It's not a griddle, but you can put a griddle on one, though it'll have a hot spot in the middle. You can simmer around the edges.

What you really do is heat up your kitchen. You turn on a powerful gas burner underneath for 10 minutes at least before you want to use it. No temperature, just on. Full blast.

Traditionally, they were used to manage a lot of small pots of this and that, primarily garnishes and sauces. They could be held around the edges for a long time and pushed to the center to reheat for plating. Nowadays, according to some professional chefs who used to hang out here, in restaurants they put sauces in vacuum bottles where they hold their heat and don't evaporate. They're also using induction more and more for holding things at temperature and reheating others.

Some home cooks love having a French top, but not if they live in someplace hot. :) It's old fashioned, however, and not very energy efficient.

(I know all this because I found GW when I was first looking and thought I wanted a French top. It's also fun using one, but I know I'd rarely turn it on because it's such a big deal to get that slug of iron up to heat.)

Thanks for the education. Not something I would use.

Carol, I assume by "search" you mean an internet search like the one below?

Here is a link that might be useful: Internet search for French tops on GW

What you really do is heat up your kitchen. You turn on a powerful gas burner underneath for 10 minutes at least before you want to use it. No temperature, just on. Full blast.

Hmmm, that's odd. I've never found that to be the case with my French top. I must be doing it wrong!

I will gladly explain the virtues of a French top but let me start by saying this: it's not for most people. I am not going to try to convince anyone to get one, most people wouldn't use the capabilities.

Simply put, the French top is a burner centered nder two or three concentric rings of heavy steel. That provides a temperature gradient that is very useful and unique from just turning a burner up and down. How, you ask? Because the contact with heavy steel is far more responsive than just turning up or down a burner. It's physics. The burner under the plate has a knob like all the rest and I can turn it from simmer to full blast.

Some use cases:

1. Ultimate simmering. As I've said before here, you can talk about which burner has the lowest simmer all day long but nothing will beat this solution. I can turn the FT burner on the lowest setting and have a temperature gradient from stone cold ambient to 200 degrees.

2. Sauces, emulsions, melting, custards. Foods where you want to add heat in increments and-- most importantly-- be able to HALT the adding of heat. Just move the pan closer to the center and the heat from the steel is immediately transferred. Move it away and heat from the pan is immediately absorbed by the cooler steel. This is relative, of course, if the middle is 500 degrees and the outside is 200 degrees. Again, depends on the burner setting.

3. Large, versatile heating surface. During events I can keep water boiling in the center while keeping other things warming around the edges. I can be sauteeing on the burners while that is happening.

4. Another burner with lots of room around it. If I want to use a 14" skillet or some monster stock pot I have no worries.

5. Heat sync. When cold (off) I love being able to put a hot pot on it to suck out heat. You could do that with a griddle, too.

6. Wok cooking. I can remove the two center rings and use it as a wok burner.

7. We do heat up things like tortillas directly on the plate. Works very nicely. It's not a griddle, though.

There's more, too, but that's most of it. I bought one because I don't need 8 burners and I wanted the capabilities of the French top that I can't find elsewhere. Of course, all of these things can be done on different surfaces but the French top combines them in a way that I wanted.

-Stooxie

Stooxie,

Great explanation! I've never used a French top that had adjustable temperature. That sounds great.

Heating up the kitchen is inevitable, however. All of that heated steel is going shed heat into the air. That's physics too. :)

Heating up the kitchen is inevitable, however. All of that heated steel is going shed heat into the air. That's physics too. :)

Quite correct! That's true of every aspect of a range. Darn that entropy! :) Good thing we have those knobs to turn the heat down.

I once had a good friend ask me, "My brother and I were debating which put more heat into the kitchen: keeping the toaster oven door closed or open after taking the food out."

I said, "You're kidding, right? You don't know that it's the same either way?"

Had to set him straight!

-Stooxie

When the ultimate goal is to heat food, more heating of the air requires you to burn more fuel than an alternate method that heats the food more efficiently. Thus, the more efficient methods put less heat into the house than less efficient methods.

Generally speaking, using common cooking methods, an induction burner will be more efficient than an open burner, an open burner more efficient than a sealed burner that throws heat to the side, and a sealed burner more efficient than a french top.

The toaster oven question is a situation that compares apples and apples (the heating is already done and finished, using the same appliance at the same time and temperature). French top versus other cooking methods would be similar to comparing, say, turning on 6 burners to heat one pot versus one burner. Different methods, different efficiencies, different amounts of overall wasted heat for the same cooking task.

zartemis, this wasn't really a conversation on efficiency but you're also quite wrong on saying a French top is equivalent to turning on 6 burners.

I have a single 18K BTU burner under the FT. I turn it on and the metal heats up and I cook. What do you think happens to all the heat from a regular gas burner? Quite a bit of it, I assure you, goes right into the air, even with open burners. What's the difference if I have a metal plate over the burner? I could even make a case for the French top being more efficient since the large metal plate captures and holds a heck of a lot more heat than the open air gaps between a burner and pot/pan. Induction is a different beast, no argument there.

I think you may have also similarly missed the point about the toaster. The point is that if you look at the kitchen as a system the heat entropy into the room is the same no matter what.

Maybe I could turn my whole kitchen in a bomb calorimeter and test out make up air systems, burner efficiency ratings and insulation all at the same time! ;-) GW would finally have some answers!

-Stooxie

I didn't say a french top was equivalent to 6 burners. I was comparing types of analogies.

If your goal is to keep a sauce warm there are a variety of ways to do it and they will use differing amounts of added BTUs to the environment. You could put it outside on a very hot day (no ADDED BTUs) or you could, say, heat up a large unused warehouse and put the pot in the middle (massive ADDED BTUs, most wasted for the task of keeping the pot warm). The stove options are in between but are not identical.

The toaster oven involves two scenarios:

A: toast X amount of time at Y setting, turn off, open door
B: toast X amount of time at Y setting, turn off, close door

A and B are an apples comparison because both involved the same energy input.

plllogs argument is not this type of apples to apples energy argument. Hers is about transfer of energy efficiency for a specific task. E.g. comparing:

C: keep sauce warm at temp Z using a french top, which requires burner set at X level
D: keep sauce warm at temp Z using, say, an induction burner, which requires burner set at level Y, where Y is easily why is Y less than X? Because the induction burner does not to heat as wide an area or bring a hunk of steel, in addition to the pot and sauce, up to temp. Yes, the same energy transfer to the sauce is required, but scenario C requires more energy input to achieve the same result as D because more is wasted doing things other than keeping the sauce warm.

Efficiency matters for specific tasks. No heating method is 100% efficient at the task of keeping sauce warm in a pot. All involve 'wasted' heat (even induction).

Umm, ok, you've shown that induction is more efficient than gas which is something we've all agreed to 100 times. Are you actually trying to add to this discussion or just take a few shots? Like I said, French tops ain't for most.

-Stooxie

I thought you were disagreeing with or ridiculing plllog's claim that for a given task, using the french top would heat the room more. Because the french top is less efficient than more direct heating (whether by induction or by a gas flame direct to a pot surface without an extra flat piece of steel in the way) the french top will indeed heat the kitchen more for a given task. That is the result of this lesser efficiency that requires you to set it at a higher level for a given task. The extra heat required because of this greater inefficiency has to go somewhere.

Your toaster example was completely not relevant to this claim because the toaster example does not involve comparison between heating techniques with differing efficiencies (french top vs something else will always involve differing efficiencies).

Thanks Stooxie. your original response without the polemic was just what I am looking for. I would hope that there are other French top owners out there who can add to the discussion

Another lively GW discussion! Learn so much.

If you are having a hard time figuring out how come some people seem to be angry about French Tops, well, you are not alone. As a service to that small portion of the GW community that really isn't that emotionally invested in obscure hot plate rangetop options, I have assembled an alternative menagerie' of French Tops for your viewing and argumentation enjoyment!

No, don't thank me! My Pleasure!

This is the prototypical "French Top," most commonly seen perched atop the pates of French market-goers and the Bohemians who desperately want to be confused with them.

A real French Top. Seriously.

This is the very French top flying off this very French automobile, the Citroen 2CV or "deux chevaux." Sadly, the little car and its top are so dreadfully out of shape in this picture that little hope remains for their survival. The driver was reportedly given a taste of English cuisine just prior to the photograph.

Here is another French top, as well a several sporting French bottoms. Rumor has it this activity is quite popular in France!

A French top of a different sort. This little fellow is very commonly d'offed as a farewell salute to maidenly virtue.






By all reports, this French "top" won't take no for an answer outside the confines of an American jail. Inside those walls he is rumored to turn into a bottom fairly quickly.

This is the real "French" top. All other other pretenders to the throne rest beneath her shoulders.






While this French top may lend excess heat to a room, there is little cause for argument. Universally appreciated, she is welcomed in civilized lands worldwide as an emissary of French good will and taste.

Thank you, Mojavean. You expressed my thoughts quite succinctly. Especially that last one.

As to the steel plate thingy, isn't this how an AGA stove works? At least the old ones that only had one knob with a scale from 1 to 5?

Mojavean, I now know that the only reason why I took so long to open this thread and to read it is because the humor angel was waiting for you to post first! Lol and thanks for that. Thanks also to Stooxie, Plllog and Zartemis for the French top discussion. In just one thread, you have taken me from the darkness to the light in terms of finally knowing just what the heck a French top is and what it can do. Amazing! :-)

Love it Mojavean. Hahaha.
Great explanation of a French top stooxie.