Searing a steak, for example. At low power, you just sorta stew it.

Sauteing is a high-heat technique, too. (Saute literally means "to jump.")

In addition, whenever you add cold food to a hot pan/pot it will lower the temp of said pan/pot.High btu will help you recover quicker and cook more evenly.

Like putting chicken into hot oil,para-boiling "fried" chicken is kinda gross.

Most electric kettles have a capacity of 1.7 liter. Enough for tea,not for pasta.

I guess you can use an outside kitchen and specialty indoor equipment and remove the need for an indoor stovetop altogether.

Most of those burners also have a true simmer included on them. I love bringing my pans to high heat quickly, eggs, french toast, etc. I don't know if you would miss it though if you did not ever have it.

It depends upon how you cook and eat.

If you tend to broil rather than fry or sear, and tend to eat steamed or baked/roasted vegetables, you may not need a very high heat burner, and a low simmer burner may be more important.

We realized during one meal (clean up, actually) that it was the first time we had actually fried anything (corn fritters) in four years of moderate kitchen use. If you lightly saute or just cook eggs, you may not miss it at all.

Deeageaux,

You are abosultely right. I hate electric coil cooktops that most vacation rentals have. When we rent a condo in summer, I always bring my portable induction unit with a couple of other things and don't use the stove at all.

And yes, what Palimsest said, that is how I cook. I don't sear steaks or fry anything. In addition to light sauteeing, brasing, steaming, baking/roasting, I either pan-grill or broil (e.g., fish).

In fact, most of the cookware I own (except for cast iron) specifies NOT to use high heat. That is why I was wondering.

Thanks!

I would want to point out that it's not just "frying" that requires high heat. For example, any decent attempt to braise meat should be preceded by browning the meat first. Anyone who's actually tried to brown meat with anything less than a high BTU source knows that it's impossible. Similarly, many fish recipes (salmon or tuna filets for example) are best seared quickly to develop a crust while not overcooking the interior. And certainly, if you ever want to cook a steak, high heat is essential.

If you have any notion of stir frying, the heart of most Asian cooking, then the more BTU's, the better. Restaurant wok burners can put out over 100K BTU's, to give some perspective.

Bottom line is that if you have any aspirations of pursuing a diverse spectrum of cooking styles, high output burners are a necessity.

Who wants to wait 30 minutes for a week night spaghetti dinner because you are waiting on the pasta to boil?

And for special meals like last night, I need high heat as well. I seared the boneless leg of lamb before it went into the oven. Then when it was ready and standing, I quickly brought the cous cous broth to boil and dropped it in while I also used another burner to toast the almonds, removed them, and then sauted the snow peas in a dab of butter and then finished them off with a glaze of honey. All of those involved high heat. I cannot imagine NOT being able to have high heat.

You can always turn a burner down, but if you don't have the heat when you want it, then you are very limited in your abilities to brown, saute, and boil.

Hollysprings,

I am not talking about 5K vs. 28K. I don't want to wait for 30 minutes for water to boil either. :-)

I am just curious if I would feel the difference between 18K vs. 22K, that is all.

Your meal sounds wonderful. Do you mind sharing the recipes?

I am not a fancy cook. I don't do hot stir fries or other ethnic specialties. We don't eat a lot of seared steaks or chops (just dietary preferences, not culinary capacity).

I always had "regular" stoves (propane) and it was OK. Then in the early 90's I got a "professional" range (old Jade/Dynasty model, no longer available) with at-the-time very high BTU burners (12K). Nowadays home pro-style ranges can get much higher, but in 1992 this was the limit. Of course since this is propane, not gas, mine actually run a bit lower.

Anyway, I was astounded at the difference it made in my cooking (and burnt more than a few meals in the learning process). Having higher heat, hotter pots that could recover more quickly from adding ingredients makes for a better tasting dish since things aren't essentially stewed back to being hot. Even something as routine as a tomato-based Bolognese sauce tastes better because the aromatics (onions, etc ) and meat are sharply heated, increasing the Maillard reaction which makes for extra tasty caramelization. Even a sauce like this that is later simmered retains a richness of taste from the higher-heat. This isn't the same as burning things, it's a more controlled application of heat.

I would never go back to "ordinary" BTU ranges - though I'm not sure I need 30K wok burners. But I think 12-15K is about my "required" baseline for normal propane/gas burners.

I did find that I needed hefty cookware: Although my old pots (Pyrex, Corning wear, Revereware, Dansk stainless steel) did just fine, I noticed that I got especially tasty results from cast iron with more heft to it. I eventually upgraded to All-clad which is especially compatible with higher BTU cooking.

(An aside I just tried one of the Cook's Illustrated best-value All-Clad imitations made by Tramontina:the Tri-PLy stainless steel, available on-line from WalMart.com. My gas range is presently on the disabled list, aka the endlessly growing Honey-do fix-it list, so I'm using a portable Viking induction burner and not all my stainless pots will work on it. I purchased the 8-quart pasta pentola in the Tri-ply Tramontina line and it works quite well -one small zone appears to be non-magnetic and the manufacturer is prepared to exchange it, but I think I won't bother. They are dead ringers for the much, much more expensive All-Clad but at $70 for an 8-quart dutch oven vs a couple of hundred bucks, or more, for All-Clad, you can't beat the deal.)

Anyway: high BTU's do make a difference even in just everyday cooking. Whether you need extremely high BTUS, 20-30K, I'm not sure but if possible I would try to get at least one burner in the 10-15K range. If my experience holds, you will be pleasantly surprised. And your meals will be tastier.

HTH

L.

Wife got s slow cooker a few years ago and wanted to try it out.

The recipes she found produced flavorless mush.

Not a single one caled for rwning meat (or anything else0 before usingtheslow cooker.

When I agreed to handle the slow cooker meals and actually browned things in a VERY hot pan (love those high output burners) before placing them in the slow cooker to finish, the food held together and had some flavor.

I see plenty of slow cooker recipes calling for browning now.

We even have adapted a rogan josh recipe to the slow cooker.

With the correct spices it tastes as good as the Indian restaurant nearby (and his tastes like the stuff I had in India).
we are looking at making a lamb vindaloo.

liriodendron,

You are right and I was not considering anything below 10K.

All my cookware is All Clad and Demeyere as well, plus for some cast iron pieces and two Calphalon non-sticks for eggs and crepes.

Except for cast iron, ALL of them came with the "no high heat" instructions.

What do you gals and guys do about that???

On the one hand a decent simmer and reasonably high BTUs are important (although my Japanese former babysitter cooks authentic Japanese on an old coil stove.)--But don't let anyone tell you that unless you have XX BTUs you are either a lousy cook or you don't know what good food is--sometimes I think that becomes the gist of these conversations.

Except for cast iron, ALL of them came with the "no high heat" instructions.

What do you gals and guys do about that???

Unless boiling is involved, I use cast iron exclusively. No snark -- that is what I really do.

And I agree with Pal.

"Except for cast iron, ALL of them came with the "no high heat" instructions.

What do you gals and guys do about that???"

Except for a coated pan for fish and eggs, everything is 0.1 inch copper with stainless steel lining.

Those are my main cookware brands, as well. I think the "high heat warning" is largely warranty CYA.

I plunk mine down (granted I don't have 30K BTU burners) and heat 'em up on "high". My pots get to the edge of smoking every day. My most-used saute pan (12" dia All-Clad) that is more than 20 years old and is used daily has acquired a bit of a bottom warp which only makes a difference on the induction burner which needs flatter-than-flat for best performance. This was my first All-Clad and probably has suffered the most abuse as I was learning higher-BTU cooking. It's on the stove and/or in the oven under the broiler most days of the week. So I take the no high heat warning with a definite large, flakey, grain of salt.

For corningware and pyrex (like my beloved pyrex double boiler which I can't use on the induction burner ::sniff::) and lighter duty pasta-boiling pots like revereware I tend to use a bit less than full-on heat (except when boiling water - that's always on high). Cast iron (and enameled cast iron like Le Creuset) gets the full-blast heat if that's what I want.

My dear, late, Mother managed to boil-off patches of the ceramic coating on all her Le Creuset saucepans, alas. And that was on dorky, slow-poke regular propane burners. I think it took so long to get to heat she was always off onto something else and hence had many cooking disasters ensued. I have decided that I will take off the wooden handles of the damaged Le Creuset saucepans and use them exclusively for baking covered-pot breads in the oven. Can't hurt them any more than they are, and I always use parchment under the boules so the possibly flaking-off enamel shards wouldn't be an issue as it might be in sauce-pan use. I guess what I'm saying is maybe for Le Creuset I should consider my Mother's experience and be careful not to boil-dry food. But then I'm not waiting 45 minutes to reach a boil either so perhaps that's the main prob., not the actual temp of the burner underneath.

In answer to your(other) simmer question: I have a simmer burner, but mainly I manipulate that end of the scale with simmer plates or moving the pot partly aside. I would never be comfortable leaving my gas burner on say, overnight, no matter what. So it's not a big deal to me. I melt choc. and soften butter in the MW. For long slow cooking (stock, etc.) I find turning to low and adding a simmer plate works very well. I am wary of too-long, too-low, non sous-vide cooking. Seems like a food-poisoning waiting to happen and also I have less patience, perhaps. I want stuff cooked and then done and stowed.

HTH

L.

I would expand the question to Why multiple high BTU? After going from electric coil to a basic gas range, the difference is cooking options was fantastic...propperly seared ahi tuna, crisply browned beef/lamb....etc. However, my current basic Fridgidaire range has only one 'big' burner and three pretty anemic ones. The big burner is prob only 10K-12K which is fine, not great, especially if you add lots of food into a pan - it takes time to come back up...
but what I'm really looking forward to on my new range is to be able to boil water on one high powered burner and prep the meat in another. So its not just high BTU , but multiple high BTU's that is the benfit to the better ranges...
Caspian

If you're at altitude, you also lose BTUs. At 8300', and on propane, I need every little BTU I can get just for browning, braising, etc. Pasta and from-scratch risotto is difficult.

cheers

I think I had a birthday waiting for water to boil on my Monogram 6 burner gas cooktop. We even used propane, as it is supposed to be hotter than natural gas. I will check the BTU rating next time!