The most obvious difference between traditional cooktops and the ones of today is modular additions. Built-in steamers, woks, barbecue grills, griddles, and deep fryers allow home cooks to customize their cooktops to the way they prepare food.
The idea of a grill on a cooktop has been around for a while, but is still very popular, as are the newest cooktop options. Now joining the grill are woks, steamers, and even deep-fat fryers.
Ever since consumers decided they wanted more than the one-size fits-all, Model-T style of products —available in any color you want, as long as you want black — we’ve been busy customizing our homes. Now, our cooktops can be customized for function, as well as looks. Three gas burners and a griddle? You can have that. Two induction burners and two radiant? You can have that. Four sealed gas burners, a wok, and a steamer? Just ask.
Buying a professional appliance gives your kitchen more than just a hip, stainless-steel look. For the money, a professional cook top comes with professional heat, measured in Btu. Btu stands for British thermal unit; one Btu is what it takes to heat one pound of water one degree Fahrenheit, roughly the heat produced by one wooden match.
Typical ordinary burners generate around 7,500 and 9,000 Btu. Newer models — those made in the past few years — can produce 12,000 Btu, which is enough heat to get a really good stir- fry going.
New high—end models, like those made by Kitchen-Aid, Thermador, Viking, and DCS, often come with “power burners,” which can produce as much as 15,000 Btu. Power burners can keep a pot of gumbo piping hot, or boil a large pot for pasta. With that much heat, eight quarts of water (definitely enough for a pasta party) will boil in about six minutes.
But the bells and whistles aren’t all about getting hotter. The newest gas can also regulate low temperatures. The drawback with gas has been that you can’t truly simmer on a gas cooktop. The newest models have solved this problem with a simmer burner, which keeps a constant low heat by turning on and off.
More functional cooktops are gaining in popularity with the new interest in staying at home. People want to be able to get restaurant-quality results without having to go to a restaurant.
Jenn-Air is the last manufacturer to still make an induction cooktop. Their most popular induction model has two induction burners and two standard radiant burners.
The first radiant cooktops didn’t heat up quickly. In reaction, manufacturers came out with a cooktop with a halogen heating element. The powerful bulbs got very hot very fast but used a lot of energy. Now that radiants heat up faster than they used to, there isn’t as much need for halogen, which is less energy- efficient anyway. The premium you pay for halogen —between $100 and $150—is enough that it doesn’t really justify the scant few extra seconds it takes for the radiant burners to get hot.
There are three basic types of cooktops— gas, electric coil, and smooth-tops. The old coil burner, normally the least expensive way to go, is still a fine choice. The coils should be about the same size as the bottoms of the pots, although some coils offer dual element options, which means the coil senses how big your pot is and only heats as much as is in contact with it.
Standard gas burners allow drips and crumbs to go beneath the surface of the cooktop — making for a messy cleanup job every so often. Gas-sealed burners eliminate this problem with burners connected to the cooktop, so there’s no place for crumbs to hide.
Professional chefs, and most home cooks, choose gas over electric because of the amount of control available. With the twist of a dial, you can increase the heat dramatically or turn the flame down, providing more immediate results than can be achieved by an electric cooktop.
Today’s high-tech gas cooktops offer lots of extra features, like simmer settings that allow delicate sauces to cook for hours without burning and reigniting burners that restore the flame to the original level if it accidentally goes out.
Electric options cost around $250 for the basic four-burner electric coil cooktop, and from $400 to $1,200 for the smooth ceramic tops. The four- burner gas cooktops with sealed burners range from $300 to $1,500 for a model with high-powered, professional-style burners.
The last category of burners is the smooth-top; these have a layer of ceramic glass on top of a heating element. The smooth surface means the cooktop is particularly easy to clean, and the non-porous glass won’t stain. Safety issues associated with early smooth-tops have been resolved with burners that glow red when hot. Now there’s no question as to whether the burners are on.
The three types of smooth-tops are radiant (electric), halogen, and induction. Radiant burners tend to be the most popular of the three.
A more unusual option is an induction cooktop. The heat is generated by a magnetic field between the pan and the cooktop. A magnet spins rapidly under the cooktop’s surface. Only metal that will stick to a magnet will get hot when placed on the burner. So, as long as you don’t have any iron-based jewelry on, you can touch the burner without feeling the heat.
However, the need for iron or steel-alloy pans has made induction cooktops relatively unpopular, because, as we all know, hardly anyone uses only one kind of cookware. Many people don’t like the idea of buying a new collection of pots just so they can use induction burners that are already fairly expensive.
Everybody has an opinion about cooktops, based on some combination of cooking style and past experience. These days, it’s possible to disagree about far more than simply preferring electric coils over gas, or vice versa. From simmer burners to magnetic induction burners, halogen burners to radiant burners, cooktops no longer look like stoves of the 1950s.
First of all, it’s very possible— and many times even preferable— to separate the elements of the range, having the cooktop in one part of the kitchen and the oven somewhere else. This configuration allows the cooktop to be on the island, and the oven to be raised — so you don’t need to bend over to peek in on pies as they cook. Plus, it allows you to mix fuel sources, to have an electric oven (very precise) and gas burners (preferred by professionals) or a gas stove (cheaper to operate) and electric coil burners (cheaper to purchase).
Something to consider is that you need a range hood above your cooktop to absorb both cooking smells and low levels of noxious fumes that result from cooking indoors. The way around this (especially if you’re putting your cooktop on an island) is a cooktop with built-in downdraft ventilation. Jenn-Air makes the only ones on the market, and they cost about $900 and need specialized installation.