Cooking Advice

The majority of serious cooks have a marked preference for gas cookers over electric ones. Gas cookers can heat food more quickly, and offer more precise control of the heat throughout the cooking process. Electric cookers tend to be preferred by those who are more concerned with saving money than the quality of their cooked food. With the increasing interest in home-based gourmet cookery, fuelled in part by the proliferation of television cookery shows and celebrity chefs, gas ovens have soared in popularity. As a result, the cooker manufacturers have responded with an increasing range of ever more exotic gas cookers aimed at satisfying the culinary desires of this growing market.

A basic gas cooker can be bought new for around £300. This should meet most of your basic cooking requirements and last you for a number of years. If you are not an adventurous cook, or you do not have to cook for large numbers of people on a regular basis, this may be all that you need.

As you begin to start looking at the more expensive cookers, you will notice that they usually have a lot more in the way of features, which may or may not be useful to you depending on your circumstances and cooking habits.The more expensive cookers tend to fall into the ‘professional’ category, and feature a less homely, more industrial-looking sturdy stainless steel aesthetic.

The question that you need to ask yourself, if you are looking at units such as this, is whether you really need a cooker that is powerful enough to be used in a commercial catering kitchen. If you are never out of the kitchen, and always have your nose in a cookery book, then a professional oven could be a great move.

However, if you are hardly ever in the kitchen, it could start to resemble an expensive vanity purchase before long.

If the aesthetics of your kitchen are important to you, but you don’t feel you can justify the expense or hassle of a professional cooker, then there are many semi-professional cookers which share the architectural looks of a professional cooker but have a slimmed down feature set. In the majority of cases, these units— which usually cost between £800 and £2,000 will work exceptionally well and will give many years of exemplary service, providing they are looked after.