Since I don’t like click-bait, I’m going to tell you right up front: “Buy a Bertazzoni”.
I don’t sell appliances and get nothing if you buy one. In fact I paid retail.
My old cook-top was only a few years old and worked as good as new, which is to say “very nicely as long as it wasn’t tying to kill me”
Over the years, I’ve had problems with my old cooktop pouring potentially explosive natural gas into my kitchen when the knob was on, but the flame was out, like after a boil-over or if a breeze blew the simmer flame out.
Finally, I decided that this was a real problem and went looking for a safer cook-top.
I found that a lot of them light the gas and assume “everything is OK,” which clearly isn’t the case, so I kept looking.
When you get into a little better class of appliances you’ll find that they have “auto re-ignition” which is supposed to re-light the burner when the flame goes out, but it turns out this doesn’t always work when you’ve had a boil-over and the spark electrode is all wet. Because the spark igniter doesn’t work when it’s wet.
So I started looking at even better cook-tops and found Bertazzoni.
Bertazzoni uses astonishingly reliable technology that has been used in gas water heaters since at least the 1950’s: “a thermocouple”.
Heat from the flame creates electricity, which energizes a magnet and keeps the gas valve open.
When the flame blows out,
- There is no more heat
- Which means “no more electricity”
- Which means the gas valve closes.
This is the same astonishingly simple, reliable technology, that has prevented water heaters from blowing people up for decades, and which requires no electronics and does not rely on household power being available, which means you can still light it with a match or lighter and use it during a power failure.
update: 6/21/2024
I just discovered something really interesting: Due to some sort magic with airflow and geometry, the actual stainless cooktop doesn’t get hot enough to burn anything on.
I’ve had all sorts of spills but nothing burned on, so cleanup has been really easy so far.