Let’s say you’re considering buying a house. You walk into the kitchen and see this Viking Rangetop looking back at you. Could you handle it?
I know that one is kinda wide at 42". I’d like to find one that has two burners and the griddle, instead of four burners & griddle. Right now I’m working on a cast iron griddle that is 8×18". The whole frying pan thing never made sense to me any way. If you want a flat surface to cook on, why not a griddle?
So what do you think, average cook? Could you give up your frying pans and get into some hot griddle action?
I’m a less than average cook, but 2 burners + griddle sounds very limiting to me. You can’t steam, boil, poch or deep-fry on a griddle. I don’t think you can stir-fry either, can you? With most stir-fry dishes I do, the sausce would go all over the place.
“Commercial-Type” would stop me right there. Means it’s not good enough for a professional, but more expensive to repair.
My dad has an actual, honest-to-gosh commercial stove and I luuuuuurve it to pieces. Seriously, it comes apart into all these pieces for thorough washing, rather than trotting a bucket and sponge over to the rangetop. The thing I had to get used to on that was that it not only looks bigger and badder, it cooks hotter. WAY hotter. “Low” on that thing is like “Med. High” on my little dinkie thing back home. It has a special burner just for keeping things on a low, low simmer. I can actually, honestly stir-fry and blacken on it, which is technically impossible without all those BTUs. It also has a griddle, which he uses, but I’m not so enamored of. My food tends to be more of the stuff-in-a-pan-with-a-sauce variety.
And I agree with scr4, there’s no way I could live with only two burners. I do it when we’re camping, but it’s a pain in the ass and I use a lot of meal in a box when I do that. If I was a buyer looking at your home in the future, a two burner stove would be a big stumbling block in the sale.
I guess you’d call me “average” (though I cook with great regularity), and I love our new Wolf range. And I’m always multi-tasking (usually cooking for hours on the weekend for everything we eat during the week), so I would need four burners at least (we didn’t have room for 6 with our remodel). Nowhere near as intimidating as having my wife (the far superior cook) hang out in the kitchen for 5 minutes.
I only have about 5 linear feet of counter space, which is what’s making me consider the two burner+griddle option. The 4b+g one I linked would lose me a foot of counter space.
I recently heard on one of those home remodeling shows that studies show very few people ever have more than 2 burners going at the same time. That was given as justification for putting in a 2 burner rangetop in exchange for more counter space in today’s smaller condo kitchens.
As for stir-frying, no a griddle wouldn’t work. But there are two burners you could use for that.
That looks a lot like the cooktop in the basement at my parent’s old house. My dad picked the stove up in a sale when a topless sale shut down. The griddle was wonderful to cook on, the eyes too, but it hadn’t ever been properly insulated so it heated up the whole house.
-Lil
I think I’m even a below-average cook, and I would love it. It looks great. I’d clean it all the time. People would come over and maybe be fooled into thinking I’m an above-average cook.
Incidentally you absolutely could steam, boil, poach and deep-fry on a griddle. All a griddle would do is act as a heat diffuser, something actually favorable in many applications. I realize it may not be quite as efficient as using a burner, with having to heat up that cast iron and all, but for the rare occasions you had to get a third pot going it’d get the job done.
In my little apartment I have a traditional home stove with four burners, I have a cast iron griddle/grill pan parked over two of the burners pretty much 24/7 and I can count the occasions where I had to move the griddle to use a third or fourth burner on one hand.
Of course more burners is better all things being equal, but being without any counter space is a hell of a lot more limiting than having two burners. If adding a butcher-block island is out of the question I’d absolutely make the trade-off for more counter space.
I don’t have room for a really big stove, but I don’t find a “professional” range intimidating, necessarily (although I hear that Viking and such aren’t really all they’re cracked up to be and have a lot of repair costs associated.) I don’t think I’d really use a griddle, though. What I love love love about my new stove is the simmer burner. Then again, I use my Le Creuset dutch oven more than any other piece of cookware, so that tells you what I like to cook.
I’m an average cook by any standard, but I love to cook, and I would love a professional range. If it is possible for me to afford the best of something and know that it’s a worthwhile purchase that will last and allow me to do anything I want with it and sort of grow into it, then I’ll take that route every time. If it is within my budget, I’ve never seen the sense in going halfway if, down the road, I’ll just want to upgrade to the big guns anyway. Might as well save the money for that interim purchase and put it towards your intended goal.
Thanks for all the comments. I’ve beeing thinking about taking the fridge and swinging it around into a closet, so it’ll look like a built-in. That’ll free-up at least 2 feet and I can add counter space and won’t be hurt by going with the 42" rangetop.
The closet used to hold the water heater. I got rid of the water heater a couple years ago and have been using it as a makeshift pantry since then, I’ll just have to get used to not having again.
Dunno whether it’s deserved or not, but Viking, and to a lesser extent, Wolf, have acquired a bit of a “wanker” connotation and get used as a design element.
As in, “Which would color match the decor better, the Mint Julep or the Lemonade?” rather than any serious thought to the usability of the appliance.
Count me in the few, then. Last week, I was doing the “cook it on the stovetop, then chuck the pan into the oven to keep warm while I get something else going” dance because 4 burners wasn’t enough.
When the day comes for us to get serious about remodeling the kitchen, I’ll be prowling craigslist looking for a restaurant going out of business and grab one of their ranges. (Not all that uncommon, really) A little steam-cleaning and scrubbing later, and I’ll have a real commercial cooker that’s had an honest life, rather than a frou-frou thing tarted up in designer colors. WTF is “commercial-type” anyway?
“Commercial type” is to true commercial as Hummer is to a true military humvee.
I take that to mean a mix of undustrial functions with enough styling/color blended in to make it attractive to most homeowners. Thermador seems especially proud of its retro blue knobs.
My first jon was working in a restaurant and they had a Vulcan griddle that must have been four feet wide, next to an equally huge grill. I recall two large detached gas burners but we rarely ever used them unless we needed hot water in a hurry. The menu was mostly steaks, burgers, sandwiches, TGI Fridays type stuff. Nothing you really need a lot of open flame burners for. Sauces and other things you might try to prepare on a burner are best done in a double boiler to keep them from getting scorched. A flat bottom saucepan on the griddle works well for that.
I can’t imagine a kitchen so large that I can hold bona fide restaurant sized cooking appliances.
