Space Age Cooking Is Here

I always do a lot of cooking when I visit my parents. I usually wake up earlier than my folks so I make breakfast every day and I usually wind up making at least one other meal each day as well. My parents' kitchen is an old friend, but when I arrived at their house for my current visit I was shocked to find it had changed considerably. The biggest change was the addition of a new stove top, one that looks like something out of a science fiction movie.

Instead of coiled metal burners, the Frigidaire 31 in. GLEC30S8 Electric Cooktop is a single solid thin white ceramic layer including four burners. Each burner is demarcated solely by a light gray coloration. This shading gives the illusion of height, but the burners are completely flat.

Instead of the traditional two small and two large burners, the cooktop includes a single larger burner (denoted by a shaded circle the size of the smaller burners plus an additional gray circle in outline that actually follows the edge of the heating element) and three smaller burners. The two smaller burners on the left are actually connected via a bridge element, an additional heading element that turns the two burners into a single larger oval burner that can fit a larger, deeper pan such as a fish poacher.

All of the controls are dials located along the right edge of the range. The controls for the front and back burners are different which is somewhat irritating. The back burners are more traditional controls that include a single set of hi, 6, 5, med, 4, 3, 2, and low settings. The off position is between hi and lo and you can turn the dials in either direction to turn the burners on.

The front burner controls are double sided, meaning that you can turn them either left or right and you'll make your way from the higher temperatures to the lower ones regardless (in other words, off is between two different hi settings). The downside to this is that the entire range of high to low temperatures has to fit on half of the dial. The different levels are extremely close to each other and if you're not careful you can move from a low setting to a high setting with barely a nudge to the dial. They include hi, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 and lo settings.

The bridge element is included in the controls for the front left burner which is unfortunate. In my family at least, we tend to use the front burners before the back burners but we don't like having the extra uncovered and unused active heating element. It would make a lot more sense to me to include the bridge with the rear burner or, ideally, give it its own controller since most of the time you're not going to be using the larger, oval pots that require it. I also don't like that the two halves of the "larger" burner use different style controllers. It makes it difficult to tell if the entire combined element is using the same level of heat.

The controllers are labeled with very tiny text labels (the bridge is not included in the label for the front left burner) as well as a set of graphic representations of the stove top that shades in the burner controlled by that dial. The graphic for the front left burner also shades in the bridge area. This is the only indication that it controls the bridge area, but unfortunately the icons are so small that you really have to be looking specifically for bridge shading to notice it.

The heating elements used in these burners get hot very quickly and get hotter than any coil stove I've used. It almost heats too quickly as you don't have time to do things like beat eggs for an omelet while onions and peppers and other omelet ingredients are in the pan. On most traditional ranges, I cook eggs at high or close to it; here it cooks too fast even on 3-4. At the same time, on the lower heat settings the heat doesn't always reach all the way through your food. I've had some trouble getting that last bit of egg to solidify without burning the bottom of the omelet and when I made grilled cheese the outside was burnt before the cheese was even partially melted. This is still a problem at higher temperature settings because the outside portions of the food burn faster, but in general I think thicker food cooks better at higher temperatures. I tend to adjust the temperature up and down a lot when I cook on this stove in some wild attempt to balance cooking the food all the way through and not burning the outside layer.

The range generates enough heat that you can literally see steam coming off of most pots and pans while they're in use. I actually turn on the overhead fan every time I use the stove and my mom said she has to do the same. That's not something you have to do with traditional stoves and just another little thing you have to remember when using this stove. I think that's the biggest down side of this stove - you have to think about a lot of little things you don't normally have to think about with other stoves and you cannot leave food unattended to cook over time. While technically never a great idea, other stoves I've used were consistent and low maintenance enough that you could leave a covered pot unattended for a few minutes without real problems.

It also takes quite a while for the stove to cool down once you turn it off. There are lights indicating hot elements underneath the four dial controllers. If any of these are on, the stove top is still hot and should not be touched. This is a nice touch because while the elements turn red while they're on, they almost immediately revert back to their neutral gray as soon as they're turned off despite still being too hot to touch. Someone else could come along, think the stove was off, and burn themselves. At least this way there's some visual indication not to touch anything.

The stove itself is white and rather elegant, but its appearance is marred by its propensity to gather streaks from the bottom of pots and pans that do not clean off. You're supposed to use a specific type of cleaner to remove these streaks and other bits of whatever that get on the stove, but it's not terribly effective. If you're buying this stove top solely for its elegant white look, be aware that it will look well used rather quickly.

I do like the Frigidaire 31 in. GLEC30S8 Electric Cooktop, but it has some serious problems. It gets very hot very quickly and it takes a long time to cool off once you're done cooking. It's difficult to control the heat well enough to cook food thoroughly without burning it on the outside. The stove collects streaks from the varnish on the bottom of most pots and pans and they don't always clean up well. The controls are a bit confusing and the decision to include a bridge element controlled by the dial for the front left burner means that we don't use that burner most of the time. On the other hand, barring streaks, the cooktop is rather elegant and I like that the entire thing is flat so you don't have to balance pots and pans on elevated coils. It's also a lot quicker than a traditional stove which is very nice. If I were in the market for my own new stove, I might consider a stove of this type. However, I would probably look for a similar cooktop without a bridge element or at least one that didn't tie the bridge element to the left front burner and one that has more intuitive and consistent controllers.