Stove top cooking

"Cook top" is also a subjective term. The heat shield on the top front of my insert is called a cook top in the manual. Must be one of those translation problems of buying a stove made in Quebec.

It would be sort of cool having a real wood burning cook stove though. My kitchen just isn't big enough for one.

Electric rangetop uses resistance heating to make coils of steel red-hot. Steel remains black up to approx 1000 degrees fahrenheit. It is red up to 1400 degrees.

It ain't cold, people.

JOshua

You've got several things coming into play here. Like Joshua says, a kitchen burner is ~1400 F when it is glowing bright cherry red, but you don't need to get that hot to cook. The kitchen stove is throwing out a lot of heat to make up for relatively poor conduction between the burner and the pan. I would suspect that cooking golden brown pancakes is going to take an actual "griddle temperature" of around 300-350F minimum. Even with the convection stove, the top surface is likely to get well up to that range, but the problem is going to be heat conduction into the pan will be very slow - and so will the cooking.

I'm guessing your stove has some type of "double wall" that prevents the pan from going directly onto the stove surface. If so true cooking may be out of the capability of the stove as it just won't transfer enough heat. It may be limited to the warming / slow baking role.

If you are going to try full on cooking, some pointers would be - have a good hot fire, turn off any blowers if it is acceptable for your stove design, find a pan with a flat bottom that makes good contact with the stove surface for maximum heat conduction, cook close to the very center of the stove as that is where the maximum heat should be, use a lid if possible to trap heat in the pan. If you are really "roughing it" you could try cooking on a heavy piece of aluminum foil as that will mold itself to the surface of the stove and allow maximum heat transfer, although it will be pretty tedious...don't stab a hole in your "pan"!!

Good Luck,
Corey

Just as a reference, when cooking pancakes in an electric frying pan that I have, I routinely set it to 250 degrees F which results in pretty well browned cakes

Corie said:

Just as a reference, when cooking pancakes in an electric frying pan that I have, I routinely set it to 250 degrees F which results in pretty well browned cakes

Click to expand...

Thats right the cheapo $14.00 electric frypan gets it right. We always use one while on the road. They are great for a quick warn up of leftovers and make wonderful grilled cheese and tomato soup.

Breakfast at the Cracker Barrel for 2 , 20 bucks with tip.
Eggs toast and ham in your room .... less than 10 bucks for the whole weekend.

You can always do the campfire thing, depending on what type of stove you have, and bake your potatoes, in the stove, wrapped in tin foil. However, I wouldn't do this too often for fear of leaching aluminum ions into certain foods.

My oven died last winter and I would occasionally do this with potatoes, and certain types of meat. I've also used the stove top for roasting pumpkin seeds and use it daily for keeping my coffee/tea warm.

homebrewz

michael said:

I realize that it's a convection stove, but I thought I could at least fix pancakes

Click to expand...

Does your stove have a blower? Was it on during the pancake fiasco? If so, turning off the blower should allow the "upper" top to get hot enough to cook.

it takes longer then 10 minutes for my lodge cast iron griddle to heat up on my range! give it 20 next time.
I like to brew my beer wort on the top of my stove. Great surface area so you dont burn it.
Ryan

MountainStoveGuy said:

it takes longer then 10 minutes for my lodge cast iron griddle to heat up on my range! give it 20 next time.
I like to brew my beer wort on the top of my stove. Great surface area so you dont burn it.
Ryan

Click to expand...

Haven't done wort yet, just food. Don't know if I could get the stove hot enough to keep it boiling. I use propane and a cajun cooker for that!
homebrewz

i have one of those too, its just to cold this time of year, the stove will keep it boiling for as long as you like, it just takes longer to get there. I would swear it tastes better :D

MountainStoveGuy said:

it takes longer then 10 minutes for my lodge cast iron griddle to heat up on my range! give it 20 next time.
I like to brew my beer wort on the top of my stove. Great surface area so you dont burn it.
Ryan

Click to expand...

I'd sure hate to have a boil over! Your really get enough heat? I use a 130k jet burner to do my beer. I like water to boil fast

It takes about 45 minutes on the stove. I have a outside cooker too, but you will freeze your butt off this time a year making wort. I just add the hops slowly to make shure it doesnt boil over. I have only done it 3 times and so far so good.

Hi Mike,

Remember, they don't have cast iron evaporators on the stoves for nothing. Ofcourse the stove top gets hot enough to cook. I used it exclusively when the power was out last december for 5 days.

It takes a little more time and I actually eliminated the pan. I made steak on the cast iron top of my stove. Just sprinkle some seasalt and you are good to go. Smells wonderful. I bet pancakes would work too, but I do not have a flat top stove anymore so I cannot try that.

But yes, if you use your castiron pan and let it sit on there long enough (put a tiny bit of water in it to see when the pan reaches 220F when it evaporates) and then cook. Should work fine.

Carpniels