On 8/6/2014 11:20 AM, sf wrote:

>
> Example of the differences between gas stoves - I was over at my son's
> last week cooking on his *old* (and not top of the line when new gas
> stove) last week. It took me all day to cook tomatoes into a fairly
> decent sauce. Fast forward to yesterday when I was over at my DD's
> house with a brand new semi-professional type gas stove and wanted to
> speed up the process a bit. The tomatoes I was trying to turn into
> sauce went from whole and raw to a burned mess in 20 minutes... and I
> spent the rest of the day trying to remove burned on crud from a
> nonstick pan.

Comparing stoves sort of generically as is often done here is
meaningless and fruitless. As you point out, there can be major
differences between models. Many stoves have all burners the same size,
about 8,000 Btu, but other models can have top output of more than
double that.

Mine has one burner that has two controls as it is a dual function.
With both going top end, it is about 18,000 Btu, but with the center
burner only, it gets down to 350 or something for simmering.

Electrics can be more efficient since you don't have heat going up the
sides. Matching pot to burner affects performance too.

And you can't toast marshmallos on an electric.