With so many choices for appliances in today's market place how do you decide? I find this subject gets confusing with so many choices. So, I tell clients to make a list of what's important to them and how they work in the kitchen. Are you a gourmet cook or do cook from a box or a jar or are you a professional chef? When I tell clients I'm the latter they think this is funny since I design kitchens for a living.
Recently I have been expanding my culinary talents and I'm enjoying learning new ways to cook. And this has given me new insight on how to choose the right range. I have been working on my sauce cooking as I have always enjoyed them in the restaurants. With this practice I have learned more about how the functions of the range and how they are more important to certain types of cooks and not to others.
Cooking - when we think of this we think of the range. So let's expore your options.
- Professional styles ranges - such as Wolf, Viking, Dacor, Bertazzoni
- Semi- professional ranges - such as Jenn-Air, Electrolux, Kitchen- Aid
- Standard Ranges- such as LG, GE, Maytag
- Other - English Aga, French LaCorne
- Stainless steel or a color?
- Stainless has the professional look whether you buy the standard or professional style
- Colors- usually black or white- Viking, Bertazzoni are a few professional ranges that has more colors options.
- Options - Models types:
- Professional ranges come in larger sizes and have more features available as you increase the size of the range. 30",36, 48,60
- Standard range usually only comes in one size- 30" is the standard.
- Gas or electric?
- Slide in/ drop in or free standing (slide in/ drop in- standard range vendors only)
- Others like the Europeans vendors come is odd sizes and gas or electric styles

- All gas - all vendors make a model
- All electric - Standard ranges mostly
- Dual fuel - gas/electric combination - professional ranges and some standard range vendors
Other options are in the oven section of the range:
- Self cleaning
- Meat probe
- Dehydrating
- Convection
- 1 or 2 ovens - depends on size of range
- Gas or electric
- Grill or griddle
- French top- only available on the professional ranges - even then only a few vendors.
- Simmer features
- Wok options
- Professional chef
- Gourmet - includes sauce cooking
- Scratch
- Baker
- Box/jar

Sincerely Yours
Angie Keyes CKD
Angie - great post!! I need to consider a new stove in the next year or so. This gives me a good start.
ReplyDeleteThanks - Dave