| Bookmark this page! Hobs Consider
your cooker hobs- those metal, or ceramic appointments atop your oven range
where you set the pots and pans that you are heating up- and how inefficiently
you could be cooking your food if you are still using an antiquated stove and
its archaic cooker hobs. Believe it or not, your cooker hobs actually serve a
very important function in heat capture and distribution, and this is true
whether or not you are using a gas range or an electric variation.
It is quite important to consider symmetry in your cooker hobs. A symmetric
design will allow the hobs to distribute heat evenly throughout your pan,
preventing hot spots that could lead to scorched food, or cold spots which
could result in portions of your final product being undercooked. For a gas
stove, a simple four prong, box design would probably serve best as a cooker
hob, as each of the four prongs could absorb heat from the burner, preventing
it from being wasted, and distribute it throughout the pan. In an electric
stove, a flat, coiled hob is probably your best choice, as it will utilize
energy most economically, and will provide an even, well distributed heat
source for your cooking needs.
You may also wish to consider the material that you want to use in your cooker
hobs. A nice, stainless steel alloy will last you years, and will prove to be
moderately efficient at keeping heat where it should be on your range.
However, metals radiate energy much more than other materials, so an alloy is
not nearly as efficient as other materials for retaining heat. On the other
hand, a ceramic cooker hob will retain the maximum amount of heat, and
distribute the great majority of it to your pans rather than the environment
around it. The only downside to these sorts of cooker hobs though, is that
they are very fragile, and if they are handled roughly (ie- if a pan is
dropped on them) they could become cracked or broken and require replacing.
You may also want to consider an induction cooker hob. Rather than heating the
stovetop to the required temperature, an induction hob will create an
oscillating magnetic field that will heat the pot itself, rather than the
range. Such equipment is far more energy efficient than either method, though
it can also be comparatively quite expensive, and requires ferromagnetic or
electrically conductive pans. | Hobs - probably the largest choice of Hobs in the UK! |