Many stewed or slow-cooked dishes can be cooked on low on the stove, or at around 300 degrees in the oven. I’m curious about which method is more energy efficient assuming a cooking time of a few hours. On one hand, the stove just has to heat the pot, whereas the oven has to heat the whole oven. On the other hand, the oven is well insulated, whereas the stove is probably wasting some heat out the sides.
What do you think?
My guess is the oven. It seems to me that the kitchen is far less warm with the oven on than with the stove on, however, that might be because the oven is cleverly designed to vent heat to somewhere else.
The oven does vent hot air (usually through a little chimney that exhausts under one of the stove burners), but the stove is totally unenclosed. I have to think the oven is more efficient.
an oven is a more efficient way of heating but it is not always a better solution.
Simmering like boiling creates a rolling motion in the fluids. Putting something in an oven can often cause the top for instance to get a hard crust. The heat dissipation from steam is something you often want to happen not something you are trying to avoid.
My guess is the stove is more efficient, since less non-food material is heated (although in winter you might not care). However, you might not want to use the stove anyway. Stovetop heating is much more likely to form hotspots and burning at the bottom of the pan if the food is not constantly stirred.
Art
One thing to consider is the entire system including fuel usage, vent systems, home heating systems, home a/c systems.
For instance if you heat your home with electric resistance heat and have a gas stove and an electric oven and it is a tempature where your heating system is running then the stove would be more efficent. As burning gas in an unvented appliance (stove) is pretty much 100% efficent.
Other things to consider, gas ovens work pretty much like a chimmy (due to air needed to combustion) and are not nearly as insulated as a electric oven.
One thing that i have is a gas wall oven that vents inside the house and a gas stove top that has a pop-up vent. In the summer w/ the a/c on using the stove w/ the vent running would be more efficent then to allow the hot exhaust to enter the room.