Are you referring to the rear IR burner? It is used during rotisserie cooking. The advantage is that you will not have juices dripping on a hot burner which will cause flare-ups. So you only use that burner, no others, when you cook using the rotiss. It should give you an inside temp of 350-ish. You just have to use it and get a feel for how it cooks. -Terry

Following up on what was just said, I'm assuming you were trying this with plenty of water in either a large kettle or a large pressure canner. However, I'm still not sure I understand precisely what is happening. What I understand is that coil burners cycle on and off to maintain heat. (Smoothtop radiant electric burners do the same thing.) The higher the heat setting, the more they come on and the longer they stay on. When you turn the knob to the "8" setting, you are asking for a lot of heat. if you've got a canning kettle or pressure canner on your burner, it may take a while for the controls to sense enough heat in the pan for long enough to switch off for a while. Go any higher, and the burner may stay on a lot longer simply because of the size of your pot and the amount of water in it. So, is this a situation that you can get pots to boil with the high setting, but need something slightly lower to maintain the proper pressure setting or keep the boil where you want it the your water bath for your jars? With that in mind, I can think of several different possibilities for what might be happening and things you could check. (1) It is just hard to find the exact right temperature with the dial set-up the way it is. Maybe all of these Kenomore stoves do this. Try finding some canning forums and asking there. You might get more specific responses if you start a new post which lists the model number in the title. (2) Also, you could try calling an appliance repair shop or two and see if they can shed any light on this being or not being a common problem. Either they've heard of this before or they haven't. If they have, they can tell you what needs to be done and give you an estimate. Go to Sears Parts Direct and see what the parts cost. If you are handy enough, you might tackle this yourself. (3) The rheostat or sensors in your particular stove might have been defective from the start, If you are handy enough to tinker with your stove, you might might try buying just one new controller/mechanism and see if that fixes the problem. If they are not expensive and a replacement fixes the problem, you've found your solution. (4) Maybe there is something wrong with the coil burner itself. They are easily removed and checked for physical damage or degradation. (They just plug and unplug.) Sorry I do not have any more specific information than this. GW members tend to look at posts with numbers of responses. So, maybe this will inspire somebody else to chime in with better information.

Hard to say without knowing a lot more. This could be a cheap service call on the order of $200. Or it would require replacing lots of hard-to-find specialty parts. I don't really know that brand. How old is the stove? How expensive would a replacement be? Some stoves are made to be easy to service (e.g. Bluestar), others not so much. If it's a $800 stove that is more than 10 years old, I'd say go save up for a replacement. Not worth the cost of a service call that worst-case could cost almost as much and that isn't going to fix any future problems that'll still come up. If it's a $4000 stove that is only a few years old, then I'd say call the service technician. They can probably fix it for much less than buying a new stove. Anything in between, and it's really a judgement call.

Is there a reason you are limiting yourself to brands sold here? Were i in the market for a 36” range, from the choices you list,i would probably focus on Berta. Without that constraint i would look at Bluestar. Having said that, induction is my go-to choice by a mile. Its powerful, responsive and a breeze to clean, just wipe with windex and you are done.