I am not sure how much this will help with a residential range, but I have cleaned up open burners in commercial ranges before. You pop off the grates and wash them (told by bluestar that I could put them in the DW). Pull off the burner and unhook the wire for the ignitor (I wouldn't do this every time only in a very detailed cleaning. Wipe it down and put it back together. Often we just turned it on high for 10 minutes and everything disappeared.

We always lined our drip pans with heavy duty foil so that was easy to clean up. I have coil now also and hate how the cheap metal liners get dirty and rush ultimately. But I never had this problem on the commercial range.

Hope it helps.

I was going back and forth on this issue. I liked the idea of open for less loss of BTU's especially on Propane but clean up is an issue with me as well. I found the Wolf open burner has a much tighter fit drip pan so it is like getting the best of both.

Rhome410:

After living with all different kinds of cooktops and researching for our new kitchen, I truly don't think there is a perfect rangetop from a cleaning standpoint. I've had electric coils (including the dreadful Jennair cartridge top - THAT was a nightmare to take apart!), electric smoothtop (easy to clean but HATED cooking on it and scratch-prone), KA gas on black glass (showed every speck or spear and the enamel grates chipped), and now a Wolf AG range. The only thing I haven't tried is the Bluestar setup or sealed stainless burners. I'm about to experience the sealed stainless burners as we're buying one of the new GE Cafe' line DF ranges for our beach place. I agree with Eandhl that the Wolf open burner does have a very tight-fitting drip pan so it is very similar to closed. Its black porcelain enamel does show every splatter (and will scratch) but is fairly easy to bring back to almost-new. I run the grates through the DW and they come out looking like new. My fear with the stainless sealed burners is that they will easily scratch and there will be burnt-on stuff around burner caps that is impossible to remove entirely. The Bluestar would probably show less mess on a daily basis but would seem to be very unwieldy and heavy to take apart to clean (as a compulsive person like me would feel compelled to do on a regular basis). Pick your poison - rangetops are inherently messy; IMO nothing but a glass smoothtop will be "easy" to keep but it won't be very fun to cook on.

Thanks, Suzanne, eandhl, zoenipp. I have black enameled drip pans in our coil burner range right now, and they definitely don't come back anything close to new, so I was afraid of the Wolf pans being the same problem, although I could see that they were kind of the 'happy medium' between BlueStar and anything sealed.

This is a tough issue for me, because I actually initially planned to get induction, which wouldn't have a cleaning issue (just right for us that way)--But without enough large burners for us, it would have had much bigger aggravations than some scrubbing!

Thanks again.

When I was doing research for my remodel, I thought sealed burners sounded wonderful, then I got a sealed-burner cooktop and discovered that I hated them. I really didn't like having the flames come out in a circle, so that the center of a pan didn't get heated; perhaps there's a sealed burner out there with a star shape, which is so much better for cooking. Also, everything shows on the stainless surface the burners sit on, and it is indeed very difficult to clean right around the burners. I've switched to a BlueStar and am very happy with the star-shaped burners, the matte black porcelain finish, and the ablility to pop the grates and bowls into the dishwasher. But I know a lot of sealed-burner owners are perfectly happy with their appliances, so it depends on personal preference.

---Margaret

Here is a link that might be useful: My New Kitchen - The cooking area

Thanks Margaret,
You just confirmed my thoughts about cleaning the Bluestar unsealed. I hated cleaning the sealed Viking burners.

Suzanne

Margaret, I have enjoyed visiting your wonderful kitchen so many times for different reasons. I'd forgotten how well you covered your cooktop experience, and it was nice to share it with my husband. I think my problem is that there are things about each rangetop (Capital Precision, Wolf, and BlueStar) that concern me, and also specific things that I like, so it's hard to decide to give up any of them!