“ The Star® Burner’s unique shape isn’t just for show. It creates a perimeter 56% longer than a round range burner of the same size, which allows the inclusion of more flame ports. The result is a stove burner that delivers superior flame spread and a reduced cold spot for faster and more even heating across any size pan”
Question : Is this part of the claim “… faster and more even heating across any size pan.” scientifically verified compared to a same BTU conventional burner ?
Probably not enough to really make much difference, or pretty much every higher-end stove line would have something similar - spirals, stars, pentagons, etc…
The fact that they don’t implies to me that a circle works just as well, and is probably easier to manufacture.
I have always felt round burners need some center flame to even things out. I even drilled an old stove I was getting rid of to see how it worked.
This. Especially when turned on high, the flame heats up the perimeter, while the center gets nothing. Of course, better cookware helps with this problem.
That’s exactly what I was thinking as well. I, like most people I’m sure, tend to always use the same burner. It also happens to be the biggest burner. I don’t know how much of a difference it actually makes, but if I’m using a smaller pot, I tend to turn the flame down a bit so less of it crawls up the sides.
As for circle vs star, I think a cheaper investment would be in pans with thicker bottoms so they can spread the heat more evenly. I’ve never had any problems with any of my pans having hot or cold spots.
and?
Well, I didn’t really cook on it. I just wanted to see if it worked. Which it did.
Not to mention all or most commercial ranges would have these zany shapes if they really worked so much better. But nope, they just have the standard circle.
I live in Melbourne, Australia. Every gas stove I have ever seen has an inner ring of flame. The gas valve is centered for off, left for small (central) ring, right for both rings. I can’t physically turn on the outer ring of flame without turning on the center flame. The diameter of the inner ring is 3/4’’ to 5/4""
Having the small inner ring also means that we can have a slightly larger outer ring than what I see in the range of stars in the linked advertisement.
I just imported the plan view of a Thermador range-top into a drawing the other day and noted how weird it looks. It does seem like there should be some merit to their claim, especially with larger burners and smaller pots and pans. The fact that it’s patented would explain why it doesn’t show up in other products, but without reading the patent I can’t say if this might cover other novel shapes.
That said, it may not be a priority in actual commercial contexts because if they’re using high heat then they’re also likely to be using larger pots and pans where the gas spread would be more desirable. I think the “dead spot” in the middle is actually not as pronounced as it may seem due to the heat being trapped/concentrated between the jets of gas.
I just did a quick experiment with a 12" frying pan on my gas stove, which admittedly is old and has much smaller burners than the like of Wolf or Thermador, but the flames do spread a good amount on high. The hottest temperatures were about 2" away from the center, but the center only lagged about 10-20º while near the edge the temperature dropped off very fast. So by the time you get about 4" out from the center the temperature is much lower than even at the center of the pan. Yes you do feel a lot of heat coming up around the edges, but it’s also dispersing more and more the farther away from the burner you get. Inverse square law perhaps?
Anyway, on the larger burners you tend to find on these high-end appliances, I can see that dead spot in the middle getting worse. The smaller burners tend to be around 9,000 BTUs which is about what my stove has, but when you’re throwing double that into a burner with twice the diameter or more (Thermador’s star burners are apparently 22,000 BTUs and Wolf’s larger ones are in the 18,000 range), then yeah I can see a need for some more burner ports near the middle. Maybe the best way to look at it is that the star shape allows for one burner size to better cover all use cases without requiring complicated controls or multi-tiered or upward-pointing ports that would be hard to clean and shield from drips that might clog them.
Nice work. I would also think that the heat radiating towards the center of the pan would be pretty hot because it’s a convergence zone. The outside of the ring is the problem because the sides of the pan act as a heat sink.
Hey jjakucyk - thank you for running some experiments and explaining the results. This is why I love the dope.