Definitely Not an Appliance for a Fraternity

The salesman said it was easy to clean -- just wipe it off with a damp sponge. My wife bought it...literally.

The old electric coil cooktop which was probably 10 years old when we moved in ten years ago finally died. We weren't ready to install a gas line even though I much prefer cooking over gas, so we resigned ourselves to another electric cooktop.

As we cruised through the store, my wife's eye fell on the gleaming, smooth ceramic glass models. Not only were they available in all white, which would help brighten up the room, but they don't have any openings through which spills could escape. On the old stove, pots would boil over and bits and pieces would accumulate under the business part of the stove. Since it required dis-assembly to get to it, well...frankly...it just didn't happen, and maybe twice a year it got cleaned. When the salesman said it was easy to clean, well that sealed the deal.

Reality is a good deal harsher than showroom fantasy. These ceramic glass cooktops may be just fine if you are planning to purchase a brand new set of pots and all of your cooking involves little more than boiling water. If you do serious cooking, forget it. Whenever I cook, the filth surrounds the pan and the heat of the cooking element dries it out into a horrid, impervious crust. Even when I haven't been messy in cooking, the accumulated grunge on the sides and bottoms of my old pans seems to melt onto the cooktop; drying and hardening into the same impervious grunge.

Don't get me wrong, it can be cleaned. In fact they make special cleaning products which is made of a very fine abrasive which must be applied with paper towels. Every night, it requires what seems like a half hour of rigorous scouring with noxious fuming cleaning product and six to ten paper towels. It comes out looking brand new, but somehow, I don't think the effort is worthwhile.

This complaint is not unique to this brand or model cooktop. It is likely to be the same for any ceramic glass cooking surface.

Now the primary purpose of a cooktop isn't just to look good, but to cook good, and this one has a number of features which help it do a fairly good job of that. First, like most electric cooktops, the elements retain significant heat even after they are turned off. This cooktop has indicator lights showing which of the four elements are still hot. It works so well, even my 4 year old understands, "When you see the light, don't touch the white."

Another great feature of this cooktop is the bridge element which spans the gap between the two elements on the left side. The bridge element allows you to use large pots like a fish poacher with ease. Also, since the surface is completely flat, the pan won't wobble across the elements like it would on a traditional, coil top. (The down side of the flat surface is that if your pans aren't completly flat, they will wobble and spin across the cooking surface.)

The final feature which makes this a useful stove is the varying size of the elements. Cooking works best if the heat source matches the pan bottom. This is always a problem with traditional coil cookers. The burners are inevitably too large (resulting in heat billowing up the sides of the pan), or too small (causing hot spots and uneven cooking). This cooktop has several different element sizes to match to pans, and even better, the right front burner is actually two elements in one. Turn the knob one way, and the whole element heats up allowing effective use of a 10 inch pan. Turn the knob the other way, and only the center of the element heats, making it work well on smaller pots.

Probably the only thing problematic about the cooktop's operation is using lower heat. There seems to be a limit on how low it can heat. In order to have lower heat settings, the cooktop cycles the element on and off. As a result it doesn't simmer very evenly. Personally, I prefer to do slow, low cooking in a crock pot or in the oven for more even temperature control anyway, so I don't find this to be much of a burden.