Take a look at that baby. Sometime in the next couple weeks, it’s going to be mine.
When I was just a wee little child, knee-high to something even shorter than a grasshopper, I learned to cook on a gas stove. I grew up cooking on that gas stove. When Mr. Twistie and I were getting married and looking for an apartment, a gas stove was probably the single most important feature to me.
Then Mr. Twistie’s mother died and we moved into the house where he grew up. Mr. Twistie’s mother would only cook on electric. In fact, the stove in the house when she died was one Mr. Twistie and I bought her as a Christmas gift a couple years earlier, and it was electric. It was also bottom of the line because we were flat broke. Scraping up the money to get her a new stove meant we had to eat at her house regularly because it left us with no grocery money for the next month and change. Getting her a good new stove might have bankrupted us.
When we moved into this house, there was no money for anything that wasn’t absolutely necessary, and the stove was in perfectly good shape, so I started learning to cook on an electric stove at the age of thirty-eight.
Ten years later, I still am not good at working an electric stove and the thing is very nearly officially dead. Only three of the burners still work, and they’re slower than a narcoleptic snail on Quaaludes to heat up. I love to cook, but I’m starting to avoid doing it because using that stove is such a pain in the lower digestive tract.
All this is about to turn around in a big way! Mr. Twistie has finally agreed that we need a new stove Right Now, and that after all those years of me putting up with the electric stove he is now willing to face his fear of gas stoves.
He’s even found a contractor to come in and get the gas line already in place in the kitchen into safe working order again.
And so I have spent most of the past week researching stoves and dreaming dreamy dreams of having rapid heat control at my fingertips once more.
None of this is meant to belittle electric stoves of good quality or the people who love them. I freely admit that had I had access to a better quality electric stove it wouldn’t have been nearly as miserable an experience for me. As far as I’m concerned, anyone who prefers electric should absolutely have it. It’s just I’m a dyed-in-the-wool gas girl when it comes to cooking. I understand how it works. I trust the visible flame… despite the fact that I’m usually so phobic about fire that I literally cannot light a match without going into full-fledged hysterical panic attacks. Weird, but it’s my quirk and I’m used to it.
Oh, and the model I’ve fallen (potentially) in love with up there? Is made by a company called Bosch. Funnily enough, it’s only in part because of the opportunity to name my stove Hieronymous.
Is that a five burner stove? OMG, the absolutely best stove I ever cooked on was in a rental house the DH and I had the first 6 years of our marriage. It was, unfortunately, LP (and there is this little story about a stuck valve and flames shooting up into the ceiling until the DH went out and took a hammer to the tank, but that’s another tale entirely), but it had five burners: two on the left- two on the right and one in the middle, which came not only with the burner thingy that you put the pot on, it also came with a solid aluminum griddle for pancakes and also a cover(which we used as sort of this primitive heating pad to germinate garden seeds on). It was a great stove and had a huge oven. The only thing that would have made that stove completely perfect would have been for it to have had TWO ovens, but finding that is like the Holy Grail. If your Bosch stove has five burners, that is truly awesome!!
Comment by Toby Wollin — May 22, 2011 @ 4:59 pm
Congratulations on your new stove-to-be!
When we did our kitchen facelift a couple years ago, we replaces the old and not working very well to the point where electric was looking good gas cooktop with a new DCS 5 burner, and it’s wonderful. I learned to cook on gas, and had always missed it. Now I’m in heaven – and even my husband, who grew up with electric, has marveled at the heat control and volume.
I hope you have it in home soon and make many wonderful things on it!
Comment by TropicalChrome — May 22, 2011 @ 5:00 pm
I grew up with electric, and have continued to have it in every apartment I have lived in, and I hate it with a fiery passion! About seven years ago my mother did a huge remodel to our family home (it was my great-grandparents home) and put it gas. I fight with my mother and siblings to cook on it when we have gatherings! I love that stove so much! Yes, it could be better if it had that magical fifth burner or that mythical second oven but still, that stove and I have a mini affair every time I go over. Soon, so soon, you will be able to cook with wondrous, reliable, instantaneously responding gas! Those of us still cooking with electric eagerly await word of all the tasty things you will be making! Congratulations!
Comment by Jessica — May 22, 2011 @ 5:22 pm
I was always afraid of gas stoves until I moved to Asia and it’s the only kind of stove you’ll find in most apartments. Actually, it’s really only a cooktop. I didn’t even try to use it for the first six months I lived in my apartment. Once I did try it I liked how quickly it heated up but it’s taken some getting used to because it doesn’t cook at as low a temperature as I’d like. It seems to be giant flame of doom or medium flame of just a bit scary, or nothing at all. I also have a small combination microwave/grill/convection oven, but it’s not big enough to do any major cooking if you’d like to roast a chicken or make a big pan of lasagna. However, my fiance and I were looking at stoves for our future home and we came across two really nice gas stoves with double ovens. They only had four burners, but it was great to see the big oven underneath a smaller one. It’s definitely on my want list. Now if I could only find a real dryer!
Comment by Daantaat — May 22, 2011 @ 5:38 pm
May a garden of earthly delights be at your fingertips for your beautiful new stove. I’m a 38 year old gas girl – I burn EVERYTHING on electric.
Comment by mel — May 22, 2011 @ 8:09 pm
I never cooked on a gas stove until we moved into our current house, and I am definitely a convert! I love having a burner that heats up instantly, not to mention the full temperature control. Our last electric stove at the old house seemed to have two temperatures, lukewarm and boiling.
Comment by SJ — May 22, 2011 @ 8:36 pm
So awesome! Gas stoves rock.
And the one you’ve picked looks super fantastic!
Congrats and enjoy. :)
Comment by joods — May 22, 2011 @ 8:59 pm
I HATE cooking with electricity. Nobody ever says, “Now you’re cooking with electricity!” They say, “Now you’re cooking with gas!” Don’t they? Or did I make that saying up?
Anyhow, the guy who remodeled our kitchen a few years ago actually cut the gas line to redirect it to a gas fireplace he installed in the living room, which is too darn expensive to heat in the winter anyhow, even to get it warm enough to go in there and turn on the fireplace, and put in an electric stove.
Idiot.
Not only that, but it’s one of those smooth top cooking surfaces, which are a pain in the neck to clean.
We have two years left to pay alimony to my husband’s ex. As soon as we are done with that, the electric stove is coming out and a gas stove is coming in. I can’t wait.
Comment by The gold digger — May 23, 2011 @ 8:44 am
Anyone who thinks cooking with an electric cooktop is better than gas cannot know what they are talking about! I guess they could, but you get me. There is a reason you don’t see electric cooktops in the homes or kitchens of professional chefs, or those of most people who love to cook, for that matter. I have been fortunate to always live where there was gas for cooking and so cooking on an electric eye has always been a pain because I have no practice. Congratulations on your dreamy new stove!
Comment by LeighB in ATL — May 23, 2011 @ 9:18 am
LOL – my husband hates gas too, so I’m glad I’m not the only one dealing with that pain. :D
I love a gas stove. Alas, I do not have one. When we (eventually) remodel our kitchen, I’m plotting. That is years down the road though. Boohoo!
Congrats on the new one. We have a Bosch dishwasher and it rocks. QUIET!! Cleans really well. Good reviews on Consumer Reports. Hopefully their stoves perform just as well.
Comment by MrsBug — May 23, 2011 @ 10:01 am
I grew up with an electric stove and a old castiron wood stove. I have cooked on a gas stove and it seems nifty but I haven’t seen a huge benefit when compared to the expense. My dream stove would be a ceramic induction stove. *prrr* I guess a gas stove with five burners would be luxury too. To bad we pay luxury tax on the gas used in stoves and you would be hard pressed to find an insurance company who would insure you house with gas lines installed. We have to make due with gas tanks. And before you contemplate on saying something about the idiocy of having a gas tank of any size near ones home instead of a small steady stream of gas in a line, I just don’t know why that’s allowed and not the other. About the myth of two ovens. When it comes to electric stoves the norm right now is to buy a flat ceramic induction plate and set it into your counter top and then have two ovens installed in torso height elsewhere in the kitchen. Is there a reason that is impossible with gas?
Congratulations on getting your dream stove. Everyone deserves to have a great tool for cooking delicious dinners!
Comment by Ravna — May 23, 2011 @ 1:17 pm
The original ’78 low end gas range in my house finally died the miserable death it deserved last yr (ie down to 3 burners and the oven thermostat was dead). I bought a highly rated Consumer Reports Frigidaire gas stove with 5 burners, a hugh oven, and continuous cast iron grates.
I never knew I could have deep abiding love for an appliance. Only the wondermutt receives more affection.
Congratulations.
Comment by txbunny — May 23, 2011 @ 6:07 pm
I have cooked over wood fires with more success than electric stoves. As far as I’m concerned, human-kind was not meant to heat food with randomly crazed electrons.
Comment by Lizz — May 24, 2011 @ 12:24 am
Congratulations on that fabulous stove up there! I’ve cooked on electric and on gas but the reality for me is that I get used to using what I’m using, and go on that. Gas has always scared me (I know, grow up) but if I had to choose an ideal, I know electric ranges just don’t offer the level of control I’d like to have. Induction looks intriguing, though; and I still go on about how nice it would be to have an AGA. But the real objective is to have a great stove that makes cooking anything that much more enjoyable.
I hope you make a million wonderful meals on that baby!
Comment by ChaChaheels — May 24, 2011 @ 9:00 am