Tell me about a Flat Top Stove

[CW&M Mom]

Our stove/oven is about kaput. It's on it's last leg and we have decided with our state tax return..that we are just going to need to bite the bullet and purchase a new oven.

My Dh does not want to get a stove that has the coils..he wants to get a flat top stove.

So the only thing's I know about them is that supposedly you can't "can" (as in water bath can) them.

Has anyone tried, did it work?

Do you still have to have special cleaners? Do you still have to use special cookware? Nearly everything I have is the teflon type of stuff. My grandmother had one...so I vaguely remember what we had to do with hers...but that was many years ago, and now they are so common place..not sure if they have new and improved with them now.

Oh and if you have any kinds you like/dislike. We are working with about $900 but we are very happy to pay less.

TIA!

[abond0017]

I am not familiar with canning so I'm not sure why it wouldn't be something you could do on a flat top, but I can tell you what I didn't like about the one in our last rental. The burner was very difficult to clean if you accidentally boiled over anything and burned it onto the burner. And the burners didn't heat consistently. To keep it at a certain temp it would heat up and kind of turn off over and over....very hard to cook on when you need consistent heat. Also it showed any smudge or fingerprint on it...but ours was a black color so maybe a different color wouldn't.

That is all I can think of for now. All I know is it was the worst stove I've ever used.

[gctattoo]

I love my ceramic cooktop stove. I will never have a traditional stove again. It's so much easier to keep neat and clean. You can get the special cleaner for it at Lowe's and Home Depot and it's actually cheap when you consider how long one bottle lasts. When used with a scrubby sponge, everything comes right off and it won't damage the surface.

I haven't noticed any difference in the way it cooks than that of a traditional one. $900 is more than enough. We got ours for approx. $500 at Lowe's two years ago. We got a Frigidaire.

The only thing I don't like about it is the fancy programming feature you can use to have the oven come on by itself. I never use it and I'm always pressing the wrong buttons when I just want to set the regular timer. Although I'm sure it's a great feature for someone who wants it.

[CW&M Mom]

I can't use like lysol wipes on these...correct?

[gctattoo]

I don't know for sure about the wipes, but I wouldn't. I'd be afraid of some sort of residue ruining the burners.

[Spanelli8706]

We just bought a ceramic top like 2 weeks ago from Best Buy. It was $535 at Home Depot & Best Buy beat it by 10%. It is a Maytag. We have been very pleased with it thus far... so much cleaner than the coils.

[rrpate]

i love mine and i can not see why you could not use it the same way you do other stoves... course you prob. could ask the manufacturer..and you can even get cheaper cleaner than the 4.00+ bottle of cleanser they want to sell you..... its in a gold can near the ajax and stuff...its called bon ami ..yes it hasn't scratched yet! (thats the logo on the can) any way... yeah mine has all the digital stuff . took a while to figure out how to get the oven on and set timers and stuff..... but its way worth it.. mine is black top too.. the way i clean is use a 409 or such for grease...then use the bon amin and rub away the burned marks... also can use a flat razor to get the hard stuff off.. it wont hurt it... then let the bon ami dry ... and then dust it off! same for cleaning windows... .. any way... i am on my second one... and love it.... the self cleaning oven is the bomb! too....

[Smee]

I want one so badly, but 1. I can't justify the expense when my old coil burner stove works just fine, and 2. I keep reading and hearing conflicting reviews. We cook using a cast iron skillet daily, and I'm consistently told not to use cast iron on the flat top stoves. I'm not willing to give up my cast iron. I've considered just buying a flat top and a separate coil type hot plate thing for my skillet, but meh, I don't know. That seems to cancel out any convenience of easy cleaning. I do hate how grotty those little trays under my coils get, though, but then they are pretty cheap to replace when they are beyond salvation. Also, heavy cans and jars have a way of flying out of my cabinets and onto my stove. The top is pretty dinged up from such experiences. I'd cry if I shattered an entire flat top panel in one not-so-smooth move.

I don't know. Flat tops appeal to me, but I am hesitant. In a perfect world, I'd have a gas stove and therefore no such quandary.

[Kulis]

We've had a flat-top for probably seven years. At first I used the special cleaner that came with it, but when that ran out I started using something like SoftScrub. No problems.
I started canning two summers ago, so the flat-top is the only kind of stove I've used. It seems to take forever for the canner to start boiling, but it you can definitely use it for canning.

[Smee]

Oh, yeah, canning. Do you do water bath, pressure, or both? It makes me nervous (to think about canning on a flat stove) just because of all the talk about not using cast iron (not that my canner is cast iron, but it sure gets hot).