What am I looking for in a Stove/Oven

Hey everyone,
My wife and I are buying a new house and it needs new appliances. We are both first time home buyers so we don't have a ton of experience when it comes to this sort of thing. So the question is what makes for a good stove or oven, They are going to be seperate the oven is in-wall and the stove is a countertop stove.

Thanks
EDIT: Thanks for the replies so far, we will definitely be going with a gas range and an electric oven. Does anyone out there have any specific features that they enjoy or things along those lines 11000BTU, simmer settings things like that?

I like a gas counter-top an an electric oven. i have found gas is easier to control the heat for a cook top but not ideal for an oven. the oven i like the option of a convection oven as they tend to cook faster and thus ultimately use less electricity, and you do not have to use the convection all the time. gas ovens tend to have larger fluctuations in temperature while cooking but they average out. sometimes you do not want that especially when baking cakes and pastries, a large pizza stone or unglazed terra cotta tile in the bottom of the oven will help with that as well.

spend the cash and buy good quality and you will be enjoying them for decades. brands i have used kitchen-aid, viking and general electric.

like any tool you should consider how you will be using them. an electric counter-top like say the induction ones are easier on children but you need to use steel and/or iron pans... but the elements to not stay hot when not in use.
congratulations on the new house.

Same here, electric oven, gas range top. I don't much like electric for anything except an oven, and yes, the convection option is awesome, Things cook way faster.

I do appliance tech/repair work on the side. Stay away from anything with a computer board/digital display. They are prone to blow out in a power surge and oftentimes it will cost as much to fix as it would to replace the entire appliance. Stay away from extended warranties. Gas is safer than electric. When buying a refrigerator find one with the coils in the back, less moving parts to go bad and more energy efficient. Stay away from GE on anything., avoid Frigidaire refrigerators, notorious freon leakers, once a leaker always a leaker.

I can double the electrical warning, we have a jennair. There is a bread board that likes to blow, between us and the previous owners we've replaced it 3 times in 15 years. At 350 bucks for a knock off board.

yes if you can get ones without digital controls go for it but they are getting harder to find. bosch is another nice name... i like how quiet my dishwasher is and that is why i bought it.

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Originally Posted by syslight

yes if you can get ones without digital controls go for it but they are getting harder to find. bosch is another nice name... i like how quiet my dishwasher is and that is why i bought it.

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Bosch made a really nice and QUIET dishwasher. My folks got rid of theirs a short time ago and are kicking themselves for it.

The more complicated the plumbing, the easier it is to muck up the works.

Unless you are in to gourmet baking or cooking buy the simplest piece you can get. That way when it breaks you just throw it away and replace it. When the 2 grand piece breaks you're in deep.

no when the price break $7k you are in too deep... think 60+" commercial 6 burner with a flatop and salamander, duel ovens...

Our electric oven gave up the ghost about a month ago, and at 50 bucks a pop for each of the knobs, and the fact that it's a guess that it's them that's the problem, and repair men who seem to think Mount Torrens is in a fabled dark and distant land many, many fathoms away (i.e. they refuse to even come and look at it) we've decided to wait and buy a new one when we can afford it. This means cooking on an astonishing array of implements; electric fry pans, woks, BBQs of different types, etc in the meantime, and meals all named "Cindy Surprise", which seem to consist of beef mince and varying pastas mixed together with almost raw carrots and peas....

I decided what I REALLY want is a duel fuel (gas/WOOD) oven if there is such a thing. That way we can still make pineapple upside-down cakes during the zombie apocalypse...

I have a Sears which cost me almost 2 grand and it has a back panel which could command the Starship Enterprise. One week before the warranty expired it quite working entirely. It just beeped put out an error code. The repair guys didn't have a clue. They wound up replacing the entire back panel. It didn't cost me anything except it took a month to fix and I was without the appliance for that long. The repair guy showed me the invoice billed to Sears at wholesale prices the repair cost them $1400. He said a few days later and it would have cost me $1800.

Re: What am I looking for in a Stove/Oven?

A turkey?

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Originally Posted by acoda

Hey everyone,
My wife and I are buying a new house and it needs new appliances. We are both first time home buyers
.....snip....

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Lots of good replies so far.

Appliances are good for about 10 years so spending a lot
and slipping the expense into a 30 year mortgage is silly.

Cooking with a gas stove top is very different than the
electric coils you will find in an apartment. I do like gas
and have lot of fun on a friends monster Viking. A monster
high BTU burner is overkill, almost all cooking is done at
medium or lower.

What exhaust fan+hood do you have. Without a
good exhaust fan and hood a lot of cooking you see
on TV shows will not happen well.

Because of this lack of a good exhaust I have found myself
doing all my browning and searing on the gas grill outside.
A modest grill can sear and brown a LOT of chicken or steak that is
then finished in a low to medium oven.

I am always taking peppers (hot and sweet) out to the
grill blacken them and bring a brown paper bag of them
back to my SWMBO where magic happens.

Carbonnade: Beef and Beer Stew... brown and sear
the beef on the grill fast and hot. Toss in a dutch
oven or crock pot with dark beer and onions and magic
happens, without filling the kitchen with smoke.

Back to the gas burners. Hunt one that lets you slide
large and small pots without risk of tipping. Also cleaning
is important. My friend tells me that cleaning her Viking is
a PITA. Gas burners do emit carbon monoxide so double
check the need for vents and monoxide detectors.

No built in griddle.

Pans... shop for good pans that you can scrub, scour, scrape and put
in a dish washer. Good pans help an OK stove cook well.
Induction ready pans are a future proof must as far as I can tell.
Induction with one exception is equal to gas. i.e. you cannot roast/ blacken
a pepper on an induction burner. I like stainless-aluminum-stainless
clad pans. For non-stick I get way cheaper ones at a commercial
outlet.

In my house: good modest sized grill outside, inside easy to clean glass cook top &
electric oven. But I do not have Nebraska winters.

Black iron pans... keep them for sure.

Something some folks might be interested in pertaining to some mf'rs self cleaning ovens.

KItchenaid is aware their Ovens Often Malfunctions after using Self Cleaning Feature

Whirlpool KitchenAid Self-Cleaning Oven Class Action Lawsuit Complaint | Class Action Lawsuits In The News

gas grill outside is a boon for us,I even cook my homebrew bacon outside when we have a crowd over.
Big fave is to use my 14 in. cast iron skillet to panfry steak,get the puppy screaming hot,toss in a couple 2 in. porterhouses,sear till black,about 6 mins per side,is the only way to cook good steak.

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Originally Posted by niftyshaving

Lots of good replies so far.

Appliances are good for about 10 years so spending a lot
and slipping the expense into a 30 year mortgage is silly.

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I have an old stove that I think that my 100 year old house was built around.:) I don't know how I would get it out the door. It has a standing pilot for the top burners but you need a match for the griddle, broiler, soup well, and oven. A couple years ago the oven regulator went out and after a lot of searching on the net I found a place that could rebuild it. It cost me as much as a cheap replacement but how many new ones has it outlasted already?

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Originally Posted by Wullie

Something some folks might be interested in pertaining to some mf'rs self cleaning ovens.

KItchenaid is aware their Ovens Often Malfunctions after using Self Cleaning Feature

Whirlpool KitchenAid Self-Cleaning Oven Class Action Lawsuit Complaint | Class Action Lawsuits In The News

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Self cleaning overs heat up to like 900 degrees during the cycle and the electronic components don't cotton well to heat. Repair issues after running the clean cycle are common with all such ovens. You should use that feature as little as possible.

With regards to what I posted, those self cleaning ovens are frying their circuit boards after one or two uses because the fans that were installed to cool the boards either fail or don't work at all.

What a self cleaning oven does is start up both the elements(bake and broil) and brings the interior up to about 1000 degrees turning everything into ash. Thats a lot of power being used. think of the stress on the electrical components controlling that power.

Best thing to look for in a stove/oven is a good woman to work them.

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Originally Posted by mhailey

Best thing to look for in a stove/oven is a good woman to work them.

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Got one! I got a little Missouri gal that can skin a squirrel without gettin any hair on the meat, baits her own hooks, and cleans all the fish! :)

Downside is that I've gained 50 lbs since I married her 10 years ago. :nj

It's worth it.:tu