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All about my new stove

Since you all have been along for my whole stove saga, I figured a little post about my new one would be in order.

Kristen's new GE stove

In case you’re new, or you’re coming across this post in the archives one day: I broke my cooktop by doing something stupid with a lid that got stuck.

You can read the whole story here and see lots of photos of the destruction.

cracked glass stovetop

We decided to replace the whole thing, since a new top was quite expensive in comparison to cost of a new range.

Unfortunately, because of current supply issues, it took two months for a new one to arrive.

I limped a bit in the kitchen, but I did get along with half a stove. Luckily, my oven was still working great, so it could have been worse.

Getting rid of the old stove

old broken Kenmore stove

I really did not want to throw my old range into the landfill, so I listed it for free on Facebook Marketplace, disclosing the damage, of course.

I got tons of inquiries, but the person who ultimately picked it up was a young guy who was on the hunt for a cheap oven to use for powder-coating auto parts.

old stove ready for giveaway

So, he didn’t care in the slightest that the stovetop was broken; he just needed an oven.

I am delighted that my old range is going to have an extended and useful life!

Also, I am pleased that we did not have to haul it to the landfill. Giving it away was less work; I just had to help the guy carry it out of the house and lift it into his truck.

The new stove details!

kitchen without a stove

It’s kinda ugly back there.

I looked at multiple models and ultimately chose a GE range, which hopefully will be a good choice long-term.

(Here’s a CNET review of the model we chose.)

GE stainless range

The stove is just a basic glass cooktop like I had before, but the oven has a convection setting, which is brand new to me.

I’ll have to let you know how I like it down the road.

Why not an induction stove?

I have heard great things about induction cooktops, but I just could not bring myself to pay that much for a cooktop.

Ranges with induction cooktops are way, way more expensive. And I figured that if I have been happy for two decades with a regular cooktop, I could probably be content for several more decades with another one.

How do I feel about the new range?

Well.

I am extremely delighted to have a non-broken cooktop.

GE stainless cooktop

It was difficult to work around the broken glass, and it was treacherous to try to clean the stovetop.

It was also frustrating to have the two working burners so close together.

I kept running into situations where I wanted to use a frying pan and a regular saucepan, and there just wasn’t room on the stovetop for both.

The first night I used my new range, I made a pot of rice and a skillet of chili, and I sent a a photo and a delighted text to my parents so they could share in my joy. 😉

stove with drywall

Aforementioned photo of delight with two pans! Also, that red thing is a Frywall.

I feel a significant level of happiness just because this stove isn’t broken, but I also think the cooktop is a little roomier, since the outer edge of the stovetop is thinner.

I love that the oven tells me what the temperature is as it preheats; with my other one, you got no information until it was fully preheated. 

And on an appearance-oriented note, because this one has some stainless instead of being all black, it makes that area of the kitchen look more spacious.

GE stainless range

I think it looks really pretty with the gray subway tile, and I feel seriously fancy now.

Time will tell

I’ll have to cook and bake with my new cooktop and oven for a while before I can form a very accurate opinion, so I’ll try to remember to do a follow-up post in a year or so. 

For now, though, I feel really happy about this purchase. I cook and bake a lot, so I’m going to get a lot of mileage out of this range. It is certainly not going to sit unused.

And I can tell you that I will never, ever put a hot lid down on my glass cooktop again. Ha.

Those of you with convection oven experience: help me out with tips, please!

 

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Randi Macdonald

Sunday 1st of November 2020

Do you not have gas stoves in your area? I love my gas stove so, so much.

Kristen

Monday 2nd of November 2020

It depends on the neighborhood. There are some in my area that have gas and others don't. In the four homes I've lived in here, none of them have had gas, though!

Erin

Friday 30th of October 2020

Congrats on the new stove! When we moved last year, our new home has a stove very much like your new one, ours being only a year old. I LOVE the convection. That's all I use to bake now as it evens out the bakes and makes cooking meat in a dutchoven ridiculously easy and scrumptious. I'm not sure I'll ever be a fan of the glass top, but I'm thankful for this oven the we do have.

Kristen

Friday 30th of October 2020

Well, now I need to bake something just so I can try the convection setting!

Katrina Campbell

Friday 30th of October 2020

We have the same stove! Have had it for four years and its still treating us well, we love it!

Kristen

Friday 30th of October 2020

Well, that's very encouraging. Yay!

Chris

Thursday 29th of October 2020

Hi, I love the new stove. You were talking about induction hobs, the information about these hobs that is seldom mentioned is that the magnetic field interferes with heart pace makers and DBS inplants for Parkinsons and other neurological disorders. So these hobs are not suitable for people with these conditions. When we had a holiday ad found the hob was induction we had to make sure hubby was in a different room.

Kristen

Thursday 29th of October 2020

Wow, that would never have occurred to me.

EngineerMom

Thursday 29th of October 2020

I love glass cooktops. We've moved quite a bit, and I've gotten to choose my range twice now, and I've always ended up choosing a glass-top GE range.

My sister worked for GE appliances as a mechanical engineer for 5+ years, and part of her job involved testing ovens for safety, both GE's and competitors' models.

GE ovens are super-safe - out of the available options, they are the least likely to set your house on fire. ;-)

I like the convection feature more because it helps to even out the oven temperature. I haven't really noticed a distinct decrease in baking time - it just tends to make things bake a bit more evenly.

Is your oven a little bigger? One big change I noticed when we went from an old to a new range in one of our homes was how much bigger the oven interior was compared to the (very) old range. Insulation has gotten a lot better, so even with the same "envelope" (the outer dimensions of the range), they're able to make the oven interior a little bigger.

Kristen

Thursday 29th of October 2020

I think maybe the oven is a little bigger? Nothing super noticeable, though.

Good to know that our oven is not likely to burst into flames. Yay!

EngineerMom

Thursday 29th of October 2020

On a related note, the home we moved into in May came with a very high-end gas range (a Jenn-Air model that is about 10 years old, and as far as I can tell, was probably up around $4,000-$5,000 brand-spankin'-new).

And it is not my favorite. Cooking on a gas range seriously messes with the bottoms of my cast-iron skillets, which I heavily dislike, and there's no "carry over heat" when you turn off the burner (I can't just shut off the burner and know it will keep the food hot while I finish some other aspect of the meal).

The gas oven is great for bread (because burning gas puts water vapor into the air inside the oven, yay combustion!), but it has to circulate more air through it than an electric oven, so it tends to dump a lot of heat into the kitchen. Fortunately, the previous owners also installed a (ridiculously) powerful vent above the stove that vents straight up through the roof, as our kitchen is in a a part of the house that doesn't have a second floor, so the "dumping heat into the kitchen" part isn't as bad as it is at my in-law's house where any kind of cooking makes the temp in the kitchen jump 10 degrees.

It's not a terrible stove as gas stoves go - the burners seem to be well-sized to cooking with normal pots/pans (a lot of gas stoves have burners that are too big, both in diameter and heat production), and I am grateful for something that seems to be a workhorse and capable of surviving another 10 years easily. But to anyone who is planning a kitchen remodel - don't buy a really expensive stove! Even repairs on it are *that* much more expensive.

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