Can I change gas hob to electric?

[kalniel]

Hehe true.

It's just our rental agency insist on at least a separate 30A circuit for electric ovens.

[Mrs Hex]

Strange, ours is great. The induction one though, that is amazing, just hugely expensive and you need special pans for it.

One of the reasons I wouldn't want a gas hob (as good as they at cooking) is the faff of cleaning them. Far too fiddly.

Indeed it is - however Hex doesn't do the cleaning of said hob - he cooks so I clean

We still argue over the washing up tho

[Agent]

Just buy a Linux powered dishwasher. Sorted

[Howard]

Off topic but that quote in Agent's sig is so funny

[moogle]

Off topic but that quote in Agent's sig is so funny

lol just noticed it too

[iranu]

Gas hobs are so much more turn off and onable. Electric creature comforts ads

[Nick]

Not read all the replies so apologies if I'm repeating anything.

First off, leccy hobs are notoriously hard to control and even the halogen type can suffer from hotspots, meaning your pans heat up unevenly. Plus they all have residual heat so even if the ring is switched off, the damn thing is still massively hot, meaning doing anything other than boiling water to cook cook veg, pasta or similar is damn hard.

Also, seeing as direct contact with the hob is needed to transfer heat from the element into the pan, any warped pans will suffer badly from hotspots. Try heating a cheap aluminium frying pan on an electric hob and you can see the damn thing buckle as expansion of the pan warps it as you cook...

Induction hobs have dropped massively in price over the last 5 years and have been in the domestic marketplace at reasonable prices for the last three years or so. But the fatal flaw with these is that you need to use good quality iron or stainless steel pans as they rely on the ferrous content of the metal to generate heat. So as well as paying for the expense of an induction hob, you'll have to go through and lob out all your aluminium or copper pans.

A side effect of this is that you can pretty much kiss goodbye to a non-stick frying pan as bonding teflon coatings or similar to stainless steel is expensive and tricky.

Also, a lot of stainless steel pans have a copper or aluminium sandwich just under the steel base of the pan, to spread the heat more evenly over the pan. Cheaper steel pans that have this sandwich sometimes don't work on induction hobs as the layer is too thin or there's just not enough iron in the layer to generate much heat... which is then dissipated across the pan by the copper layer, so performance varies hugely depending on the pans you use.

Gas hobs have the flexibility to have the heat up and down as you fancy giving you far more control and though they can be considered wasteful as a lot of heat escapes up the sides of the pan, they do work with everything and you can shut the heat off as needed.

On the oven front, gas ovens are good because they produce a more moist cooking environment, so pastry based products brown more evenly and are less prone to burning. However, because heat rises, gas ovens are far more prone to hotspots, so the top is much hotter than the middle or bottom and, on some ovens, they don't have a flame guard... so opening the door quickly or shutting it hard can blow the damn flame out... a complete pain in the bum when you're cooking and you don't notice it... and sometimes an absolute bast to relight when the oven is hot.

You can get fan assisted gas ovens which are mush better, but to my mind gas is an inefficient way to heat an oven even though they do come up to temperature very quickly.

Electric ovens, especially modern ones, are much better with fan assist, zonal temperature readings etc all of which help with even cooking. A new leccy oven should have an excellent door seal which, combine with the ovens exhaust system, traps moisture in the oven meaning browning is more gradual and even, eliminating those burnt edges closest to the fan.

Also, once an electric oven is up to temp, the element is shut off and then run at minimum power to maintain the set temperature. Unlike gas ovens, an electric oven can be nearly completely sealed as there's no requirement for an air intake or exhaust to keep an oxygen supply for a gas flame... so they waste less heat too.

So, in short, your best bet is a gas hob and electric oven. You'll get the control on the hob to cook whatever you need without having to buy a new set of pans and you'll have an efficient, hassle free oven for the baking/roasting.