I use cast iron on mine all the time. Just don’t drop it on the surface! 
I like my flat top pretty well, mostly because it’s easy to keep clean. (I’d rather scrub a flat surface every day than have to remove coils and drip pans, etc…and although I’m a messy housekeeper, I HATE a dirty stove.) Scrub it, wipe it down, done!
The only down side I’ve found is that occasionally someone will slap a hand down on it while it’s still hot, or the cat will jump up there. No serious injuries, but it’s something to be aware of, and I suppose you’d have the same type of danger with a coil.
I’d love to have gas, but I’m afraid of setting a cat on fire.
My parents had a flat top but I have only ever had coil. I’d take the coil over flat top any day. (I’d prefer gas but you don’t get a lot of places that have a gas line anymore. At least not where I live.)
In my experience, flat tops put out much less heat than coil and, to top it off, are way too easily breakable, especially if you put anything heavy on it. (I’d never even consider trying to boil 7 gallons of water on a flat top but I do it regularly on a coil stove.)
I find cleaning a coil stove to be just as easy as a flat top as well… Pop out the eyes, put the trays in the dishwasher, scrub the enameled top, wipe it off and replace everything.
Eeee-YOW!! :eek:
When we went to buy a new stove, we considered a flat-top electric. Price made us reconsider and we went with old-fashioned coils.
We felt even better about our purchase when the salesman asked “Are you going to get the extended warranty?” I thought about it a minute and then said no.
“Yeah, with the coils, you won’t really need it anyway.” So I’d venture that the ceramic tops are probably the weakest link in the system.
We had an old flat top for a while, and it drove me nuts because the touch buttons often didn’t respond when I wanted them to, and then did respond when I didn’t. Sometimes I couldn’t get the stove to even turn on for several minutes, and then it would get switched off accidentally. Modern ones are probably better.
Maybe we just got a lemon, but I cannot keep the flat-top at our family’s shared cabin clean. I even bought the $9 a bottle recommended cleaner - still looks grungy. And as mentioned above, if your pan bottoms aren’t perfectly flat the pan will spin when you stir.
I hate having to use electric anyway.
I have worked in appliance sales and in service. When asked this question I always ask “Do you do a lot of cooking?” If the answer is yes, I tell them to go with coils. The flat bottom pan issue is not as important with coils, but you can use a wok with coils. With a flat top, you can actually fracture the surface with a wok (heat is absorbed at one very small point (bottom of wok) while the rest of the burner gets as hot as if a pan was sitting on it. The difference in temp can fracture your top.
Also, although they do look pretty nice, and add counter space, they are very expensive to repair. A coil for a typical coil stove will run $25-50 and take 10 minutes to replace. You can do it yourself VERY easily. A flat top coil replacement part can run as high as $150, be hard to obtain, and requires a service call (generally unless you are pretty skilled at that sort of thing… not a typical DIY project). The glass/ceramic top can run as high as $700 (!) to replace.
Thirdly, the ceramic/glass tops vary in quality by manuafacturer. Some scratch very easily, some are “sticky” and food literally bonds like a ceramic glaze to them, or they can be very fragile.
I am not sure if the SD allows for brand recomendations (Mod, feel free to edit this out if so), But go with GE,Amana, Moffat for either coil or flat top. Avoid Sears, Maytag. Sears (Kenmore) stoves are made by a large variety of manufacturers, often repair or replacement parts are hard to find, and the quality of the manufacture is a crap shoot. Much the same goes for Maytag, although parts are generally easier to find.
My wife and I both cook extensively… (see my Dim Sum write up in the “Dinner PartY” thread. We both prefer gas stoves.
Regards and hope this helps.
Missed the edit, but want to add - cleaning flat tops - BAR KEEPER’S Friend - it ROCKS!
This is why I have never considered a flat top. A friend of mine uses her cast iron pans on her flat top (was told she could!) and it looks terrible. She has never dropped her pans on the surface or broken the top, it’s just all scratched up. I don’t know how you can cook w/o moving the pan around some on the heated surface. Some of my cast iron pans were my grandmother’s. They’re heavy and rough on the bottom. They make the best food, though.
Excellent discussion! I’m going with the GE coil-type. Y’all are the best.
This came up last weekend. I mentioned a flattop range to roomie, and she said someone she knows has one. (So FOAF/third-hand information.) She said her friend said that flattops are harder to clean than coil ones.
I really want a new range, and I like the looks of the flattops. As others have said, they can double as extra counter space. But I don’t think a flattop is compatible with my cookware or cooking style. I frequently use cast-iron. My pans would be sure to scratch the surface. Also, I’m one of those cooks that shakes pans over the heat. That is, I rapidly slide pans back and forth on the element to agitate the food. You can’t make a proper omelette without the agitation action. Or popcorn. Or several other things. My Calphalon Tri-Ply pans are nice and smooth on the bottom, but it’s still sliding metal on glass.
One of these days I’ll re-do the kitchen. I’d like to have a range, plus a gas cooktop connected to the propane tank. That would solve the cast-iron issue. But if I had a flattop range I’d have to use the gas cooktop for things that could/should be done on the range. So even though coils are unattractive, I’ll probably get a coil range. (And I can get a coil range before re-doing the kitchen.)
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Sorry, I’m just not seeing how the coils are easier to clean than a flat top. And maybe mine has a magic top (it’s just an LG), but I get better heating and I use all kinds of pans on mine, including my cast-iron skillet. I generally use a stainless steel set, but I’ve used pretty much everything.
If you need to move your food around, you raise the pan just off the top. Just so it’s not touching, then do what you want.
My problem with coils was always the same thing, they’d start fine, and then you’d end up with coils that wouldn’t sit flats, no matter what you did. I hate putting an egg in a pan and watching it run to one side because the coil is messed up.
As for cleaning, it just takes a little scrubbing. Like I said before, Bartender’s Friend (should be at any store near the Comet and stuff) or just a heavy scouring pad should take everything off. You can also switch to a razor blade if it’s really stuck.
I’ve had my flaptop for two years, I cook on it daily, and I would never switch back.
We have a flat-top and are very happy, having formerly had coils.
But we did manage to etch the glass when a sugar solution boiled over. Made a little line of pits eaten right into the glass.
So if you make a lot of candy, I’d go for coils.
As mentioned above, I have had issues in past apartments with coils that didn’t sit flat, making it impossible to cook things evenly short of standing there and rotating the pot. I don’t know for sure if it’s an issue of old coils vs newer flat-tops, but I have been happier cooking-wise with flat-tops vs coils. Of course, I prefer gas by far, but that’s irrelevant in this discussion.
I use cast iron pans to make scrambled eggs on a ceramic hob and it works just fine. No idea what the warnings are all about.
Sounds like the decision has been made but I wanted to add that instead of standard coils I see a lot more solid burner models now. They don’t seem to perform any differently, and do not have a pan underneath the burner that requires cleaning. They look nicer too.
My wifes old condo had a flat top range, god I hated that thing. We now have an awesome dual fuel gas range with a convection oven. I love it.