When I was very young, the stove and rangetop were all electric. I well know the spiral pattern of the electric range. A move resulted in a change to gas oven and range. At the time, it scared me – gas was stuff that could explode. Electricity was well-behaved and with rare exception was properly confined in wires and did not leak out. When I moved out on my own, it was again all electric, but I didn’t really cook or bake much. What I did was largely stuff with a slow cooker as that was hard to screw up.
Eventually $HOUSEMATE and I agreed on becoming housemates and settled on (and in) a house, and had to deal with appliances. As the house was simply NOT arranged for a gas stove, electric it was and is. A very nice glass-top affair. Other than being problematic for other than utterly-perfectly flat cast iron (and a bit tricky even then) it’s nice enough. It certainly looks nice. It does the heating thing well enough. BUT… while the electric oven is wonderful, the range is still… well… it’s almost. Very good, yes, but almost.
With the current panic-demic nonsense putting a strain on supply chains (notice how the supermarket is ‘spreading’ things to make the shelves appear full with fewer actual items in stock? And that’s AFTER a normal Summer/Fall/Winter?) I expect things to get worse as unseen (and perhaps unnoticed just now) things mess up supply chains even more. I’m NOT panic-buying anything, but every trip I’ll pick up a bit extra to build up reserves for what I expect could be very lean Winter indeed. I am hoping to be wrong. Looking the fool will be a Truly Wonderful outcome, really. That said, I am NOT betting on all going well. Add in the current rioting and “burn it all down” idiocy of many places… well, I cannot count on infrastructure remaining reliable.
Again, I HOPE I am wrong and that I have the great pleasure of of looking the fool rather than being prescient. Still, even if all does go well, I do live in Minnesota and Winter and Winter storms (and drunken idiots…) happen. It’s entirely possible the electrical power might go out and NOT come back within a short (with in a few hours) time. $HOOTERVILLE has its own power plant, but it’s a “peaking” plant – it only comes on when the base capacity can’t quite keep up. It’s NOT enough to run $HOOTERVILLE by itself without some ‘allocation’ (translation: rolling blackouts) going on.
Thus I recently picked up a dual fuel gas camping stove. It can run on butane or propane. The butane setup is very nice indeed, and I can see the appeal. The propane arrangement needs an (included) adapter and works, but is not as slick. My couple of tests just to be sure everything works and to familiarize myself with it was more revealing than expected. Sure, it is a little gas burner. But even just cooking an egg on it was seemingly so much better and easier than the glasstop it was surprising. The next try (had to check both fuels!) was similar, though it revealed that the (bought new from the smith) cast iron pan was in need of seasoning as it was just a bit sticky and should not be so.
I do NOT see any way to modify the current residence to make gas cooking a common option. I’d want the stove/range by an outside wall and have a vent fan set up to deal with exhaust gasses – the house layout just is NOT made for that, alas. While it’s an older house and decidedly NOT airtight, the best place for combustion products is Away From My Lungs. But, should I ever build new? Gas cooking will be a consideration, oh yes. The electric oven is great. The ideal would be a combination: Electric oven, gas rangetop. I’ve heard such exists. I’ve also heard such are Not Inexpensive.