At Thanksgiving or other large meals we routinely use all 5 burners on our cook top and the BBQ, deep fryer and all three ovens.
Even just cooking breakfast. The griddle takes up two burner spots for bacon and then we’ll have one spot for eggs and one for oat meal. At dinner we’ll have rice on one burner and the wok on the center burner. I could do both on a two burner but maybe on a three depending on layout.
I’ve got an induction cooktop so it is also my prep and storage surface. I wouldn’t want anything smaller than the 36" we have and I could be talked into larger if they made them.
I have four and would happily switch to a six burner stove. When I’ve done Thanksgiving, I had to juggle seven or eight pots and crockeries, microwaving some and heating others stovetop then setting them aside while heating the next.
I have never heard them referred to as “tops” or “slots”. Admittedly “burner” only makes sense for a gas stove but we still call them that on the electric range.
Five on our stove, too – that center one is elongated, and clearly made for a griddle. We’ve had the stove for over a decade, and have never used that center burner.
One of the four “normal” burners is larger than the others, making it better suited for big pots and the like. My wife has, on occasion, had three burners going at once (typically while making a big meal for family), but it’s rare for us to be using more than two burners at a time.
Don’t know what your stove top looks like; but mine fits four pans just fine, with some space in the middle. If your pans are approximately the size of the burner, as they ought to be for most even cooking with minimal waste of power, how can you not fit four pans on four burners? – OK, I can see a wok taking up more than one burner. Even my largest stock pot is no larger in diameter than the large burners; it’s just taller than the other pots.
I sometimes do use all four at one time. Not all the time; but often enough to make it worth having four. Different people cook in different fashions, and often for different numbers of household members.
Most wood stoves I’ve seen or used had at least 6; not counting any warming positions off to the side and/or above the main cooking surface.
“Burner” is the normal term around here for either electric or gas; though I think I’ve seen “element” also for electric, mostly in the context of replacing one.
Now that I think of it, “burner” is an odd word to be using, because one doesn’t generally want to burn the food.
Another IMHO thread, where someone assumes that everyone thinks and behaves like they do, and really aren’t seeking opinions but validation of their viewpoint.
Our radiant electric nominally has 4 plus a warming pad. But it’s not as simple as that.
The largest is three-stage and has three concentric elements with a control that will power the center small element only, the 2 centermost together, or all three together. Functioning as a small, meduum, or large element according to need.
Behind that is a single small element, because of the balance of top space along that side.
The two medium elements along the other side are fairly straightforward, except that there’s an optional “bridging” element connecting the two and one of the medium element controls has two ranges: medium circle element by itself, and medium circle element plus bridge element. Taken all together, this entire side is convenient for a uniformly heating a long griddle, for instance.
And yes, in high-intensity cooking situations, every element on the rangetop can be in simultaneously use.
We have four here in Hawaii. And always four in Bangkok too, when we lived there. I know the two-burner model you’re referring to, but the four-burners are also very common.
48" 2-oven 6-burner, all 17,500 btu LP gas, with a built-in griddle.
On occasion I use them all simultaneously, even now as a single person. I do a lot of canning and that alone sometimes requires 5 burners. (Two canning pots, one to simmer lids, one to simmer water for slipping tomato skins, one simmering a kettle to top up the canning pots or tomato skin water).
I have risotto recipes that use 3 burners simultaneously.
Can’t beat the griddle for pancakes or French toast.
The two ovens are nice to have, as are the warming lamps built in to the vent hood.
It really does depend on how you cook and how you live. To just cook, I can manage fine with a campfire. But to do it in comfort and with ease of preparation, please give me the stove I have.
Well, I have indeed been enlightened in this thread, but thanks for the snark anyway.
I too do a lot of cooking (family of four) and not just meat and 3 x veg meals, but nominally creative and complicated fare as well. And I still maintain that it is an extremely rare event for me to need more than 2 burners on at one time: I can’t recall the last time I used three. (I don’t cook rice on the stovetop, having a dedicated rice-cooker helps there I guess).
That sounds handy, but you can’t properly cook risotto in a rice cooker. It requires constant stirring as the rice cooks to create its creamy texture. So a pot of stock is simmering at the side of the rice mixture and added gradually as the rice absorbs the stock and becomes creamy.
I like to present one particular risotto in sauteed Portabello mushroom caps as a serving vessel. For that recipe, I saute the mushrooms while preparing the risotto. Three burners. Four if I’m steaming additional vegetables for the meal. The meat is either in the oven or on the grill outside.
I don’t have a rice cooker, never personally needed one because I prepare regular rice on the stove top.
We’ve got a natural gas range with 5 burners in 3 types:
2 Regular burners
1 “Super” burner that’s about 1.5-2x larger than the Regular burner.
2 “Simmer” burners- they’re about 60% the size of the Regular burner.
We use the “super” burner all the time, and the regular ones pretty frequently as well. The simmer burners, while not quite useless, aren’t as useful as maybe just having 2 more regular burners. We just don’t find ourselves often needing very low flame to simmer things that’s below the regular burner on the lowest setting.
My gas hob has five burners but the centre one is designed for a wok. When that is in use the wok overhangs the other burners, but that’s not a problem as most wok meals are cooked together.
The other four burners are the usual configuration with one large, two medium and one small. I rarely use the large one except when I need to get something to the boil fast. This evening, for example, I made a cottage pie from Sunday’s leftovers. I had the meat, onion and carrots simmering on the small burners and when I put the potatoes on for mash, I started them off on the big burner to get them boiling before transferring to a medium one.
Yep. I have four but one is busted and not worth fixing because we want to remodel but haven’t gotten to it yet (time, not money), so I’ve been supplementing with single-burner induction units. Wish I had room for a six-burner!
I remember being in a McMansion a decade ago for a party, and realizing they had a six-burner stove that looked like it had never been used. No reflection on folks who don’t cook–but dammit, those of us who do lust after those units!
