this post was submitted on 21 Oct 2023
227 points (96.0% liked)
science
21388 readers
509 users here now
A community to post scientific articles, news, and civil discussion.
rule #1: be kind
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I had gas stoves most of my life. Several years back I had an apt with a nice flat top electric and I liked it. Fast forward a couple years and my current place has a gas stove again. I hate it now and I miss the electric.
It was reliable. It didn't smell or leave combustion byproducts in the air. I don't have to worry about making the house explode if a burner is bumped on.
The thing I notice the most is it's wasteful. On the electric the handles of my pots were never too hot to touch. Gas stove, so much heat is lost around the pot. The handles are always hot and the above range microwave handle gets hot too. (I am using the appropriate sized burner for the pot size.)
This article was posted on another community yesterday. Most of the comments were about how awesome gas is and how crappy electric is.
In my adult life I'd always had electric stoves, and they were fine. Two years ago I bought a house with a gas stove and I was so excited because I love cooking and it's supposed to be the best.
I fucking hated it. There's so many cons to gas stoves that people never talk about and I don't get it.
The waste heat is insane. Your pan and pot handles get hot. You can't leave utensils in the pot or pan, they will burn. It directly heats and humidifies the air in your kitchen. It's finicky on low heat and you can sometimes have a burner go out.
And these are just ways that gas sucks to use. I'm not even talking about health impacts.
We switched to induction and it's definitely the best. But I'd rather have resistive electric than gas.
One benefit of electric and induction that's a bit subtler: you can smell what you're cooking better. With gas, there are all these hot gasses coming up around your pan that make smelling things hard.
It’s so weird because I’ve hated every electric stove I used and loved every gas one.
One big reason is that when a gas burner is off it is no longer producing any heat. The number of times I’ve had a boil over or burned food because the heat doesn’t just turn off immediately makes me hate electric. And that’s just one reason.
Resistive electric just requires a different technique. If you adapt to it, they work just fine.