Wayne Boatwright wrote:
On Thu 19 Nov 2009 05:24:36p, cshenk told us...


"Bob-tx" wrote


Am replacing an electric cooktop (exposed burner element type). Wife is
considering the smooth top type.
What are the pros and cons of the smooth top over the open burner type?

Pro's, they tend to look spiffy. I stretched for another one and can't
find it.

Con's
- Much harder to clean a spill if it bakes in at all. Easy to damage
surface when trying.
- Often a favorite pan or so can never be used on it (my best cast iron
for example)
- Somewhat fragile, leading to chips or cracks
- Expensive to repair (pretty much replace)
- Pots leave marks, the time you 'save' wiping gets used scouring pot
bottoms
- Slower to heat, lower final heat (this may be dated info and newer
models may be better)

Reality is the usefullness tends to degrade fast with a person who
*loves* to cook and and is more interested in performance than looks.
Seen any cooking shows? You won't find any glass tops at all in them.
Electric and gas (both slightly different but both work well).

Now, if most of the time you folks are just reheating a soup, or boiling
a few veggies etc, glass top is ok. If using it to put up canned goods,
make jellies/jams, or any of the other assorted things some of us really
enjoy doing, you will find a glass top 'looks spiffy' and after a month,
you will wish to hell you had a regular stove top again. That big pot
of tomato sauce, perking slowly all day to perfection? Nope. Not as
efficient as a regular burner for that.

I had a fortunately *short* 4 month time when I had a temporary place
with one of those glass top units. With no experince with them at
first, I thought it looked really neat and liked the idea. The
honeymoon ended in less than a week in my case. I was really glad to
move by the end of that 4 months to a place with a real stovetop.


Clearly we've had different experiences, Carol, and I couldn't disagree
more. In 3 different houses I have had 3 different smoothtop ranges and
loved all 3. The first was a Frigidaire, the second a GE, and the present
one a Whirlpool.

Cleaning methods are obviously different for these ranges, but done
properly is neither more time consuming nor more difficult.

I will agree that "proper" cookware is necessary for best results. I use
both heavy stainless steel and Le Creuset enameled cast iron, as well as a
few Pyrex pieces.

IME, the heating/cooling responsiveness is far better than an open coil
electric range. I have never liked nor wanted a gas range.

My last two ranges have had variable size elements, as well as true simmer
and "keep warm" settings.

In short, I couldn't be happier with any other type of range. Although,
could I afford it, I would be interested in trying an induction cooktop.
All my current cookware would work with that, too.

I am absolutely delighted with my GE Spectra smoothtop. It is black and
I use my cast iron cookware on it every day. I don't always clean it
daily and do have to scrape with the razor blade which came with it.
However, I do feel I can clean it better than I could clean my coil
range and even with cleaning once a month or so it looks like new even
though it is 10+ years old.

Jane