Cooking with gas

Pulled from the pasta alla vigliacca thread...

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Saltgrass

Great recipe and very good insight into making an excellent sauce. Just one thing that is mostly off base. It's this part:

'If you have an electric stove, carry it out to the curb and replace with a gas stove before beginning'

Most serious cooks that I know would never let an electric stove become a constraint, but instead they would adapt their technique to the tools they have. Note that in episodes of 'The French Chef' Julia Child's iconic cooking show she used an electric range exclusively. Almost everyone knows she cooked circles around virtually everyone of her peers then and most professionals since.

https://www.pbs.org/video/the-french...n-soup-dv2ts5/

---

Not as bad as an unvented gas heating appliance (talk about something that should be dragged to the curb) but cooking with gas does not help indoor air quality.

Kill Your Gas Stove
It’s bad for you, and the environment. If you can afford to avoid it, you probably should. – The Atlantic

Gas stoves making indoor air up to five times dirtier than outdoor air, report finds
Gas cookers making people sick and exposing tens of millions to air pollution levels that would be illegal if they were outside– The Guardian

Yeah… unvented gas is unacceptable. It’s a shame it was considered ok for so long. But it’s not just the air quality… it’s a non renewable energy source and a huge hazard in a natural disaster. New construction in California does not allow for a gas connection. And while I love my gas for cooking… I fully support it.

Many years back here I asked for impressions on top level induction. Not many folks here had experience at the time. But 100% induction is the future. I still went, and will continue to use gas, because of habit and wanting to keep my copper stuff, but really induction is lovely.

One small nit pick… yes Child used electric on the show because it’s what folks would recognize and the show was about getting everyone to try… but had a garland (now blue star) at home.

in the 3.5 years we've had our house, the only time i've enjoyed having a gas stove was this past February when we had no power and it was sub-freezing outside.

In my market, electric costs are nuts and natural gas is really the only viable energy source for heating, in terms of energy costs and equipment life cycle costs. Most folks also pipe their clothes dryer, hot water heater and cooktops and there are lots of natural gas outdoor grilles too.

Ha. If you saw the amount of smoke I get going out of the pots and pans you'd realize that little flame underneath is the least of my worries.

Hah. The latest episode of The Sporkful podcast addresses this topic. I live in an area without gas. I’ve always lusted after the gas cooking experience but not willing to pay the $$$$ to have the line brought into the street from main road. So I have an induction cooktop. It doesn’t heat carbon steel evenly but other than that it works ok.

Last year we had to replace oil burner. Big cash outlay. A couple of months ago the gas co started lobbying my neighbors to commit to gas and they’d run the line down the street. No takers, or not enough. And now there’s been a fair amount of news about the safety of gas, air quality, etc. I’m not inclined to change.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by thollandpe

Pulled from the pasta alla vigliacca thread...



Not as bad as an unvented gas heating appliance (talk about something that should be dragged to the curb) but cooking with gas does not help indoor air quality.

Kill Your Gas Stove
It’s bad for you, and the environment. If you can afford to avoid it, you probably should. – The Atlantic

Gas stoves making indoor air up to five times dirtier than outdoor air, report finds
Gas cookers making people sick and exposing tens of millions to air pollution levels that would be illegal if they were outside– The Guardian

---

Very poor journalism. The article from The Guardian said nothing about ventilation other than to say that using a range hood fixes the problem. The Atlantic article did but said nothing about what ventilation is sufficient and failed to show any data about what ventilation people have vs what would be required for their stove, their cooking and the air-tightness of their homes. The Atlantic article cites a study by RMI, which is a climate-change advocacy PR firm. The article also mixes using a gas stove for cooking and foolishly using a gas stove for heat, and mixes having proper range hood with no ventilation at all. A similar headline could be "Pouring CO2 into your home is a bad idea. Don't run a hose from your car exhaust into your house."

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by 9tubes

Very poor journalism. The article from The Guardian said nothing about ventilation other than to say that using a range hood fixes the problem. The Atlantic article did but said nothing about what ventilation is sufficient and failed to show any data about what ventilation people have vs what would be required for their stove, their cooking and the air-tightness of their homes. The Atlantic article cites a study by RMI, which is a climate-change advocacy PR firm. The article also mixes using a gas stove for cooking and foolishly using a gas stove for heat, and mixes having proper range hood with no ventilation at all. A similar headline could be "Pouring CO2 into your home is a bad idea. Don't run a hose from your car exhaust into your house."

---

I mean, all this is true, but it’s asking a lot to give any kinds of definitive answers when we’re talking about turbulent gas mixing. Anyone making a comparison would start with eliminating variables and end up with a sealed, unvented room, and yes the results are bad when you burn things in a sealed room. I found the articles only mildly sensational fwiw.

The much, much trickier thing in all of this is managing ventilation concerns. I worry about laws requiring make up air systems having an adverse effect on installing good vents since they allow 400cfm or less without air replacement. But in no world is 400cfm good enough. All that said, I don’t hear people talking about “how much hood do I need?” for anything other than heat extraction. And honestly the biggest air pollutant in my gas-stove-ventless-condo was all the vaporized oil. I’d take a look at the coating on everything and think “huh, I breathe that”. Getting a real vent was personally a huge motivator in my desire to move. I now look at the baffles and smile as I drop them in the dishwasher.

Speaking of vents... we replaced the over the stove microwave with a fan in it with an actual hood earlier this year and I was a little disappointed in its draw. I went out and looked at the 45 year old exhaust on the side of the house and thought the little door wasn't opening the way it should. A couple drops of NFS and the hood draws much better!