I am renovating my kitchen and am comparison shopping for a gas range (among other appliances). Oh the choices! I have narrowed my choices for the refrigerator and dishwasher (although I remain open to suggestion), but I am completely overwhelmed by the options for a gas range, ie., dual fuel, convection, double oven, warming drawer, griddle in the middle, GE Profile vs Jenn-Air vs Kitchen Aid, freestanding range vs. cooktop/wall oven, etc.

I have become obsessed with this purchase, spending my weekends at Home Depot, Loews, the Great Indoors, Bray and Scarff, and sears.com, to no avail. So, I am turning this over to the rockwellians. The only thing I know for sure is that I want the cooktop to be gas. I would greatly appreciate your input, advice, and/or strong feelings on this subject. Thanks!

Monique:

Try visiting THIS forum. YOu might find some information that will help you make your decisions.

Thanks so much! That is exactly what i've been hoping to find.

Somehow, I just knew that someone here would have sprung for a Bluestar (from the folks who formerly supplied Garland's residential line). How do you like it, John? Anything about it you don't like? Would you buy it again?

(And for completeness, I assume you have it configured for natural gas, not propane?)

I love it--it is a real cooking machine. Really, I can't think of anything about it I don't like, except perhaps that the burners, even the simmer burner, are hard to get low enough to really simmer, but this is a small price to pay and a problem that can be solved in other ways. The sheer firepower of the thing is really worth it for just about any type of cooking, and can't be beat for wok cooking which is important to me since I swore that in my new retirement house I was going to get up to speed on Chinese cooking, heretofore a major gap in my range of (modest) skills. I certainly would never want to be without one ever again.

I have the range top, not the full range with ovens (I'm partial to electric for baking which is why I went that route). But the top is an exact duplicate of the full range's cooking surface. As to fuel, where I am there is no natural gas so I have no choice but to run it on propane. But it doesn't seem to be an issue.

BTW I know of at least two other Rockwellians who have BlueStars, and I'm sure there must be others.

I designed a 36-inch 6-burner natural gas BlueStar cooktop into our kitchen 5 years back. Very happy with it. It's hot, beefy, and I like the open (not "sealed") burners that let mishaps overflow into a catch tray. It's a cooktop, not an object of art: the cast iron burner bowls do get gunky with burned on grease and such, but they go in the dishwasher once in a while, or respond to spray-on oven cleaner a couple times a year for the worst cases.

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Every time I cook at friends' houses their burners seem very slow, more steaming rather than searing -- even ones with high-priced name tags. I end up having to cook in much smaller batches than I do at home.

I find I use the tiny simmer burner more often than expected. Most recently I've been using it to cook fish sous vide, vacuum sealed and held at 140F for 30 minutes -- comes out wonderfully unctuous, verging on duck-confit texture and richness.


I'd definitely buy it again, and would have a hard time moving somewhere that had a more wimpy cooktop. I can't think of anything I don't like about it.

We have the 30" range with oven, powered by Natural Gas--and we love it. We had a 36" Viking in our last house, and this blows it away. The oven does take time to heat, as most 30" do, but the nicest thing is to be able to put to half sheet pans side by side. I hadn't used it in awhile, but tested it out quite successfully when I made some Molasses Spice cookies this fall. We also have an electric oven in our kitchen, that does take a shorter time to get to temp.

The infrared broiler is great for searing steaks. I can't recall the temp our broiler reaches off the top of my head this morning, but the website says the new models reach 1850 degrees (obviously when close to the broiler element) I agree with John about the low temp for simmering...although the simmer burner does get lower than the 22k burner, I tend not to use the back burners very often because of my height (or lack thereof.) I had no problem simmering when I made potato corn chowder last week. I definitely credit my level of confidence and adventure in learning more about cooking with the ease and durability of this stove.

Now that I'm learning more about how I cook, I may have configured the burners differently, having one simmer burner up front with the 22k, but that's just me. I would definitely purchase it again.