All of my life, from birth to age 22 (the age I still lived at home) we had an electric stove/oven. I had never known any different. Oh sure, I had seen movies and shows with gas ovens but, for one, I didn’t know they were still around much and, for two, they seemed downright dangerous. After all, whenever you’re drawn to the attention that someone has a gas oven in a movie or book, it’s usually because it will play a role later on (like the house exploding after a gas leak or someone dying from the gas fumes).
So when I moved into this place, five years ago…you can imagine my dismay when I saw it was a gas oven. Every apartment in this complex has gas stoves/ovens.
It was incredibly new to me and, suffice to say, I didn’t use it very much (prefering the good, ol’ microwave). Even to this day, I use it the least amount of times that I have to. And then I was talking to a friend the other day who, like me, had never ever used a gas oven before and actually thought they were something that went out with the 60s. She didn’t believe me when I told her I had one and used one.
So this all begs the poll: How many of you use a gas stove/oven and how many of you use an electric one? And I’m talking about the MAIN one in your house…not any grill or just a stove part (you know, the thing that just are burners and no oven part).
Pre-thread prediction: Most people will have electric stoves/ovens. I could be wrong, though.
I currently own an electric glass-top stove, but I had a gas stove/range for three years while I was in college. When my current one goes, I’m going back to gas. It just feels weird to be coooking without a flame.
I have both gas and electric ovens. No preference, mainly the broiler is on top in one and at the bottom in the other.
For cooktop, gas, always and only. I have two electric coils for warming. Never a safety issue with gas and I too like being able to cook when the power's down.
had gas until recently and changed the stove out for an electric. Convection ovens have some advantages…and not sure if there is such a thing as a convection gas oven. I kinda prefer gas myself. For the stove top burners, it has to be gas. Fuggehaboutit for electric and Chinese food.
Gas. All the places I ever lived in had electric, then when I bought my house it had gas. Frankly, I’d never to go back. I find the rate of cooking much easier to control, and, like someone said, when Hurricane Ike came through and the power was off for nearly a week, I could still cook dinner each night.
Gas stovetop, I grew up with electric, my first few apartments had electric, but now I have gas, don’t think I’ll ever go back. (My oven is electric though which is nice it dosen’t heat the house nearly as much as the gas oven did).
Gas, much more convenient for cooking than electric. In fact you would be hard pressed to find a restaurant worth its’ salt (no pun intended) that doesn’t cook with gas.
I have a dual fuel range, with 2 electric ovens and a gas cooktop. It’s my dream appliance. Electric ovens are better for baking, with more even temperature, and gas burners are much easier to regulate than electric (although I’m pretty sure the new electric stoves are better for that than the one I grew up with).
I grew up & learned to cook on an electric stove & oven. As an adult, it’s been gas all the way. Note: I’ve always been a renter–it was not my choice. But gas seems much better for cooking; you can see the flame! Gas stoves have pilot lights–they’re pretty safe.
Another Houstonian here. After Hurricane Ike, I got a few surly looks from co-workers who found out my electricity came back the day after the storm came through. Especially the co-workers who couldn’t even heat soup or make coffee–since they had all-electric kitchens.
Mine is propane. I have lived in apartments with electric ones, and quite frankly, don’t see a problem switching. Electric stoves need a little adjustment because they take a little longer to heat up and cool off.
I’ve used gas all my life… I’ve used electric on holiday a few times, but not regularly. I like how you can just glance at the flame and see how high it is, and therefore hot quickly you’re heating something up…
Natural gas stove/oven in our house, along with two furnaces, the dryer, and the water heater. When we moved in this combination was cheaper than the alternative, which would have been all electric appliances and oil heat and I believe this is still the case.
Another advantage of gas stoves over electric…when you turn off the heat you don’t have to move the pot, the heat is off instantly unlike those electric coils that have to cool down. I don’t bake much so any uneven heat in the oven hasn’t been a problem, and it works fine for roasting turkeys or whatever.
By the way I only remember hearing about one house in the last ten years in our area blowing up due to a gas leak, and that had nothing to do with the stove itself, instead the owner broke the gas line doing some digging with a rented Bobcat digger-thingy.
Propane gas for me. It’s hard to tell what heat you’re at with electric. I believe electric would be more expensive - and as mentioned up thread - it still works when the current is off. I love the hooof sound when the burners kick in on the oven.
I’ve always had natural gas ranges in the apartments/houses that I’ve lived in. I have heard that electric burners heat things faster but I prefer the control of the gas burners.
Newer gas ranges don’t have pilot lights so you don’t have to worry about gas in the house if a pilot light is out.