House Kitchen Stove BTU - Blue Star Ranges

[treillw]

Surprisingly you guys have been very helpful in making some decisions on building a house! There needs to a rockslide for home building. Dunno how many of you know about the Blue Star ranges, but I'm sure we have a few that know about cooking over high heat.

We are trying to decide between 15k and 22k BTU burners. Specifically looking at the Blue Star 36" wide Nova RNB series compared to the Culinary series.

How much nicer are the 22k BTU burners? We would like to start dabbling into wok cooking and currently sear steaks in cast iron pans on high heat. Boiling water is the only other thing I can think of that it would be nice for.

We have been using an inexpensive Kenmore electric range in our apartment for the last few years, so I'm sure either will be an upgrade. It produces about 10k BTUs, the best I can estimate.


We really love cooking, but don't know if the 22k burners are necessary. The Nova does come with some additional nice features - the rolling oven rack is about $450 extra to add on to the culinary (would be really nice for Turkeys, etc). Going with the Nova and a blue star hood insert will also get us $500 back in a rebate, so there is some additional draw to the Nova. Basically that brings the price difference between the two to around $1200.


Thoughts?


Thanks!

 

[SonnyDay]

Having the extra BTUs are nice for some things as you mentioned (wok/stir fry, steak in cast iron, boiling large pots of water). I have a GE with a 20K on the main burner, and I wouldn't argue with some additional power in some cases. But it is mostly up to the job.

Something that is just as important to me is making sure the burners will go LOW enough to do a proper simmer. Not sure if you can get specs on that but it's maddening when you can only get the flame so low and sauces, rice, etc. burns. Good luck!

 

[treillw]

They say they go to 130 degrees. Hopefully that's low enough!

 

[SonnyDay]

Yeah, that should do.

 

[GotDraw?]

Consider a top tier inductive cooktop. Blindingly fast to heat- faster than gas. Low temps are easily controlled too.

I you have not tried one, I strongly suggest you do. Not as sexy as gas but better in many ways.
JL

 

[riversidejeep]

You sound like me 6 years ago! I spent 45 years cooking on the bargain basement stoves that have 12000 btu burners that you can turn down to 10,000 on low. Fast forward I built a new house to retire into and made the decision to get a Blue Star 36" RBN, 6 burner, 2 power burners on the front outsides and the simmer burner on the left rear. It is UNREAL what a difference to cook on a real stove. The 22,000 power burners will get your stock pot boiling in just a couple minutes and the regular burners (all of them actually) have gas valves that you can fine tune the heat with ease.
Clean up is easy with the removable grates etc. Seems well built and the best part is that it's easy to repair as it doesn't have any electronics . Now the bad, The simmer burner is still not low enough for me so I just made a stainless steel mesh pad to put on the burner to raise the pan another 1/4 inch or so. Had to replace the convection fan already but was cheap and easy to get.
The hood is of equal importance, I went with an AIR KING commercial style ( lift out style grease filters that you throw in the dishwasher) 600-900-1200 cfm, 10 inch exhaust pipe, happy with that also.

 

[treillw]

You sound like me 6 years ago! I spent 45 years cooking on the bargain basement stoves that have 12000 btu burners that you can turn down to 10,000 on low. Fast forward I built a new house to retire into and made the decision to get a Blue Star 36" RBN, 6 burner, 2 power burners on the front outsides and the simmer burner on the left rear. It is UNREAL what a difference to cook on a real stove. The 22,000 power burners will get your stock pot boiling in just a couple minutes and the regular burners (all of them actually) have gas valves that you can fine tune the heat with ease.
Clean up is easy with the removable grates etc. Seems well built and the best part is that it's easy to repair as it doesn't have any electronics . Now the bad, The simmer burner is still not low enough for me so I just made a stainless steel mesh pad to put on the burner to raise the pan another 1/4 inch or so. Had to replace the convection fan already but was cheap and easy to get.
The hood is of equal importance, I went with an AIR KING commercial style ( lift out style grease filters that you throw in the dishwasher) 600-900-1200 cfm, 10 inch exhaust pipe, happy with that also.

You mentioned raising the pot up on the simmer burner. Did you know that you can rotate the top center portion of the burner ( don't know what to call it - pot support??) to elevate the pot?

The salesman told me that after we got our Blue Star and I didn't realize it previously. There are 2 or 3 different pot elevation settings already built into the stove to help you reduce the heat, if desired.

You might already know that, but should be happy to learn it if you didn't.