Member Advice on Gas Cookers

Years ago I would have recommended specific makes, such as Canon, but now most companies are offering similar appliances. They are all owned by each other anyway! So it is best to look at whichever cooker you like, and see if it meets safety standards. Here are a few pointers to help you choose :

Look for a cooker that doesn't have much glass on it. If the glass parts break (and they very often do) they are really expensive to replace. ...
...not something that many customers ask about when buying a cooker. Ask the shop to check what the availability is like for parts in your area. I avoid some makes of appliances because I know their parts service is very poor and I don't want to be without a cooker for long periods of time while waiting for parts. For this reason, I usually avoid Italian appliances. They often have very poor parts availability.

Check it has a Gas Council ... more

Years ago I would have recommended specific makes, such as Canon, but now most companies are offering similar appliances. They are all owned by each other anyway! So it is best to look at whichever cooker you like, and see if it meets safety standards. Here are a few pointers to help you choose :

Look for a cooker that doesn't have much glass on it. If the glass parts break (and they very often do) they are really expensive to replace.

Parts availability is very important and not something that many customers ask about when buying a cooker. Ask the shop to check what the availability is like for parts in your area. I avoid some makes of appliances because I know their parts service is very poor and I don't want to be without a cooker for long periods of time while waiting for parts. For this reason, I usually avoid Italian appliances. They often have very poor parts availability.

Check it has a Gas Council number (for UK customers). This is a safety standard. Very often foreign imports don't have Gas Council registration and are not as reliable. They can still be sold in the UK, though.

The choice between an eye-level grill and a waist-level is entirely a matter of personal taste. Remember the cooker will hopefully last you a long time, though, and as you get older it is more difficult to bend. Eye-level grills leave space below the oven for a storage drawer, which is usually spacious and will hold a lot of pans. Waist-levels are preferred by people with fitted kitchens, who want all the work-surfaces to be the same height. We have a waist-level cooker, because my wife prefers them, but I wouldn't have one out of choice. I have found them to be problematical - the hinging mechanisms of the lids often go. Because they have a lid to cover the burners they have to have extra safety devices on to cut the gas off if you close the lid when a burner is lit. Unfortunately, when you lift the lid back up the gas starts coming out of the burner again without being lit. Some makes, such as New World, actually turn the taps back off by means of a worm-drive on the taps, which is a good safety feature. However, the more features an appliance has, the more there is to go wrong. These things can be very expensive to replace.

SERVICING
Cookers do need servicing, but by keeping the burners clean and washed yourself, you will not need professional servicing too often. If you don't keep the cooker clean, the burner ports block and with the heat the blockage becomes hard and can't be removed, so it doesn't burn properly. This is expensive, it cuts back the life of the burner and possibly your cooker, and you are not getting an even heat-distribution across your pan so are wasting money.

Some companies (British Gas is one) now operate service contracts for a number of kitchen appliances (dishwasher, washing machine, cooker, etc), so it is worth including your cooker on one of these. All the engineer needs to do is get it burning correctly and check all the gas pressures. The only trouble is that companies normally take kitchen appliances off contract once they get to 10 years old, at the time that you really need a service contract!
 

...less