Gas Range

The Right Appliance for You

October 10, 2007 By NightOwl

Do you find that you are drawn to a certain brand of appliance again and again? Did your mother always rely on one brand of washer and dryer? Whirlpool is aware of consumers conscious and unconscious preferences for specific appliances.

For every Whirlpool Corporation brand – including Whirlpool®, Maytag®, KitchenAid®, Jenn-Air®, Amana® and Gladiator® GarageWorks – there is a unique brand identity that is defined using proprietary consumer research about preferences, lifestyles and values. Whirlpool Corporation uses this research to make tough, strategic decisions about the kinds of product innovations, features and designs it will offer to consumers.

Each of Whirlpool Corporation’s branded products is designed to meet the specific needs and preferences of consumers from a psychographic standpoint. What’s important to one consumer may not even occur to another,” said Michael A. Todman, president, Whirlpool North America. “For instance, the consumer who buys Maytag brand focuses on reliability, so the durability of internal nuts and bolts means everything. The time-starved nature of the Whirlpool brand consumer means placing greater value on getting more done quickly, so the brand’s focus is timesaving features.”

Some other Whirlpool insights into how they, and we view their large family of brands:

For 100 years, the Maytag brand has represented strength and lasting durability
With a common-sense approach to life, Amana brand consumers believe in creating a pleasant atmosphere in their home. Amana consumers want quality and style at an affordable price.
KitchenAid brand consumers enjoy cooking with others, savoring the journey of making great food with great friends and family.
The Jenn-Air brand appeals to a consumer who loves to entertain, has uncompromising taste and pays great attention to detail.

So, the fact that your mother might have insisted on a Maytag washer because she knows they are durable is exactly what Maytag (remember they’re Whirlpool in disguise) wants her to think. It’s up to Whirlpool to build machines that uphold the reputation.

If you’d like to read more about the varieties of appliances available from these Whirlpool brands, you can do so here

Viking Goes Commercial

September 30, 2007 By NightOwl

“Viking doesn’t make commercial ranges?” That has been the response to my very informal survey when people learn that Viking Corporation has recently announced their plan to release a line of commercial appliances.

Viking Range Corporation who originated ultra-premium commercial-type appliances for the indoor and outdoor kitchen has announced their intention to enter the commercial market.

The Viking Commercial product line will consist of a complete array of cooking equipment, including ranges of all styles, ovens, broilers, griddles, salamanders, cheesemelters, induction units and island suites, as well as under-counter refrigeration.

To request product information, please contact Viking toll-free at 888.845.4641, or visit the web site at vikingrange.com.

High End Appliances – Chef Included

September 5, 2007 By NightOwl

If you have recently spent some time feeling baffled by the many options on a new appliance, you are not alone. Some folks have even sought help with their entire kitchen. Maybe not a bad idea. The Los Angeles Times writes:

With sophisticated, professional-quality appliances and high-design gizmos going into residential kitchens, many would-be home chefs haven’t a clue how to operate the latest technology. The infrequent cook who wants to make a Thanksgiving turkey might stare blankly at the keypad and wonder: Convection, radiant, bake, roast, speed-cook or steam?
People are spending less time cooking in kitchens but more money remodeling them because they want the best to impress their neighbors,” says Mark Connelly, senior director of appliances and home improvement for Consumer Reports.

Connelly, a no-nonsense guy who’s been testing kitchen appliances for 18 years, says manufacturers are adding unnecessary options to differentiate themselves. TVs are embedded in refrigerators, toasters have convection-oven modes, faucets come with hands-free functions. “There are sanitary reasons for having one in an airport bathroom but not in your kitchen,” he says.

And those Starbucks-style coffee machines?

“You can spend $15 on a drip coffee maker or thousands on a fancy coffee maker,” he says, “and they both make a good cup of coffee — if you use quality coffee.”

As kitchen appliances become more complex, Connelly says, owners look for simple ways to use them.

“People spending a lot on an appliance want as many buttons as possible to justify the cost,” he says, “but most of the time they’re using the same selection as on their old appliance.
To read more, click here

The $2,000 Digital Post-it Note

August 21, 2007 By NightOwl

Are folks really willing to pay for what they say they want in an appliance? Apparently not. The OC Register has some thoughts on cool but pricy features that are appearing on kitchen appliances.

In 2002, for example, Whirlpool Corp. introduced Polara, which combined refrigeration with a convection oven. Polara would keep a casserole cool until a preset time then would start to heat the food in anticipation of your arrival home. If you were late, the oven would power down to keep the food warm and not overcook it.

“Our focus groups said they wanted it, but people wouldn’t pay $1,900 for the technology,” said Whirlpool spokeswoman Audrey Reed-Granger. “So we put the Polara on the back burner, and we’ll bring it back in a few years” when the market is ready. Read more about it here.

Char Broil 4 burner grill – first thoughts

July 3, 2007 By WorkinMan

We’re working on a radio segment on grills over at TechTalk Radio and I’ve been lucky enough to test the Char-Broil Commercial Series 4 burner gas grill (Model 463268107). Here are my first impressions out of the box so to speak. This thing is shiny. And BIG. I’ve been using an old cast iron, two burner Arklamatic for over ten years, and barbeque probably 60+ days a year. So i’m used to working hard to make room for my burgers or steak on one burner and my wife’s trout or salmon filet on the other and alternating peppers and veggies as one side or the other finishes. Right out of the gate, using the CharBroil 4 burner grill is like moving into a bigger house. Your stuff looks lonely in all of that space. Last night I grilled a full chicken and only managed to cover a small area over a single grill. Later this week, we’ll fire up the grill for the whole editorial production team, and we’ll easily have room for 20 or 30 pieces of chicken on half the grill.

Living in California with a wife who isn’t that much of a carnivore, I’ve also gotten used to grilling more delicate fare, and wondered if a 50,000 BTU grill would just destroy a less robust food. So we also did a grill test on some items that would make a Texan wince. I grilled a few pieces of Surumi – a delicate white fish based fake shrimp, some light salmon fillets, some red trout, some yellow and orange peppers, and (carefully) some lightly marinated tofu.

I was a mildly surprised at how well the grill did. When cooking foods other than burgers and steaks, I tend to spray the grill with olive oil spray to keep the food from sticking, and I preheat the grill for 10 minutes to let it get nice and hot. The grates are a very heavy duty cast iron, tightly spaced, with each grate bar shaped like a triangle so that it tops out in a very narrow line but with minimal gaps between grates to lose your food. I’ve been very pleased with the results so far. The grates really picked up and distributed the heat nicely. The salmon steaks especially came off the grill soft and flaky with a nice grill pattern on the surface but well cooked through and through. Even though I’ve only been grilling small portions that easily fit on a single burner, I’ve found that I’ve had better results if I turn on the neighboring burner also to pick up more indirect heat (the interiors thermometer suggests I was running around 325 degrees with the lid down).

The Charbroil Grill itself

Assembly
The CharBroil 4 burner Commercial Series Grill is a big piece of hardware. Our test unit showed up all by its lonesome in a big fedex truck and took three of us to get out to the deck where we are testing our grills. In the end, it was easier to open the box and pull out the grates, doors and side panels to make the box lighter and easier to manouver. Although the grill would certainly fit in the back of a Suburban or pickup, unless you’ve got a couple friends with strong backs, I’d recommend letting the store deliver the grill to you.

Assembly was well documented, and pretty straightforward. The manual is concise, has clear illustrations including blowups of the details of each individual step. Every illustration has a specific listing of exactly which screws and fasteners to use, and the order to use them in. For guys like me who tend not to read instructions cause we just “know how to put things together” its worth actually following the book. Not reading closely , I put a pair of screws into a back panel a step early and had to pull them back out when I discovered that another panel had to be inserted before they could be driven in.

Assembly took about two hours, and could easily a one man job except for the five minutes needed to lower the grill onto the cabinet. Nevertheless, if you can find a son or daughter (or in my case, 4) to help out and tighten screws, the job is a lot more fun. Its clear how much care went into the design of the installation procedures when you see the pack of included screws and fasteners. Instead of a plastic bag with mishmash of small pieces, charbroil gives you a blister pack with each screw and lock washer packed with its mates, clearly labled on the back, with perforated flaps for easy access.

My only suggestions to Char Broil to improve the process: 1. Give me an extra screw and washer of each size. When one washer rolled away, we were sunk untill we could find it again. and 2: Give me a better caster wrench. (To tighten on the wheels on the bottom of the cabinet they give you a small wrench cut out of 3mm sheet metal, which has to bind against the caster’s nut, also out of 3 sheet metal. Sliding off by even a millimeter loses bite on the caster. I found it easier to just get my own wrench and finish the job.)

Nevertheless, I was very pleased with the fit and finish of the unit, and the obvious attention to detail. For example, when you go to hang the doors and need to hold them vertically in place to screw them on, you’ll find that CharBroil has given each one a small little hook that hangs on the lip of the door frame holding them in perfect alignment while you put in the mounting screws. No need to struggle to hold the door up with your knees while you fumble to drive in one screw while holding the next screw in your teeth.

Appearance

The CharBroil Commercial Series 4 burner Gas Grill is a very attractive piece of equipment. It has a substantial weight and feel, but with nice lines. The exterior of the grill is completely stainless steel, with silver tone plastic knobs. Part of the grill is a higher quality stainless steel, and part seems to be a lower quality steel. On the either side of the grill is a solid stainless steel shelf. The left shelf has a flip up surface that exposes a side burner for those who need to heat up a pot of beans, or corn, or spicy cajun dipping sauce.

All of the seams are very tight and smooth with minimal gapping to let in moisture and eventual rust. The surface does seem to pick up a bit of smear and a slight mottled discoloration from being out in the moist nighttime air. I would probably cover it if I wanted it to last forever, but we might instead try hosing it down every night leaving standing water on the surface and see how the metal holds up to years of simulated rainstorms and abuse. We’ll let you know how things shake out.

I only had a few design concerns. My biggest -and its almost a deal breaker:- There’s no place to hang my spatulas, tongs and grill brushes. The engineers at Char Broil shoud add hooks to the underside of the right shelf so I can hang my tools. For now I’ve had to put a paper plate down on the right side shelf and lay the messy ends of my flippers/tongs on that. This week I’ll go buy some S hooks from the local hardware store, remove the towel bar on the right side, slide on my hooks, reattahc the bar and jury rig up some hanging space. My weaker complaint, and I realize that it’s really just a personal bias, I wish there was a place to put some lava rocks, and to occasionally toss in some hickory chips. The burners are each topped by a steel heat dissipater, but they are sloped downwards, and don’t connect, so there’s no surface above the burners to hold lava or wood chips. Since this is a pretty common design structure across most grill this size, I guess I’m not supposed to complain, but nevertheless, I like when my marinade drips on the lava, burns up and resmokes my food while it grills.

All in all, it seems clear that this is a well engineered, well thought out piece of equipment. It is moderately priced, looks beautiful, and performs beyond expectations. Any outdoor chef should be pleased to stand next to it.

Product Specs and Usage Tips:

Four Burner Gas Grill

500 total sq. in. porcelain cast iron cooking grate

Add 170 sq. in. Secondary cooking surface, for a total of 670 total sq. in. cooking area

Stainless Steel lid

50,000 BTU Main Burners

13,000 BTU Sideburner

Electronic Ignition

Double Doors

Here’s a copy of the assembly manual for the 463268007 4 burner gas grill.

Here are some maintenance tips for getting the best lifetime of use from your grill:

Season your cast iron grates so they won’t rust

Learn how to clean your stainless steel grill to keep it looking as shiny as the day you tested it. This great cleaning guide from CharBroil includes a video.

Here are some cleaning tips for the grates themselves.

When all else fails, here are troubleshooting tips for your new gas grill

SuperSize Me – Kitchen appliances to do a hummer proud

June 27, 2007 By WorkinMan

I was visiting a friend a few weeks ago who has recently finished a home remodel in West Los Angeles. He and his wife turned their 1500 square foot bungalow into a 4000 square foot family home. I stood in their kitchen looking at their double wide refrigerator (literally, double wide.) It’s two fridges side by side with the doors mounted to open to the outside creating about 72 inches of cold storage. The hummer of refrigerators.

Super size refrigerator — by Hummer?

Makes you wonder, how did anybody ever raise a family in the 1500 square foot house that was there before? Arrol Gelner of Inman News touches on the same question in this article from Upstate House a couple months ago:

Needless to say, bigness has hit housing in, well, a big way. Not only are American homes now nearly twice the size of their postwar counterparts, but they have more of everything: more bedrooms, more bathrooms, bigger windows, taller ceilings, more garage doors.

The things inside our homes are getting bigger too, as a trip to an appliance store will quickly confirm. Like those colossal baby carriages, appliances are being pumped up to SUV-like proportions.

Many washing machines and dryers, for example, are now raised up on huge pedestals for “convenience,” not to mention being slathered with enough fake chrome to shame a Lincoln Navigator owner.

I’m guilty too. We tore out 24 inch wall ovens and rebuilt our vintage kitchen around 30 inch double ovens, dropped in a huge fridge and a six burner range. We drive the biggest suburban on the market, and live in twice the house I grew up in. Personally, I just like elbow room and efficiency, and have a big family. But what about couples with 4000 square foot mini mansions crammed into lots of little look alike lots? Does the space inside make life seem more substantial? What’s the nexus between, big and shiny and important and successful?

What do you think?

Miele is really cooking – 6 burner cooktop is hot (literally)

May 31, 2007 By NightOwl

One of the hardest parts of doing a minimal remodel on an old kitchen is figuring out how to fit new gear into old spaces. We had a 40 year old cooktop just begging to be scrapped, and needed to find a sleek new stainless steel cooktop to drop into the now hard to match 40 inch hole. Most cooktops today fit either a 36 inch or 42 inch form factor. We were pleased to find that with a little bit of counter shaving the 42 inch Miele could manage in our old 40 inch slot.

The Miele km344 cooktop has a completely sealed stainless surface. You can spill a pot of boiling water over the surface without worries. Its a 6 burner cooktop, with castiron interlocking grates, self reigniting, with good, old fashioned analog dial controls.
Cooking Surface
The cooking surface is three giant grates, that each cover 2 burners front to back. The grates interlock so they have to go on in order, but there is no wobble, and great stability. No worries that a large pot will tip off of an inadequate grate. On the downside, the cooking surface consists of cast iron fingers reaching towards the center of each burner. It can be diffiicult to find a well supported flat spot to set down a soup bowl while ladling into it. It would be nicer if the grate had a couple of extra tines around each burner to create more broad surfaces for setting things down on the grate. The units continuous grates make it easy to move pots around on the surface without lifting and the sealed burners make cleanup much less complicated.

I find the configuration of the grates annoying in that they seem to be designed for commercial sized or styled cookware that the average home cook (that would be me – and I think most American cooks) does not use.

Heat
The BTUs on the majority of the burners are so high that I find myself needing to reduce the heat to keep the flames from overwhelming my pots and pans.

Here’s the burner configuration:

Burner Configuration
6 completely sealed burners
(2) 9,000 BTU burners
(2) 12,000 BTU High-speed burners
(1) 15,300 BTU Double Ring Super (Wok) burner
(1) 16,500 BTU Double Ring Super (Wok) burner

Oddly enough, the bigger more powerful burners are at the front of the unit rather than the back, so if you have kids in the house and generally want to put giant boiling pots of soup at the back of the cooktop, you find youself stuck using the lowest powered burners.

Cleanup
It looks quite nice, and is generally easy to clean. However, each gas ring is surrounded by a stainless ring that darkens and requires scrubbing with a mild abrasive. This is maintenance that is required regularly. Also, the lovely stainless is scratched anytime someone lifts a burner for cleaning unless the burner is carefully lifted straight up without making any contact with the surface.
Features and Quirks
The quirkiest feature of the cooktop is its propensity for blowing out the flame anytime you open the cabinet doors below the cooktop, or when the nearby oven fan blows across the surface, or when a decent breeze blows in the window. It’s nice that it automatically reignites, but it is kind of humorous to hear the cooktop relighting every few minutes on a windy breezy afternoon.

Final thoughts
Although I may sound dissatisfied, I’m really not. The Meile was pricy, and I have to wonder if it is really worth it, but overall, this cooktop works well, and the customer service has been outstanding and the tune-ups we have needed were done with skill and professionalism.

If You Can’t Stand the Kitchen Heat, Try Appliances Alfresco

July 11, 2006 By Appliance

It’s July and maybe you haven’t yet emptied the Independence Day charcoal ash from the bottom of your Weber kettle grill. You’d like to figure out a way to heat up your house by boiling corn on the cob or macaroni or potatos to make salads to go along with the remaining summer barbeques you’re planning.

According to the Charlotte Observer:

The outdoor kitchen trend caught on with average consumers in the past two or three years, according to local builders, designers and landscapers.

Architects nationwide have reported a surge in the last year of customers requesting outdoor living space such as decks, patios and outdoor kitchens, according to a 2006 American Institute of Architects survey.

“The outdoor room is sort of the family room of the 21st century,”

More here.

more here