When you use your kitchen for entertaining often, you want to have the most efficient and best-performing stove to ensure happy guests. That can make the decision of whether to purchase a gas or electric stove challenging.
In this blog post, Designer Kitchens summarizes the gas vs. electric question from Essential Home and Garden Guide to help you decide on the perfect stove for your family and guests. After all, entertaining guests should be fun.
Consider These Factors to Choose the Stove that is Best in Your Kitchen for Entertaining
Like many Colorado Springs homeowners who use their kitchen for entertaining guests, the cost of the stove they choose for their new kitchen design or kitchen remodel may be your first concern.
Electric stoves run much lower for the initial investment. They have an average cost of $460 to $950 while the price of gas stoves ranges from $980 to $2,100. Electric stoves have a higher operating cost after installation, but it isn’t much more than $50 a year based on 30 minutes of daily use.
Other considerations in this decision include:
Cooking Style
When cooking in Colorado’s high altitudes and low humidity, it’s important when using your kitchen for entertaining to think about how the cooking style of your stove affects how the food looks and tastes when complete.
This is because gas and electric stoves provide a different heating style. With gas stoves, you can expect your food to come out moist while electric stoves produce drier foods. It’s a matter of preference whether you want to prevent food from drying out or want to serve something crispier and crunchier to your foodie friends.
Heating Time
Gas stoves heat food indirectly when the heat rises from a flame. Unfortunately, this can decrease efficiency which is a negative factor when designing a kitchen for entertaining. Coils take longer to heat compared to electric stoves, but each type is about the same once you have reached the desired temperature for the food you’re preparing. The heat touches the pot or pan directly at this point. Electric stoves can lose some efficiency due to a small layer on top of the burner’s coil.
Hook-up
You only need an electrical outlet to plug in an electric stove and start using it right away. With gas stoves, you must connect to a gas line first. That can also make the gas stove more difficult to move should you ever need to do so. However, gas stoves have the advantage if there’s an electrical outage in your area. Your electric stove won’t work until the power comes back in that case.
You might like: Refrigerator Placement Ideas for Your Kitchen Remodel
Safety Concerns
Using heat and fire always poses some degree of risk. Your biggest concerns with an electric stove are likely to be burns or an electrical outage. With gas stoves, you need to be vigilant about guarding the gas line to avoid it coming loose or springing a leak. Either situation could expose you to breathing in fumes or even start a fire in your kitchen. This is something you want to be especially careful of when using your kitchen for entertaining.
Speaking of safety: Kitchen Remodeling During the Coronavirus Quarantine