"Doris Night" > wrote in message
...
> On Wed, 6 Aug 2014 01:20:32 +0100, Janet > wrote:
>
>> I've had a stove with a glasstop hob for 12 years with no problem,
>>fast heating, very responsive, tough, clean.
>
> My glasstop stove has a burner labelled "power element". It will boil
> a liter of water in about 90 seconds. Since I only steam (not boil)
> vegetables, I can get a lot of stuff cooked in relatively little time.
>
> Compare this to my MIL's gas stove. Put a pot of potatoes on to boil,
> (no steaming in that house, no, things cook faster when they are
> boiled) you'll be waiting for half an hour for the water to even get
> hot.
>
> Every Christmas, Easter, and Thanksgiving I get ****ed off about this.

Wow! I had a gas stove that was quite old. Not sure what year it was made.
I could just tell by looking at it that it was very old. Never had the
pilot light go out on it so never had to deal with that. Other than that, I
had the military housing, standard issue, likely cheapest ever gas stoves.
I had constant problems with the oven pilot light going on when we lived on
Cape Cod. I was told it was due to the humidity. Always had to call
maintenance to relight it. Meanwhile, I had could use the burners but I
think I had to use a match to light them until maintenance came. I don't
really having any problems getting things to boil and it certainly didn't
take a half an hour, even for a very full pot of water.

The only problem I had with my current electric stove was my mom somehow
damaging a burner not long after I got it. She was angry because of the
condition of the drip pan and tried to remove it for cleaning. Long story
short on the drip pans, they were crap. They got darkened and eventually
rusted out. Have since replaced them and added drip pan liners.

The problem came in the way she removed the burner. On her old stove, you
had to yank the burner kind of straight up to take it out. But not these!
In fact the instructions that came with it cautioned you never to do this
and instead to slowly and carefully slide it out as flatly and evenly as
possible.

That burner was never the same after she did that and it didn't fully turn
red when on. Not really sure what she damaged in it but something. It
worked and I kept using it until the center of it rusted out. Oh she also
broke some little piece underneath. That burner was the one I used the most
often so I just got used to it like it was. But the new burner I put in
does heat up water a lot faster.

My mom's flat top stove was so slow to heat water that if you needed boiling
water, you needed to start it about an hour before you wanted it boiling.
Might not have taken that long but it often did, especially if it was a huge
pan for pasta.