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from: Maureen & Dave
Cooking with Gas: Pros and Cons
About 58% of American households cook with electricity, but gas cooking is making a steady comeback. Gas has several advantages, starting with efficiency.
Gas stove-tops and ovens use much less energy than their electric counterparts because the fuel is used directly for cooking; to power an electric appliance, the fuel must be converted into electricity at a power plant and then transmitted over long distances, typically requiring three or four units of fuel to produce one unit of electricity. A gas appliance costs less than half as much to operate as an electric one, provided it’s equipped with electric ignition instead of a pilot
light. Pilot lights burn only small amounts of gas, but they burn it 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, and in the average household this waste is roughly equal to the amount of gas actually used for cooking. (It’s not hard to shut off pilot lights, but for safety reasons we do not recommend this.) Most modern ovens and ranges have electric ignition, and proposed federal energy standards would require this feature in all models.
In addition, gas burners tend to be more responsive and easier to control than electric ones, and do a better job of heating pans with rounded bottoms.
The downside of cooking with gas is that it carries additional hazards, notably the combustibility of the gas itself and the health risk of the fumes produced by combustion. Gas appliances require ventilation to the outside (recirculating the air through a filter isn’t adequate), and this is all the more essential.
If your house is well-sealed for energy efficiency. Unfortunately, the warm air evacuated by a range hood fan or downdraft ventilator is replaced by cold outside air, which places additional demand on your heating system and poses the risk of back drafting from the furnace and fireplace. Some fans on the market use make-up air ducts to offset this; otherwise, make sure your fan isn’t too powerful for its purpose.
Stove-Tops
For most of us, a stove-top is either an electric coil element or a gas burner. In recent years, however, a number of new styles have been introduced:
Solid discs are heated by electrical resistance just like coil elements—the only difference is that they’re solid for easier cleaning. But with more thermal mass,
they take longer to heat up and typically use more electricity.
Radiant elements are electric coil elements placed under heat-resistant ceramic glass, again for easy cleaning. They too take longer to heat up, although their energy efficiency is comparable to standard electric coil elements.
Halogen elements use a quartz-halogen lamp to radiate heat to the ceramic glass surface, while magnetic induction elements heat metal pans directly by exciting the molecules magnetically. Both of these stove-tops are more efficient than standard coil elements, but they are quite expensive, and induction cooktops require that you use only iron or steel pots and pans.
Whatever kind of stove-top you use, the following tips will help you reduce the amount of energy you use in preparing meals:
• Cover pots with lids to prevent heat from escaping, which can reduce energy use by up to twothirds.
• When appropriate, use a pressure cooker. By cooking food at a higher temperature and pressure, cooking time is reduced dramatically and energy use is cut by 50–75%.
• Minimize heating requirements by using the smallest pan necessary. If you cook with gas, don’t turn the flame on really high unless you’re using a large pot.
• When boiling, use as little water as needed to do the job.
• On electric stove-tops, use only flat-bottomed pans that make full contact with the element. A warped or rounded pan will waste most of the heat.
• Keep metal grease plates under burners clean, or line them with aluminum foil, to reflect heat more effectively up to the cookware.
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