How to choose a hob: gas, electric and induction? Which is better?

To under­stand which hobs are bet­ter, it is nec­es­sary to ana­lyze a rather large amount of infor­ma­tion, because a wide range of prod­ucts is on the mar­ket today. First of all, you need to decide on the pow­er source. And here the ques­tion aris­es: is the hob gas or elec­tric and which one is bet­ter to choose?

Deciding on a gas hob

Do you have per­ma­nent and unin­ter­rupt­ed access to the gas pipeline? Then, undoubt­ed­ly, a gas hob should be installed, the choice of which must be made accord­ing to the fol­low­ing cri­te­ria:

• design;
• mate­r­i­al;
• burn­ers.

First, you need to focus on the design. Here the ques­tion will be, which one to choose — depen­dent or inde­pen­dent. The fact is that depen­dent hobs are installed only togeth­er with the oven, on which all the con­trol but­tons are locat­ed. For a gas sur­face of such a plan, you will have to pur­chase an oven from a sim­i­lar com­pa­ny, which means not only their joint instal­la­tion, but also instal­la­tion next to each oth­er. This arrange­ment is not always con­ve­nient, so the advan­tages of an inde­pen­dent mod­el in this case are unde­ni­able.

Now we deter­mine how to choose the right hob, depend­ing on its sur­face char­ac­ter­is­tics:

• Glass ceram­ic pan­els are dis­tin­guished by a decent heat­ing area, styl­ish design and ease of main­te­nance of a smooth sur­face. How­ev­er, they also have such dis­ad­van­tages: sen­si­tiv­i­ty to sug­ar-con­tain­ing prod­ucts, mechan­i­cal shocks and dam­age by heavy objects. To clean such sur­faces, abra­sive mate­ri­als should be dis­card­ed.
• Strained glass for a gas hob — a new rage, how­ev­er, unlike glass ceram­ics, tem­pered glass is a stronger mate­r­i­al that is not afraid of mechan­i­cal shocks and is resis­tant to tem­per­a­ture extremes due to the pres­ence of pro­tec­tive tem­pered glass­es. There­fore, you have already guessed which sur­face is bet­ter. How­ev­er, it is still pos­si­ble to dam­age it with a met­al object, espe­cial­ly when chips appear along the edges.

• Bud­get stain­less steel option steel makes it pos­si­ble to choose an enam­el coat­ing of any col­or and design. Such a gas hob is not afraid of dam­age or tem­per­a­ture changes, but is sen­si­tive to scratch­es. There­fore, dur­ing oper­a­tion, it quick­ly los­es its orig­i­nal appear­ance and lus­ter. A good alter­na­tive is to choose a mat­te or pol­ished fin­ish.

To under­stand which hob is bet­ter, also pay atten­tion to the type and size of the burn­ers:

• Grill burn­ers in the form of a lat­tice, under which there is a heat source and are used for fry­ing veg­eta­bles and meat with­out adding oil;
• Crown burn­ers with flame dividers, more prac­ti­cal and make it pos­si­ble to cope with good amounts of food in a short time;
• Coup de feu burn­ers for the pro­fes­sion­al kitchen. This is a cast iron sur­face that heats up from below.

Be sure to look at the bars. The most prac­ti­cal and reli­able option com­pared to stain­less steel grates made of cast iron. Ask a con­sul­tant for dimen­sions or check the prod­uct data sheet so that your gas hob is suit­able for instal­la­tion in a work­top.

Equal­ly use­ful in the gas hob are addi­tion­al func­tions such as:

1. the main switch, which stops gas access to all burn­ers at once;
2. rotary switch­es that allow you to adjust the height of the flame;
3. timer func­tion on the burn­ers;
4. block­ing the gas in the absence of igni­tion of the burn­ers.

To decide which gas sur­face to choose, you need to pay atten­tion to the pan­els where var­i­ous burn­ers are used, which dif­fer from each oth­er in their func­tion­al­i­ty: mul­ti-lev­el, ultra-high-speed, pow­er­ful and stan­dard.

There­fore, care­ful­ly choose which gas hob can sat­is­fy all your require­ments and requests!

How to choose an electric hob

If you do not have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to con­nect to the gas pipeline, then you will not have a prob­lem choos­ing an elec­tric or gas hob. Despite the fact that a gas hob will cost you much more eco­nom­i­cal to oper­ate, from a safe­ty point of view, gas or elec­tric, the choice will be in favor of the lat­ter due to the absence of gas leaks.

To under­stand how to choose an elec­tri­cal sur­face, pay atten­tion to the fol­low­ing points.

Hob sur­face: glass-ceram­ic, enam­eled or stain­less steel.

The first two options have already been dis­cussed in this arti­cle a lit­tle high­er. There­fore, now it is bet­ter to dwell on stain­less steel, which is in no way infe­ri­or to enam­eled coat­ing. Rather, on the con­trary, such a sur­face is sim­pler and more prac­ti­cal because it is much eas­i­er to care for it.

The only draw­back of such a coat­ing is that there is no free­dom to choose col­ors, but in prin­ci­ple this option is con­sid­ered uni­ver­sal. We hope that now you know the answer to the ques­tion of how to choose a hob depend­ing on its coat­ing.

How to choose an elec­tric sur­face depend­ing on the type of heat­ing ele­ment: it can be cast iron, rapid and induc­tion.

The last clas­si­fi­ca­tion involves the use of dif­fer­ent types of heat­ing burn­ers: induc­tion or tra­di­tion­al heat­ing. Recent­ly, many buy­ers have a ques­tion of choice: elec­tric or induc­tion. How­ev­er, only the buy­er him­self, who will famil­iar­ize him­self with the fea­tures of the lat­ter, will be able to clear­ly answer the ques­tion of which elec­tric hobs are bet­ter.

How to choose an induction hob?

Kitchen tech­nol­o­gy is con­stant­ly evolv­ing and today we have already become aware of induc­tion hobs that:

1. due to the absence of inter­me­di­ate heat­ing, they quick­ly warm up and keep warm for a long time;
2. eco­nom­i­cal use of the heat­ing sur­face;
3. dura­bil­i­ty due to the use of a glass-ceram­ic coat­ing, the prob­lems of which we have already become famil­iar with;
4. light­ness and ease of clean­ing.

It should be not­ed the safe­ty of such burn­ers due to their method of heat­ing, which con­sists in mag­ne­ti­za­tion and, accord­ing­ly, heat­ing only the bot­tom of the used pan.

And yet, an induc­tion or con­ven­tion­al elec­tric burn­er is up to you to choose.

How to choose a hob and oven?

We hope that you can choose a gas or elec­tric hob by fol­low­ing our sim­ple tips. How­ev­er, what to look for when choos­ing an oven, we will tell you a lit­tle more. To do this, let’s lis­ten to the advice of an expert on this mat­ter and get acquaint­ed with some of the mod­els that they will advise us.

Pay atten­tion to the type of oven — depen­dent or inde­pen­dent. This cri­te­ri­on will allow you to specif­i­cal­ly deter­mine which mod­el to choose so that its char­ac­ter­is­tics and qual­i­ties meet your needs.

The oven at your dis­cre­tion can be cho­sen with or with­out con­vec­tion, sim­ple sta­t­ic, with the func­tion of a dou­ble boil­er or microwave oven and many oth­er pro­grams. And pyrolyt­ic clean­ing gen­er­al­ly works won­ders — now you just have to brush off the ash­es with a rag.

Rating of the best models of hobs

A fair­ly wide range of options when choos­ing hobs makes the buy­er think about the ques­tions: Which hob to buy, and which hob will be bet­ter? To unrav­el this tan­gle a lit­tle, we sug­gest that you famil­iar­ize your­self with the rat­ing mod­els of hobs for 2016:

Electrolux EHF 56547 FK

A mod­el that stands out with a pow­er­ful pan­el with 14 oper­at­ing modes, a per­fect dis­play, the abil­i­ty to set the cook­ing time and the abil­i­ty to auto-shut off. There is a back­light, child pro­tec­tion mode and fast heat­ing. The orig­i­nal­i­ty of the design is expressed in black glass ceram­ics.

Zanussi ZEV 6340 XBA

The undis­put­ed leader in the mar­ket of kitchen appli­ances. This mod­el boasts an unusu­al­ly smooth sur­face, thought­ful con­trol sys­tem using a mod­ern dig­i­tal dis­play. Reli­a­bil­i­ty of the glass-ceram­ic coat­ing is giv­en by a met­al frame along its con­tour.

Zanus­si has dis­tin­guished itself with anoth­er of its mod­els ZEI 5680 FB.

It should also be not­ed such mod­els of oth­er lead­ing man­u­fac­tur­ers as Hot­point-Aris­ton KRM 641 DX, Goren­je GW 65 CLI and G6 SYW, Gunter&Hauer GH 41 C, Hansa BHGW 63111035. How­ev­er, your rat­ing may include oth­er brands that you pre­fer. Good luck and hap­py shop­ping!