My house is all-electric. I live in the country- no gas available. I’m looking at replacing my electric stove that was used when I bought it 22 years ago. Went shopping at Sears yesterday and saw lots of flat top ranges. I’d like opinions/experiences re the flat top v. the coil-type burners.
I know one of the advantages is ease of cleanup, but the flat tops I’ve see at friends’ houses usually have burned on stains and look pretty yukky. I guess they don’t wipe up their spills immediately.
Another friend, who lives in an apartment with limited counter space, said the flat top gives him a place to put his cutting board.
Are there any other advantages to the flat top?
I’m not going to spend an arm and a leg, prolly about $500 or so. I don’t cook all THAT much, and since I can’t have my Dream Range (an Aga… but then, I’d need the English Country Manor to go with it… and the servants… and the horses… and the title… but I digress…), I just want a nice, simple electric stove with a clock/timer.
This happened years ago and maybe they’ve made it a moot point now but my wife did scratch up her mother’s new flat top range pretty bad by shuffling the pan on top making popcorn.
I’ve had limited experience with both types of electric as we have propane. I’ve always had better luck with the coil type, they heat up faster and seem a little more responsive than flat tops which have always struck me as weak and slow.
My grandmother loves flat tops but admits that she buys them for looks.
I’ve had both, and even if you wipe up the spills on a flat top it gets grungy looking. I felt like I was always polishing it with that polish/cleaner that was recommended.
I think the flat top looks nicer than the coils, and when it isn’t on it does function as an extension of your counter, but I’m a low maintenance person and keeping it nice looking drove me nuts. However, polishing 10 minutes a day or so is the same in the long run as removing the coils, washing the drip pans and under the pans once a week, so it all cancels out, doesn’t it?
They both cook the same as far as I’m concerned.
I like my flat-top, and I do a lot of cooking. As for burning things on, in 5 years, that hasn’t been a problem. Sure, it happens now and then, but scraping it off with a razor blade and cleaning the top doesn’t take that long, even if the burnt on gunk has been there a while and cooked over a few times.
I don’t remember the heat output of mine, but it was at the high end of the scale, and I have no issues with heating up any of my pots.
If only it cooked as nicely. If the bottom of the pan I’m using is uneven in any way, then not only does it heat unevenly, but if I have to give something a quick stir, the pan can start spinning.
The flat top stoves require far more cleaning – you pretty much have to scrub the surface with the cleaner every day to keep things from burning on, and things build up anyway. If you do get one, get black, not white.
One thing to remember about flat-top ranges is that if your pots and pans aren’t perfectly flat on the bottom, they’ll rock and tilt. This annoyed the piss out of me when I had a flat-top electric range. (have gas now and will not go back to electric)
I’m not sure if it’s important or not (are flat-tops radiant heat?), but if your pans aren’t flat, you don’t get very good contact between your pan and the stovetop, which could lead to hotspots, inefficient use of heat, etc…
I have a black flat top. Cleaning is not that big of a deal. Cookware should all have flat bottoms, any curve to the bottom is just not going to work correctly.
A friend of mine just bought a new induction stove for her new kitchen. She had to buy new cookware, but loves the new stove so far.
In fall '08 we replaced our coil-element stovetop with a flat top. Much easier to clean. It came with a small bottle of abrasive polish (careful what you use; the grit in this particular polish is hard enough to remove food, but soft enough so that it won’t damage the flat top material), but I find that I don’t need to use that stuff more than once every week or two - and even then, it’s typically only on small spots here and there. Usually, clean up involves spraying the flat top with Windex, maybe letting it soak for a bit, and then wiping it down.
After nearly three years of service, we have some very minor scratches. I’m pretty sure the manual said to avoid sliding pans around on the burners too much, and so we’re careful about that.
We like it. As mentioned, it’s easier to clean, and I think it looks better - a nice, smooth black surface, uncluttered by the typical matte-grey coils of a traditional range top.
I’ll echo what others have said about your pots and pans having a flat bottom.
One additional benefit (assuming your pans have nice flat bottoms): the flat top is quiet. On our old stove, I always hated the way the pans skritched and rocked on the elements, and the way the elements skritched and rocked in their catch trays, and the way the catch trays skritched and rocked on the enameled stovetop. The flat top? No horrible skritchy noises, just a satisfyingly mellow thud when you drop in a handful of meat or veggies. And when you’re tossing the food around in the pan while you brown it, the only noises are the spatula on the bottom of the pan and the sizzle of your food.
We’ve had a flat top for years. Mrs. FtG loves it. Makes her life a whole lot simpler and it looks pretty good. You do have to keep it clean, and the sooner you clean up messes the better. On ours only one of the element areas has some damage.
You have to exercise some care in not putting meltable/burnable things on a warm burner. There’s no glow after it’s turned off and they retain heat for a long time. (Ours has just a single orange caution light to tell you that one of the coils is still hot.)
The biggest downside for us is that replacing an element is $$$. In fact, I’m not sure if I could even find a replacement element now if we needed one. (One went out, then the same one went bad again, but I cobbled one working one together from the two broken ones. Yeah, I’m one of those geeks.)
Classic coil types are of course much simpler and cheaper to maintain. The cooktop will basically last forever if you don’t abuse it.
So you have decide it’s worth it, both immediate and long term cost, and are you a naturally tidy person to maintain it properly. (If you’re a natural slob, forget it. Promising yourself to to it right “this time” never works.)
Do you know the brand / name of this cleaner? My flat top stove is looking pretty bad because I am a chaotic cook. I’d really rather replace it with gas but that’s not in the stars right now, so maybe I can just spiff it up a bit.
Had both, prefer flat top. Coils warp and get out of level; you’ll never have that problem with a flat top. Easier to clean. Gets hot very fast. Easy to scratch, however, so don’t use abrasives, steel wool or scrunge pads. A razor blade used carefully can take off cooked-on food. Looks great, but don’t drop a heavy pot on it.
I used a razor just last night to clean up a spillover. It is pretty necessary, I’ve found. I prefer coils, but we found that we could hardly find one for sale any more.
The pans for the coil one get much dirtier than for a flattop, but at least they were usually out of sight.
I love my flat top, I specifically replaced another stove because I hated the coils. Hating dealing with them, cleaning them, and fighting with them if they weren’t sitting perfectly flat.
I use Bartender’s Friend on my flaptop. Gets everything off without scratches. I also use the heavy duty Scotch-Brite Scouring Pads. Again, no scratches, and makes for a fairly quick clean up.
I refuse to consider a flat top because I’d have to replace so many of my pots and pans. Some models claim that you can use normal ones, but they all caution that you must not use cast iron skillets. How am I supposed to make bacon and scrambled eggs without my cast iron pans? No way.
