Siemens ET 737501 E

When we moved into our new house just under a year ago it had just recently had a brand new kitchen installed. All of the kitchen appliances that they had installed are Siemens appliances which I do know to be an expensive and a premium quality brand. The hob that we have is this built in induction hob by Siemens.

For the purpose of this review I've just quickly googled our hob to try and find a price as we didn't actually buy it ourselves, and I'm actually quite gobsmacked - they are around £500 or more depending on the retailer. I'm starting to see out kitchen appliances in a whole new light now!

Our hob is positioned on the kitchen island just a little opposite and down from the oven and microwave. This is ideal as I can easily go between the two. The hob is a black ceramic glass induction hob, with a brushed stainless edge steel surround. It does look quite sleak and classy, and the brushed stainless steel matches our Siemens microwave and Siemens oven perfectly. It has the touch sensitive integrated LCD controls, so it is perfectly smooth and flat, there are no knobs or dials sticking up anywhere. I have to say that I really like this concept, I think it certainly looks much sleaker, and also there is no danger of bits of food getting trapped under the dials. This is the first time that I've had an LCD touch screen hob, and I'd certainly go for this type of hob again.

The hob is really easy to clean as it's just a flat ceramic glass surface as I said. I find that if I mop up spills and stains straight away then just a damp cloth and kitchen cleaner will be adequate. However if I leave spills or stains on the hob then I normally leave some Cif cream to soak in for a bit, and then the stains wipe off easily enough. I have had a few baked in stains to clean off the hob, basically when I've left my husband to his own devices for a week or so. I've actually had to scrub the hob with some Cif cream and a scouring pad to remove these stains and the glass surface is still absolutely perfect with no scratches at all from the scouring pad. On a day to day basis though a quick wipeover is all it needs. I definately think that this concept is so much more hygenic than having the dials which can get all sorts of stuff trapped underneath them.

The hob has four heating elements, all different diameters to suit different size pans. It has a small 14.5cm diameter element at the front, along with a large dual element that is 21cm in diameter or that you can just use the middle portion of and reduce it down to a 12cm diameter element. At the back it has another 14.5cm element along with a 17cm element that also extends out into a longer element of 26.5cm for a griddle pan or suchlike.

The touch controls are easy to use and just require a light touch to change the temperature. Just press the + or - button to increse or decrease the temperature one step at a time. All of the elements go from 1 through to 9 in 0.5 steps. It is easy to distinguish which control is for which element as each control has a small square off 4 dots next to it, with the dot corresponding to the element in bold. The elements heat up very quickly, and they also react very quickly to any changes you make to change the temperature. For example if something is about to boil over then there is no need to remove it from the hob, you just need to decrease the temperature, and it will start to simmer rather than boil.

I like that you can switch all of the elements off at once very quickly by just pressing the on/off switch rather than having to turn off each seperate element in turn. This is so handy if you are called away from the kitchen to maybe answer the door or the telephone. You don't need to worry that anything will boil over, you can leave all of your pans where they are, as the elements do start to cool down very quickly. When you come back to switch everything back on then just press the on/off switch again, and then each element that you tuch to turn back on will remember its previous setting.

I like that the touch screen LCD has a child lock feature. As the controls are so sensitive and very easily turned on I always use the child lock so that our little nephew cannot turn it on accidently and burn himself. The child lock feature also enables you to lock the current temperature on the elements so that you don't increase or decrease them by mistake whilst cooking.

The hob has dual residual heat indicators to let you know that the element is still hot too touch. When you have just switched the element off it has a capital 'H' to indicate that it's red hot, when the element has cooled down slightly but is still too hot to touch then it has a lower case 'h'. You can finish off cooking something by leaving the pan on the element when is is showing 'H', and you can keep something warm on the element when it is showing 'h'.

The hob is very simple to use, initially I just fiddled around with it to get it to work rather than reading through the instruction manual. Overall I am happy with the hob, it's very easy to use, and we've had no problems whatsoever with it. I do think that it was very expensive though, but I guess that it does match all of our other kitchen appliances, and it does look sleek and classy. I would reccomend it if you are looking for a good quality hob and don't mind spending the money.