"Variable heat" electric range available anywhere?

[Bill]

Does anyone manufacture a "variable heat" electric range, where when you
select the heat setting, it would have a constant heat at a certain
temperature? (Like you can do with a gas range...)

This would be sort of like a dimmer switch for a light where you can adjust
how much light is output from the bulb.

The way electric ranges work now is they go on and off, on and off.

Less heat means the "burner" goes on for a little while, then off for quite
awhile. Then with more heat, the "burner" is on for a long time, then off
for a little amount of time.

With a gas range, you can adjust the heat so it is constant - no off and on.
Seems they could do this with an electric range as well....

 

[Bill]

"Peter A" wrote in message

Why do you want this?

Well I installed a woodstove and tried cooking on it. I cooked eggs and
noticed they came out perfect!

When I cook eggs on my electric range, they will tend to stick to the bottom
of the pan or overheat / underheat.

Anyway the difference between cooking on the woodstove and on my electric
range is amazing! The difference of course is the "steady heat" of the wood
stove as opposed to the "on/off" heat of the electric range.

And of course I don't have my woodstove fired up in the summer....

 

[JoeSpareBedroom]

I think the main question here is why would anyone who does any serious
amount of cooking want an electric range to begin with? No real cooking
can be done on them.

Bullshit. Who told you to say that?

 

[James Silverton]

Hello, JoeSpareBedroom!
You wrote on Mon, 12 Feb 2007 16:27:24 GMT:

J> message
??>> I think the main question here is why would anyone who
??>> does any serious amount of cooking want an electric range
??>> to begin with? No real cooking can be done on them.
??>>
??>> --
??>> Steve Barker

You probably have noticed the massive cross-posting on this
topic: a pretty good troll indicator, IMHO!

James Silverton
Potomac, Maryland

E-mail, with obvious alterations:
not.jim.silverton.at.comcast.not

 

[Mike Berger]

I think you're jumping to conclusions. I doubt it's any variation
in heat that's making the difference.

 

[Nancy Young]

Does anyone manufacture a "variable heat" electric range, where when you
select the heat setting, it would have a constant heat at a certain
temperature? (Like you can do with a gas range...)

If you're talking about the stovetop, perhaps a diffuser would help
your situation if you can't find what you're looking for.

nancy

 

[[email protected]]

Of course they cycle on and off, that's how they control the amount of
heat. What do you think they use, a big resistor?

Yes, of course they do. Sheldon is making up crap because
he doesn't really know how electrical appliances work.

I don't think you understand your own question... I think what

More nonsense. Most of the electric cooktops I've encountered had
continuously variable settings, with perhaps a detent for highest and
lowest, but they still cycle the heating element full-on/full-off
with overall heat being controlled by the duty cycle.

If you really

I'm not sure an electric hot plate or electric fry pan behaves any
different. I think they all apply full current to the heating
element, and just cycle in on or off for varying duty cycles. What
he wants could be done with that approach, but requires varying the
duty cycle on cycles of very short duration.

Exactly right. I think what the OP might want to look at is
an inductive cooktop. Expensive, and I'm not sure how they
achieve their variable heat settings, it may just be a duty cycle
switching type of control also, but they are supposed to have
very steady heat control.

Bill Ranck
Blacksburg, Va.

 

[Sharon]

Why do you want this? The on/off technique works just fine in my
experience. The thermal mass of the burner and the pan even things out.
For example, when I am simmering a soup on low, the soup simmers at an
even, constant rate even though the element is on for 2 seconds then off
for 10 (more or less).

I'm with the OP. I was just commenting that this kind of thing would
be nice to my husband yesterday as I was making our week's dinners. We have a
piss-poor glass-topped electric stove. We think it's crappy because it might
be low-watt, but don't know for sure. It can't boil a gallon of water unless
it's tightly lidded, and even then it takes over a half an hour.
Last weekend, I was making a roux, and I really noticed how poor it is
there too. I had trouble getting the correct temp to cook the roux - it cooked
fine while the burner was on, but all cooking stopped when the burner cycled
off. We HATE the thing.

- Sharon
"Gravity... is a harsh mistress!"

 

[JoeSpareBedroom]

I'm with the OP. I was just commenting that this kind of thing would
be nice to my husband yesterday as I was making our week's dinners. We
have a
piss-poor glass-topped electric stove. We think it's crappy because it
might
be low-watt, but don't know for sure. It can't boil a gallon of water
unless
it's tightly lidded, and even then it takes over a half an hour.
Last weekend, I was making a roux, and I really noticed how poor it is
there too. I had trouble getting the correct temp to cook the roux - it
cooked
fine while the burner was on, but all cooking stopped when the burner
cycled
off. We HATE the thing.

- Sharon
"Gravity... is a harsh mistress!"

You cannot compare a crappy glass top stove with a well designed electric
open-coil stove. That's like saying you like a certain shampoo better than
you like the size of the glove box in your car.

 

[Dave Martindale]

Well I installed a woodstove and tried cooking on it. I cooked eggs and
noticed they came out perfect!

When I cook eggs on my electric range, they will tend to stick to the bottom
of the pan or overheat / underheat.

Anyway the difference between cooking on the woodstove and on my electric
range is amazing! The difference of course is the "steady heat" of the wood
stove as opposed to the "on/off" heat of the electric range.

There are many possible explanations for this. Perhaps you just pay
more attention when cooking on the woodstove. Perhaps the large flat
iron cooking surface of the wood stove heats your pan more evenly than a
coil element on the electric stove. Or maybe the cyclic temperature
variations do matter. You haven't provided any evidence for the latter
explanation.

It would be interesting to measure the amount of temperature swing at
the surface of your electric element as the element cycles on and off.
Then measure it on the inside surface of the pan. I'll bet the
temperature range is not very large.

Dave

 

[JoeSpareBedroom]

There are many possible explanations for this. Perhaps you just pay
more attention when cooking on the woodstove. Perhaps the large flat
iron cooking surface of the wood stove heats your pan more evenly than a
coil element on the electric stove. Or maybe the cyclic temperature
variations do matter. You haven't provided any evidence for the latter
explanation.

It would be interesting to measure the amount of temperature swing at
the surface of your electric element as the element cycles on and off.
Then measure it on the inside surface of the pan. I'll bet the
temperature range is not very large.

Dave

Coming to conclusions while missing 90% of the pertinent information is a
great American pastime, apparently.

 

[JoeSpareBedroom]

Exactly right. I think what the OP might want to look at is
an inductive cooktop.

What the OP "wants" to look at are his cooking habits. Every stove will have
quirks, and there are people who will notice none of those quirks and always
want to buy something else. Cooking involves a certain amount of attention.
The only way around it is a restaurant.

 

[wff_ng_7]

I've had numerous electric stoves over the years and the elements don't go
on and off on any of them. They already use a "dimmer switch." The heat
is constant at whatever setting you put the dial.

I had one stove that had an element that was thermostatically controlled
and it did vary the heat. But it didn't just go off and on, as the temp
of the food came up the element would lower the heat output to maintain
the temp. I still miss that stove, it also had an oven and a half.

In reality, those electric stoves were going on and off the whole time, and
you never noticed! If you have a very quiet kitchen and you listen very
carefully, you can hear the switch turn the burner off and on. The "dimmer
switch" is adjusting how long the "on" time is versus the "off" time. The
owner's manual on my 1982 GE electric range even mentioned the noise the
switch made in the troubleshooting section, to put to rest the minds of
people who noticed the sound.

Even dimmer switches for lights are in a way turning the light on and off to
adjust the light intensity. The dimmer switch is varying the amount of time
the light bulb filament is turned on versus turned off. Only it is happening
60 times a second versus every several seconds as on an electric stove
burner. The principle is basically the same, but on dimmers the controls are
solid state electronics, while on a stove burner the controls are
mechanical. It would be costly to make a solid state electronic control to
handle the power required for a surface burner. Most light dimmers are 300
watts capacity. A surface burner is about 2,500 watts.

This cycling of the burner is different than thermostatic control. What it
is doing is keeping the burner on for a percentage of the total time, giving
a proportional heat output, regardless of how hot the pan ends up getting.
There are thermostatically controlled surface burners out there, but they
are not that common.

 

[JoeSpareBedroom]

That's normal. It's a lot easier to ignore 90% or more of what you
heard, and make up stuff to fill the gap.

"Contrary to recorded weather data from 7 independent scientifical sources,
and reports from over 4,300 farmers, we has conclusiatious evidences that Mr
Al Qaeda is responsiblatious for the shortage of them brocollis from
California during the last past two or couples of weeks". - George W. Bush

 

[Tzortzakakis Dimitrios]

Does anyone manufacture a "variable heat" electric range, where when you
select the heat setting, it would have a constant heat at a certain
temperature? (Like you can do with a gas range...)

This would be sort of like a dimmer switch for a light where you can adjust
how much light is output from the bulb.

The way electric ranges work now is they go on and off, on and off.

Less heat means the "burner" goes on for a little while, then off for quite
awhile. Then with more heat, the "burner" is on for a long time, then off
for a little amount of time.

Well, traditionally stoves (or ranges) here in EU (certainly in Greece) have
3 elements for each hob, and a dial for each hob, that is numbered from 0 to
3 with 1/2 subdivisions(thus 0-1/2-1-11/2...)and the three elements are
turned on and off, respectively.So, for full heat, all 3.For 1/2 set.the
smallest one etc.

 

[Tzortzakakis Dimitrios]

I'm with the OP. I was just commenting that this kind of thing would
be nice to my husband yesterday as I was making our week's dinners. We have a
piss-poor glass-topped electric stove. We think it's crappy because it might
be low-watt, but don't know for sure. It can't boil a gallon of water unless
it's tightly lidded, and even then it takes over a half an hour.
Last weekend, I was making a roux, and I really noticed how poor it is
there too. I had trouble getting the correct temp to cook the roux - it cooked
fine while the burner was on, but all cooking stopped when the burner cycled
off. We HATE the thing.

Well, excuse me, but in EU (at least in Greece)glass-topped electric stoves
are state-of-the-art, and very expensive, and very robust, and efficient,
too.The traditional stove has four hobs with the elements inside a ring of
iron (not steel),ours is glass-topped (or better, glass-ceramic, and cost
like, 700 euros, while a cheap iron one, like 400-500 euros.

 

[Tzortzakakis Dimitrios]

Sounds awful, but it has nothing to do with it being electric. A decent
electric stove will boil water faster than a gas stove and is usually
superior at low-heat cooking. Time for a replacement maybe?

The problem lies elsewhere.While on a gas range all (or almost all)of the
fuel's energy is directly converted to heat, with electricity it has to pass
through a number of stages, so the fuel's initial energy is converted to
electricity (with an efficiency at best of 33%),<in a fossil fired power
station>transformed up, transmitted, transformed down,distributed,reaching
your residence, and transformed finally to heat again)

 

[Dave Martindale]

The old electric stove my grandmother had had one burner that was
thermostatically controlled. The other burners didn't have knobs, but
rows of buttons (labeled something like "high", 'med-high", "medium",
"med-low", "low", "simmer", "warm", "off").

My mother used to have a stove like that, but with knobs instead of
buttons. The elements in that stove were solid metal discs, not coils,
and they had multiple resistances built into them. The multi-position
switch achieved its different heat outputs by connecting various
combinations of terminals on the element to the 240 V line (it might
have used 120 V in some of the lower positions too; I no longer
remember).

So this stove did have several different continuous heat outputs,
without switching the element on and off. But modern stoves with
"infinite heat" controls are better. The coil element has low mass and
heats up (or cools down) faster, and you can have almost infinite
control over the amount of heat via the modulating control.

Most other writers in this thread are talking about infinite-heat
controls on a modern burner (or about the oven, which is
thermostatically controlled).

Dave

 

[wff_ng_7]

The old electric stove my grandmother had had one burner that was
thermostatically controlled. The other burners didn't have knobs, but
rows of buttons (labeled something like "high", 'med-high", "medium",
"med-low", "low", "simmer", "warm", "off"). BTW, it also had a 120V
outlet on it. I guess people usually didn't have enough countertop
outlets then.

I know I've lived on one or more houses as a kid that had the push button
controls for the surface elements. The last one I remember my parents
replaced in 1965, so the stove must have been from the 1950s or even late
1940s. I think push button controls were gone by the mid 1960s.

I do have a 120V outlet on my gas stove, circa 1973. It comes in handy since
the nearest outlet on that side of the kitchen is six feet away. The house
was built in 1963.

 

[wff_ng_7]

Well, traditionally stoves (or ranges) here in EU (certainly in Greece)
have
3 elements for each hob, and a dial for each hob, that is numbered from 0
to
3 with 1/2 subdivisions(thus 0-1/2-1-11/2...)and the three elements are
turned on and off, respectively.So, for full heat, all 3.For 1/2 set.the
smallest one etc.

They used to have burners with multiple elements here in the USA, but I
think they disappeared by the mid 1970s. I have a catalog of home and
apartment repair parts that lists a few replacement burners that have two
elements in the burner. The listings for these say for GE through 1975.