Rangetop Dilemma - induction, grill, griddle, open/sealed burners

6 years ago

I think I've read every review, discussion, forum, and blog available on this issue. I may or may not have finished the internet. However, I find myself just more hopelessly confused than when I started. I am building what will likely be my forever kitchen. I've kind of settled on a 48 inch rangetop, but I could also be convinced to go back to an induction/gas cooktop combo. (see above re: being hopelessly confused).

My specific concerns with the rangetop are.

How important is a decent grill? I wouldn't be doing steaks/burgers on it year round, but I'd like to be able to grill veggies, seafood, and bread to accompany dinner. Would an iron grill plate over the regular burners work just fine, or is it apples and oranges.
Is a 12 inch griddle big enough for most normal use, or is it better to opt for a 24 inch griddle? I have it in my head that I'd use the griddle for a bunch of stuff (meats, fish, veggies, breakfast, etc.) in lieu of using a pan. Is this accurate, or will a pan simply be easier to deal with (with the sides and ability to flip the food, etc.)?
Are the open burner (Bluestar and Capital Culinarian) really that hard to clean? Are they easier to clean than a sealed burner? Generally, my big criticism of sealed burners with gas is that all the heat goes to the edges and up the side of the pan. If I move the pan to a smaller burner, then I can't get the heat that I'm looking for. I love the functionality of an open burner, but I also don't want to have a big expensive rangetop that I never want to cook on because it's a bear to keep clean.
With regard to rangetops, my contenders are bluestar, capital culinarian, wolf, and jenn air. Any advice (given the above) on this?

In addition to rangetop options, I am still (although leaning away from it), considering doing a gas and induction combo in the kitchen. Probably a 30 inch bluestar drop in cooktop (any reviews/advice on these), coupled with a 24 inch induction unit. I've switched quite a bit between whether to have the bigger induction or bigger gas, but ultimately wasn't able to find anything decent for a gas cooktop in the sub 30 inch range. My concern with this set up is that it doesn't get me the grill or griddle that I was hoping to have. Again, I can just use a grill plate or griddle plate on the induction top or on the gas top, but I'm not sure if the built in units are that much better? Are they? Can anyone help me here?

On the induction issue, I've read that a lot of people have fallen in love with their induction cooktops, but I'm one of those cooks that likes to flip the pan, slide it around, make a mess, etc. The idea of just having a flat, boring?, glasstop induction cooktop feels more like heating food up to me than really cooking. Am I just being delusional here again? Would an induction cooktop do everything I'm looking for and more? If anyone has experience with both induction cooktops and pro-style rangetops, I'd love to hear it.

I'm at the point where I need to tell my kitchen people specifics on sizes and appliances so they can order cabinets, which is why I've finally bucked and just put this all into a post begging for your help.

Thank you all,

Alex

Featured Answer

homechef59

6 years ago

I'm on the side of open burner gas. I think the optimal arrangement is a range top and separate wall ovens. If you have to have a range, I suggest the BlueStar due to the burners. You use those more than anything else on a regular basis.

To answer your question about open versus closed burner, open wins hands down every time. It's not difficult to clean. In my past, I've had open burner Wolf, Viking and BlueStar in a residential setting. My closed burner experience was with Thermador. It's been quite the adjustment moving from a BlueStar range top with open, star-shaped burners to much lower power Viking round open burners. I miss the BlueStar. I will also opine that while power is important, the shape of the burner is the most important feature.

I don't like using the griddle in a residential setting. I find myself pulling out my old griddle pan. I go out side to the grill. Both features make a big mess inside and I don't like having to clean them up. Grease gets everywhere.

That's my personal preference. You have to make that decision for yourself. Most people only see one of these in the showroom when it's shiny and new. Use it for a few years and see how they hold up. I do use the griddle burner for a warming tray. So, it does have a use. I don't think you need to dedicate a burner side for a grill or griddle. But, that is just me.

I loved my BlueStar and I miss it.

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Comments (12)

homepro01
6 years ago
Alex,

I own both a gas and induction cooktop. In retrospect, I would have done all induction (I would have added an Induction Wok burner). I had been experiencing random power outages and worried that I would not be able to cook during an outage. To be honest, a camper stove would have been more appropriate. I rarely use the Gas Wok burner except for specific instances. I use the 30" Miele Induction cooktop constantly. My advice to you is to find a showroom where they have the induction cooktops operational and they may also have a Gas range that you can try out. There are some things I forget until i go to use the Gas Wok burner such as:
1. The handles for my cookware gets really hot on the Gas Wok burner but not on induction.
2. The kitchen and cooking area are hotter when the Gas Wok burner is being used.
3. I set a cotton cloth on fire again when using the Gas Wok burner.
4. Control of the heat is much smoother on induction and if something is burning, I don't have to move the pot just turning off the cooktop stops any heat from going to the cooking pan.
You will not need to flip anything when you cook on Induction in my opinion, the heat is so smooth that everything cooks evenly. I try if you try it, take your own pots and utensil and make something you would normally cook at home. When I went to try out the induction cooktop, I made a vegetable pasta dish and took all my ingredients. It took 30minutes less to make the dish using induction than on my old Dacor 48" gas range top.

Since I got induction, I can now make delicious omelets, I always overcook them on a gas cooktop or I don't have to be as careful. I do a lot of Indian cooking and being able to make a curry without burning the curry is a great asset of induction. Onions burn very easily on gas normally.

Good luck!
Julie B
6 years ago
I have a 48in Wolf range with a 12" griddle and 6 burners. I love it. The duel level flames offer great range of heat for my pans, and yes, it is easy to keep clean with the sealed burners. I don't have experience with open burners to compare, however. As for the grill and griddle issues, I personally have friends with grills who curse the difficulty in keeping it clean and all wish they had opted for a grilltop over burners. And with the griddle, unless you know you will use it every day for a large volume of food, 12in should be sufficient. I can fit quite a bit on mine. My sister has a 24in, and they sacrificed burners and never use the griddle anymore. I know they regret it and wish they had opted for more burners and less griddle space, or no griddle at all.
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@ foodfiend_gardener, Most of the pricer lines have places where you can try out various cooktops - that's what I would try to do. You might have to go to more than one place, but its a small price to pay for some decision information. I would also consider induction. Forgive me it this has been covered above. A rangetop generally has more space for larger pans because the unit itself is deeper - there is more space available from front to back. I would view that as a positive EXCEPT if its placed near a corner with opposing cabinets. It may require a 4" or so filler to permit the next cabinet around the corner to open completely. The same kind of consideration would need to be given to access for the cabinets on both side of a decision to place a rangetop across a corner. @marthavilla - I think it depends on your personal experience with sealed burners. Just like there isn't the one-true open burner design, sealed burners from different manufacturers are different. I'm pretty sure they vary widely in actual performance (mine have). Same pots, same cook, but different results. I think there isn't a big generality that explains or reconciles every view of open vs. closed. I don't have the budget for an expensive cooktop/range so I'm more familiar with the pretty bad burner designs on the more modest end of the money spectrum where the burners are always sealed. I'm not saying they're all bad, just that the ones I cooked on were. The thing about single ring burners and the center being cold? I have actually experienced this (for 7.5 years) on the last range. I think its possible that the physics-speakers are not making enough allowance for stupid burner designs. In my case, the diameter between where the flames are perpendicular to the bottom of the pan at medium was close to 8 inches on the power burner. Even when the burner was turned all the way down, the effective flame diameter was still more than 6 inches. The more the burner was turned up, the further out the flame moved and the larger the "flameless" center became. It was my experience that the effect of "cold center" on that burner was barely changed by heavier cookware or cookware that was more conductive. It could be changed by stirring. It's possible that I just didn't own any cookware big enough and heavy enough (I would have trouble lifting something like an enameled cast iron pot with at least a 12" diameter on the bottom). The 17k power burner design was Extra-Stupid but the 11k burner design was ok. It had a diameter almost 2 inches narrower between the flames. A properly heated cast iron pot could fill-in the cold center. I couldn't use the same pot (3 qt casserole) on the power burner because the flame would miss the pan on any setting > 1. As a matter of fact, the setting at 2, 3 and 4 was the same as 1 - this was true on all its burners. Because I could literally take the same cookware outside where I had an open burner camp stove - its has 30k burners that I never turn up more than halfway. A 30k burner turned up all the way is a scary burner to me. It was easy for me to ascribe the difference to open v. closed burners. The burners on a culinairian look like a tamed and refined version of camp stove burners. My new range is the baby NXR with 15k dual stacked burners and I'm pretty happy. I get done cooking in less time with better results in doing simple things like browning chicken. I can boil a gallon of water in 15 minutes on any burner. This is a miracle to me. On the stupid sealed burner design, I couldn't boil 2.5 pints of water in 20 minutes without stirring. So, not-stupid closed burner designs have removed some of the open burner desire.. I still think positioning more of the heat in the center of the pot at all power levels is better than positioning it closer to the outer edges. Open burners win in my mind at being able to effectively heat a wide variety of pan sizes and many types of cookware on the same burner.
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I've mentioned this before, but hot cooking can generate meter per second rising and expanding cooking plumes. Generally, these will have larger sectional area than the pop-up slot area facing the plume. Yet, somehow, the slot velocity is expected to be high enough that the vector combination of vent air and plume effluent at the plume and over the entire plume area will be directed toward the slot. However, the slot acting as a mini hood has, like all hoods, to follow the behavior documented in the 2003 ASHRAE Handbook: HVAC Applications. There, Figure 6 page 30.4 shows that the air velocity has dropped to 10% of its slot opening value at 1.6 times the narrow dimension of the slot. Yet most of the plume is multiple slot dimensions away. One imagines that the slot velocity would have to be 30 m/s of so to be fully effective. (Let's assume induction cooking so we don't have to deal with flame extinction.) A 3-inch by 48-inch slot (1 sq. ft. area) would have to move air at 6000 CFM to accomplish this. Given the pressure loss of the slot, I can imagine the large and noisy blower this would require. In case this makes one wonder how regular hoods can work, please note that regular kitchen hoods do not pull effluent away from their direction of flow, but depend on the flow to bring the plumes to the hoods for capture.
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Toronto Veterinarian
6 years ago
"but I'm one of those cooks that likes to flip the pan, slide it around,
make a mess, etc. The idea of just having a flat, boring?, glasstop
induction cooktop feels more like heating food up to me than really
cooking. Am I just being delusional here again?"

Yup. LOL. The induction cooktop can do all that, probably better than gas. I've never had gas at home (not allowed in the buildings where I've rented or owned), but I have used them at friends' and vacation rentals. I always liked cooking on them far more than standard electric stoves, but once I got my induction.....ahhhh.....gas just isn't as good.

Nothing around the pot really heats up, because there is very little heat from the burner or the glass stove top. And that also means it's far easier to clean, because spilled food or ingredients don't get baked on; if you like, you can even cook many things on top of some newspaper or paper towels to catch drips and splatters. (I don't know if I'd try that for high-heat frying or stir frying, though I sometimes do it for simmering saucy things like chili.) You've got excellent, fast control of heat levels up and down, and it maintains a nice low simmer very well.
mishmosh
6 years ago
I don't see what the draw is with griddles. Unless you are cooking a mass quantity of food, it is far easier to use a pan. Clean up is a pain.
malabacat
6 years ago
I have a 36" Bluestar range and the open burners are very easy to keep clean. Having used many stoves with sealed burners, imo open burners are much easier to clean.

I have a cast iron reversible griddle/grill pan that fits perfectly over two of the BS burners. I like it, but honestly I prefer to use a pan, and find I rarely use it anymore.
PRO
User
6 years ago
I have the grill and the griddle both - in my case a 60" Wolf - and the griddle is indispensable. A high quality griddle cooks quite differently than a pan - even a cast iron one - and the perfectly even quality of the heat allows you to cook things you might not think of, like crumpets. Of course breakfast is a no brainer on a griddle, but it also works like the griddles at Benihana's for cooking asian style veggies, shrimp, etc. Grilled cheese sandwiches come out so perfect you can't believe it. And don't worry about not having enough burners if you opt for the 48" with four burners and a grill and a griddle - the griddle works just great for pots and pans to sit on as well if you need the extra room.
Rosie Miller
6 years ago
When we redid our kitchen 4 yrs ago I had not even heard of induction, but a salesman introduced us to it and we have it a go. I LOVE IT....and cooking is like what I do all day just because I love to cook. We had to get new pans, but our old Revere Ware didn't owe us anything. one thing I have learned however is that induction cook top cookware can be very expensive. I have found that going to places like Marshalls I am able to pick up induction compatible pieces very reasonably.

My only complaint is that we did all of our appliances in Jenn Aire......huge mistake. the quality is crap these days. after 4vyears one of my doyblevoven set wouldn't work which automatically disabled the second oven. For 3 weeks I have no oven. Service was terrible and although there was a 5 year warranty on the oven set, the only part not covered was the fan, and that was the part that was broken. the only good appliance is their dishwasher. you have to put your ear on the door to see if it is running, it is sooooo quiet.

Go with induction....DON'T BUY JENN AIR!!!

Also, another suggestion. get a microwave drawer. They are awesome!! I'll never have anything but a drawer again.

when
.
Jerry Jorgenson
6 years ago
I cook almost nothing that would use a griddle. I use the broiler in the Bluestar wall oven all the time. And a Wolf induction cooktop (though now I would get the Bluestar one because it has knobs--the touch panel controls on the Wolf are a pain). The microwave mostly sits idle.
opaone
6 years ago
I very much prefer open burner gas but I don't think induction is at all a bad choice —so long as you understand the limitations of both. I think the difficult to clean bit was a myth as folks I've talked to as well as my own brief experience says it's a non-issue.

I'm personally not fan of indoor grills. That said, I recently very much enjoyed the fruits of one at a small dinner party.

We currently have a 36" Wolf AG w/ 4 burners (old semi-open) and 12" griddle. For our new build we'll likely have a 48" BS w/ 4 burners and 24" griddle. For us a good thermostatic griddle is a very useful tool that does a wide variety of things.

Our hesitancy w/ BS is:

1) no 25k burner on RNB (and no thermostatic griddle on 'platinum'),

2) their griddle is thin and will likely not provide as even of heat nor as fast recovery as our current Wolf. I've got IR measurements off our Wolf and hope to get some of a BS early next week, and

3) their oven racks are wide and make it difficult to get full size sheets and chaffer pans in.

4) the above indicate that they don't really understand cooking.
Jerry Jorgenson
6 years ago
I use full size sheets all the time and haven't had any issues.
Nina Rosenblatt
6 years ago
Alex, I’m in a similar boat here! What did you pick?!

Rangetop Dilemma - induction, grill, griddle, open/sealed burners

homechef59

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homepro01

Julie B

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