A Range of Options

David Rosengarten - Departures Magazine
Published: November, 2003

Among serious cooks, the debate over the perfect cooktop is hot stuff. David Rosengarten tests four of the best ranges on the market today.

THIS, BELIEVE IT OR NOT, IS A TRUE STORY. Once upon a time – not so long ago, really – people didn't care about which cooktop they had in their kitchen. Not only didn't they care about which range they used, it wasn't even a subject deemed worthy of consideration.

For one thing, there was really nothing to consider; 30 years ago, you moved into your house, turned on your stove, and, well, that was that. And then there was the fact that people simply didn't have conversations – much less debates – about their household appliances. Oh sure, there were some general kitchen decisions to be made – should the freezer be on top of the fridge or to the side? Should the refrigerator be avocado-green or sunset-red? – but aside from the fundamental choice of "gas or electric," the cook top range was virtually an option-free zone. Ah, those were the days.

But say "home" and "range" to many Americans today, and instead of inspiring a rendition of an old prairie song you'll find yourself igniting one of the hottest arguments among at-home cooks: Does Garland make the best range on the market? Or does Viking? Or is it being made by a hotshot company you haven't even heard of? Let's face it: The range has replaced the hearth as the epicenter of domestic life. It's the place where we cook, of course, but it's also the place where we get to show off a bit. (Okay, a lot.) Nowadays we're all star chefs whipping up fabulous at-home facsimiles of restaurant food. Not that it's easy. After all, eliciting oohs and ahs from friends and family – amateur restaurant critics all – requires burners so sensitive they can incinerate a shallot one moment, then cook quickly enough to hold that buerre blanc at the perfect quiver while you're busy boning the poached salmon.

So commonplace have such culinary theatrics become that it's easy to forget that American's fascination with and ease in the kitchen is really a fairly new phenomenon. According to Viking's Fred Carl Jr., it wasn't until the late 1970's that Americans even began to evince an interest in large, powerful, commercial-style ranges tailored for residential kitchens. But as Carl writes in an article in The New Cooks' Catalogue, the commercial ranges back then didn't "meet building codes for residential installation because of their high heat output, lack of safety features, and excessive energy consumption."

So he, and others, began working on high-firepower residential ranges that would still satisfy American building codes. And did they ever succeed. By the 1980's, Garlands and Vulcans and Vikings and Wolfs were everywhere, elbowing their way into popular culture and establishing themselves as icons of the idealized end-of-the-century kitchen.

Today the number of companies that produce these commercial-style residential ranges is well into the double digits, and the number of options and accoutrements available to the customer is in the triple digits. And yet most consumers don't have the time or opportunity to significantly test-drive their prospective cooktop. Instead they are left to wonder: What should I look for? What should I be asking? And then, in the back of their minds: Are there even any significant differences between stovetops, or are they all more or less the same?

As a cookbook author who understands how crucial a good cooktop is, I always asked the same questions. So I set out to test four leading commercial-style cooktop ranges built for residential use. The tests devised were purely performance-oriented ( I knew early on that I was, in showroom parlance, "a cooker, not a looker"), and so, armed with my arsenal of pots, pans, thermometers, and ingredients, I traipsed through showrooms for a week, testing, retesting, and marveling at the results. By the end of my experiments I was much wiser, much more informed, and absolutely convinced of one thing: Not all cooktops are created equal.

I PICKED COOKTOPS FROM FOUR popular, well-regarded companies – Viking, Blue Star, DCS, and Jade –
for my tests. I worked with six-burner models, which can be purchased either as a freestanding cooktop (burners only) or as a cooktop atop an oven. I devised a series of experiments that I hoped would demonstrate each appliance's strengths and weaknesses (see "Prep Work"). The five tests were executed in exactly the same way on each, and I used the same pots and pans, and the same ingredients, each time.

TEST BOILING WATER

First I wanted to see how quickly each cooktop could boil water – it's a simple test, but one that gives a fairly accurate indication of raw power. I filled a large pot with six quarts of water at 60 degrees and covered the pot with a glass lid to eliminate any ambient air differences and allow visibility. I placed the pot on the cooktop's highest-BTU burner at the highest heat setting and waited. The differences in boil time were amazing. The hands-down winner was the Blue Star, which I might have expected, given its 18,000-BTU burner; it took only 17 minutes and 50 seconds to bring the water to a boil. DCS, with its 17,500-BTU burners, came in second: The water on this cooktop came to a boil in 19 minutes and 30 seconds. Viking and Jade each provide 15,000 BTUs at their highest settings, and, predictably, were the slowest.But what I couldn't have predicted was that the Viking range would boil the water in 21 minutes and 20 seconds, where as the Jade took a full 24 minutes and 10 seconds. I'm not certain why the Jade lagged behind – but the fact that its cast-iron grates cover some of the flame may have a good deal to do with it.

TEST SIMMERING WATER

The opposite test is also of great importance – which cooktop can provide the lowest heat setting? This is a key consideration when you're making sauces (like those in the hollandaise and buerre blanc families), braising lamb shanks at the gentlest heat to ensure the slowest melting of velvety collagens, or when (like me) you're obsessively scrambling eggs over the lowest possible heat so that they reduce and get richer as they cook (this can take an hour if you have a really well-behaved burner). The test, again, was simple: I placed two quarts of 60-degree water in a large pot, covered it, set it over the burner's lowest possible setting. Then I measured the water's temperature at two minutes, five minutes, ten minutes, and 20 minutes.

The results were startling; the cooktop that boiled water in the fastest time was also the cooktop that kept water at the lowest, most even temperature; Blue Staronce again emerged victorious, thanks to its "burner within a burner" feature, which provides a separate 250-BTU simmer flame right on the same burner that gives you a standard higher-output flame. The performance was beautiful: The water remained at 60 degrees after two minutes, even after five minutes. At the ten minute point it rose slightly, to 62 degrees, and at 20 minutes it had mounted to only 68 degrees.