2024, Family, Food, Kids, Uncategorized

Cooking With Gas

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I and my grandson are cooking up a storm while his parents are at work. Yesterday we made Marcella’s tomato sauce, another peach and blackberry crumble, banana bread, and lemon sorbet. Grandson sliced the onion, lemons, and peaches with his special, child friendly knives.

Son and DIL have a gas stove. My, do things cook fast and at much lower temperature settings on a gas stove! It makes rather alarming pops and snaps and clicks. Son and DIL don’t seem to be worried about reported health problems with such a stove. Son, who does most of the cooking in the family, loves his gas stove. I would have one if we were piped for gas. Perhaps in our new house in Luverne.

I remember that my mother was really anxious about the gas stove we had in our last house in Luverne before we moved to a new house in the country with an electric, glass topped stove. We plan to get a new stove and microwave in our current home in October. We have used and abused our current stove and microwave so that a new set will be a selling point.

Gas, electric, wood, or induction for you? Ever cooked with gas? Any good food burning stories?

37 thoughts on “Cooking With Gas”

  2. I learned to cook with gas, and still would prefer it. Alas, the house we purchased 6 years ago has electric, and I’ve adapted. What I really would like to get is one of the “blast furnace” stoves that are common in Taiwan, which give wonderful high flames for under a wok and get things cooked in two shakes of a lamb’s tail.

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  3. We have mostly had gas stoves and that’s our preference. One of our houses had an electric stove and we accommodated to it but never grew to like it. A gas stove lets us do things like lightly charring flatbread and tortillas directly on the burners.

    I expect that gas stoves will eventually be phased out, replaced by induction. I know that induction requires cookware of specific composition but I am not entirely sure what the limitations are. Switching to induction might entail a change of cookware. It’s probably not a problem I will have to deal with in my lifetime.

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  4. Gas for me. Much more responsive than electric. Most of our cooktops and ovens have been gas. That said, I’ve read that electric ovens provide much more even heat for baking, roasting, etc. However, I prefer a gas broiler because if the protein being broiled is cooking too fast and in danger of burning, turning down the gas reduces the heat much faster than turning down the electric broiler.

    Wood-fired ovens for pizza, chicken, etc. Mmmmmm!

    If society does away with gas cooking because of fossil fuel burning restrictions, we’d probably check out an induction cooktop. They seem to be more responsive than electric. But I haven’t heard great things about them, just “good” things.

    No major food burning stories, although I’ve set a few potholders and dishtowels on fire in my career as the family cook. Never had to call the fire department, though.

    Chris in Owatonna

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  5. My grandmother told me about her mother, a professional cook in Hamburg before immigrating to the States, who always seemed to have a bowl of bread dough rising on the back of the wood fired stove. I can’t imagine baking bread using the fresh yeast they had then, and then trying to regulate the oven temperature to bake the loaves.

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    1. Yes, we actually had a wood stove in our first Winona house, tho’ there was also an electric one. I tried baking something like banana bread in there, but just once. I can’t imagine how the pioneers did it, but I guess if you practice anything enough…

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  6. I’ve owned three homes and never had a gas stove. The home has to be plumbed for the gas and I’ve never had one that was. I used to want one but I’ve become really accustomed to the ceramic top electric ones. I don’t have any problem with it at all. I clean it after each use, especially if something spills on a burner. It looks like new. Just don’t drop something on it. It’s really expensive to repair if it cracks.

    I’ve cooked on wood burning stoves. It’s not too hard to cook things on the stovetop, but baking is a real challenge. You have to watch it carefully and turn it because it will burn on one side. I have friends who live in the stone house that I’ve mentioned before. They have an old wood cook stove and they use it all the time.

    I apologize for all my messiness trying to post Queen last night. Linda found the video I wanted.

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  7. We’ve usually had gas stoves, which I prefer because of the quick response to changes. I’ve never thought of the gas as a health hazard unless I do something dumb like accidentally have a burner on without lighting it. But then you smell it right away. (Uh-oh – unless you wander out of the kitchen for a bit… )

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  9. Rise and Shine, BAboons,

    Gas, here. I love it and note no health concerns at all.

    We have a large tree branch down here so I will be finding someone to assist with getting it out of the back yard. The entire tree may need to come down.

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    2. I will be getting one of those LP tanks this fall for My heater in my shop.

      I have heard my parents talk about the old fuel oil heater in the old house, and I know there’s a tank around that they used for it. but I am too young to remember that in use.

      And up at our Townhall, we had a furnace that ran on fuel oil up until about five or six years ago. The problem was we couldn’t get anybody to repair the furnace anymore. At that point we put in a propane tank and a new furnace. Because it’s only used for meetings twice a month, we had a small upright tank. Someone stole it. Now we have about a 300 gallon tank.
      Too heavy to steal.

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  11. As you have all heard me say, I did not learn to cook from my mother as a child so don’t have any fun, childhood memories of what kind of stove we used to have. The first stove I remember was the corningware stove that they had installed when I was in high school. It had a flat surface, was electric, but you had to use corningware cookware on it, otherwise it didn’t work. I will admit, though that it did make a good popcorn, back when you used to heat up the oil in the pan, add the popcorn and put the lid on. But my mother still prefers electric. I prefer gas. As Chris said — more responsive. Also much better for making s’mores in the winter time.

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  12. I have a dual fuel stove: four gas burners on the stovetop, electric oven underneath. I have cooked on electric stoves as well, and I much prefer gas. Much easier to quickly regulate the heat. Like Bill, I heat flour tortillas directly over the flame; that’s also how I roast peppers. I have never tried cooking on an induction cooktop.

    My granny in Ireland had a big wood burning stove in the main room, which was also the only source of heat in her house. She wasn’t much of a cook or a baker, but I don’t think her stove had anything to do with that. Too little money and too many mouths to feed, did. There was always a big kettle of water simmering away, ready for a cup of tea or Bovril.

    My first fiance in Denmark grew up on a farm in Jutland. His mother was an excellent cook; she also baked all their breads. Her kitchen was a big old farm kitchen with an enormous wood fired stove. That kitchen was really the command center of that house. Their upstairs parlor, living and dining rooms were pristine and rarely used.

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  13. I spent time in the summer with my maternal grandparents on the farm place they shared with my uncle and his family. Thev old wood stove was in the machine shed. One summer my cousin Steve and I filled the stove with corn cobs and started them on fire. The whole yard filled with thick smoke. I cooked mud pies on the stove. It was really fun.

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  14. I wonder if the phrase “Now we’re cooking with gas”, which I always have understood to mean we are doing well, was coined from the transition from wood stoves to gas stoves?

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  15. We have always only had Electric. And then last summer bought an induction stove.
    We already had good metal cookware so that wasn’t a problem. Being all glass you do spend a lot of time cleaning it, but they never get hot. You won’t melt plastic bag on the burner or anything. The only thing I don’t like is that the touch knobs are right on the front And anytime I lean over the stove or bump up against it I’m turning on a burner. Having said that, if there’s nothing on the burner it won’t do anything. Nothing gets hot.

    I’m not doing fancy cooking, and I do realize it is more responsive to the heat settings, but only things like heating water for tea or boiling sweetcorn are what I’ve noticed.

    Yeah, we’ve burned a few things.
    Several years ago on a day trip to Fairmont we took along a gluten-free pizza and the local Pizza Ranch said they would make it for her. They burned it to a crisp. the waitress came out and apologized but we were like, it’s the only thing she has to eat, bring it out. It’s really black, she said. Well, it’s all we have, bring it out. And daughter scraped the black stuff off and ate it anyway. I’m sure that’s had something to do with her food choices to this day.

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  17. I would be afraid to name my preferred cook stove on here now. OT today I gave to a charity shop about $500 worth of Czech glass pieces. Just exquisite work, but no point in keeping such things anymore. Also a hurricane lantern. They said they have customer to call about that.
    Shedding shedding shedding.
    Clyde

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