The one pictured here, that is.
As you may know, our landladies recently replaced our still-perfectly-good stove with a new one. I did not ask for this, and was given no input as to what type of stove I wanted. You’d think that after having lived here for something like 15 years now, I would have been asked first. If I’d had the choice, frankly, I’d have just said that the old one was fine, no need to spend money on a new one. Seriously, I don’t understand when people forever see the need to replace things that are still in perfect working order. We’re the sort of people to use things until they die.
This is the stove we got. If I were the one who was making the purchase, I would have read the reviews first. For the most part, the reviews are good, but the few bad ones concern me enough, in that they would have made me NOT buy this particular stove. For one thing, I’m concerned about the computers on the inside going on the fritz, it supposedly is something that would cost $400 to fix. One person said they had this happen after using the self-clean feature for the first time, and was told by a Sears technician that this is a common problem. Now I am afraid to use the self-cleaning feature. I haven’t used it yet, because I’ve only had the stove for a few months, and the oven has not gotten dirty enough yet.
I also don’t like that there seem to be a million restrictions as to what you can and can’t use on it to cook in. I had heard that cast iron is not recommended; however, I have been using mine anyway, because other people say they have used it on these kinds of cooktops, and have been okay. You just have to be careful not to drop the heavy iron pan on the glass, or drag it on the surface, lest it get scratched. So far, no problems.
Look at this, from the owner’s manual (you can click it for bigger, will open in new tab/window):
This is just a small part of the whole book. It seems that I’m expected to jump through a zillion hoops to keep this cooktop from being scratched or broken. What a wonderful way to kill my joy in cooking, huh?
Anyhoo, that leads to the stovetop smoker, which I definitely CAN’T use on this stove. Not only does it break two rules of the cooktop (the bottom is not smooth, it’s ridged, and it’s big enough to overhang even the largest burner), but even Camerons, the manufacturer, warns against this. This is from the manual from the smoker:
Well, since Camerons makes a big deal out of telling people this, I’d best heed their advice. So I ordered the single burner hot plate seen above. It’s mostly so I can use the smoker, but given the fact that this damned cooktop is supposedly so fragile and needs to be treated with kid gloves…it might end up being my ONLY cooktop. Because if this stove breaks, it’s staying broken until we move out and the landladies opt to fix or replace it for the next tenant, and they can go and suck eggs if they expect US to pay for it.
Either they will blame me for breaking it, and refuse to pay for the repair…or they WILL pay for the repair, but cut corners by hiring one of their regular cast of skeevy workmen, rather than a Sears technician. And I will NOT have the skeevy workmen in my house, not when I’m here alone (landladies often go out and allow skeevy workmen free reign of the basement and their own unit upstairs). Even if Mike were here, I still might not want them in here, every single person they hire is a smoker, and none will respect our rule about no smoking in our apartment. Mike is severely allergic to cigarette smoke. If he is exposed to it for too long, his entire face puffs up to the point where he can hardly breathe, and then I’d have to call 911.
And I am NOT going to pay Sears to repair it myself, not when I don’t own it. All the law says is that the landladies must fix the stove if it breaks, nothing about who they have to hire to fix it. I just don’t like the skeevy workmen; I have seen cleaner, classier looking guys panhandling on the streets of Boston.
Mike is also severely allergic to whatever additives they put in supermarket smoked sausage; this is why I got into sausage making and bought the smoker in the first place. I also enjoy using it for other things. Why should I have to give that up, because of someone else’s stupid choice of a stove?
So if the cooktop breaks, I’m keeping quiet about it. I’ll just use the hot plate, my George Foreman grill and rotisserie, my toaster oven, and my NuWave oven to cook. I’ll do my best to be careful, but it just makes me nervous all the time, with all the warnings about the alleged fragility of this thing. If I had my way, I’d never have agreed to this stove. If we owned our own house, I’d want a gas/propane stove, but that is not possible here. I’m not a huge fan of the electric coil stoves, but as a frequent cook who gives a stove a good workout, they are the lesser of two evils. I am convinced now that these glass-top stoves are more for people who hardly ever cook anything, and want something that just sits in the kitchen and looks pretty.
It works just fine, I just don’t like the fact that it is too easy to break it, and very expensive to fix if it does break. And that doesn’t even include the inner computers inside the thing.
Gack.
I’ve had a NuWave oven for some time now, and I absolutely love it. Easy to cook in, easy to clean, cooks food faster than in a conventional oven, uses less energy. It’s also great for when the weather is warm, because it does not heat up your kitchen as a regular oven would.
I’ve already gone into detail as to why I 
I cooked a boneless leg of lamb roast in my 
