Do you use all 5 Burners in a Cooktop ?

January 16, 2019 7:22 PM

I don't recall ever using more than 3 burner at a time. 3 is rare. Usually one or two for everyday use. Are there any advantages to a 5 burner compared to a 3 burner?

The main reason it is a choice between a 3 or 5 burner is the inclusion of the wok burner with the high heat component.

Four burners do have a high heat inclusion, but I don't like how close the burners are. I cannot fit a wok and a big pot side by side.

Definitely going with gas. Family of 4.

I like how some 3 burners are adequate spaced apart for big pots. I also like how 5 burner have the option of possibly cooking more if there are guests?

Will be doing a kitchen remodel in March. Being stuck on the cooktops.

I have decision fatigue. Have chosen every other appliance except this.

(Rangehood will accommodate either option.)

Thanks.

posted by oink to Home & Garden (11 answers total)

I chose a six burner with a built in griddle, so a little more over the top than what you’re choosing between but that was partly thinking about resale value in the neighborhood we live in.

I rarely use more than three burners at a time but I very often use more than one very large pot or skillet at a time and being able to space them out so they sit properly over their flames without crowding is a great luxury that I’ll never regret.

The super powered wok burner (my range even came with a trivet for the wok) is amazing but also be sure you have a low-output simmer burner.
posted by padraigin at 7:42 PM on January 16, 2019 [1 favorite]

Almost every meal in our house starts with three burners, and we very frequently need all four on our cooktop. I’d love a fifth burner for big meals like holidays, but we make do with appliances (sous vide, rice cooker, steam oven, pressure cooker), or use a plug-in induction burner.

If you don’t find yourself maxing our your current setup, five burners sounds like overkill. But I’d certainly go for it if it were me—if even just for resale value (if you’re in the US, where at least four burners would seem to be the norm...).
posted by Admiral Haddock at 7:48 PM on January 16, 2019

You can have different burner sizes. Mine has 3 sizes plus a griddle.
posted by Raybun at 8:03 PM on January 16, 2019 [1 favorite]

I'm not sure whether it's the three or the five that has the wok burner, but I also don't know how much you care about a wok burner. If you're Chinese, I'd expect the wok burner to be a killer feature. If not, I'd be surprised you care at all.

Ignoring the wok burner question, I think three widely spaced burners sounds more functional. Being able to fit two big pots side-by-side sounds way more useful for crowds than being able to run five burners in parallel because usually the bottleneck is my attention. I'm not sure I could run even two burners at once unless one of them was simmering a soup or something equally hands-off.

if I were cooking for more people, I would plan to serve more uncooked or pre-cooked dishes, and use more hands-off methods like my instant pot, microwave, oven, or sous vide. Also, Russian service is much easier on the kitchen than French.

The question of resale value is a different beast entirely. It's really weird how poorly resale value correlates with people's use value.
posted by meaty shoe puppet at 8:16 PM on January 16, 2019

I have 4 burners and can think of specific meals where I use all 4 at once, but I can't think of any situations where I couldn't improvise with 3. There's a kind of probabilistic logic to this: the only time you might want 4 (or 5) burners is when you're doing a lot of things at once, but if you're doing a lot of things, it's fairly likely at least one of those things can tolerate being done differently (whether by using the same burner serially or using another appliance). Burner spacing sounds harder to compensate for, so probably prioritize that?
posted by aws17576 at 8:33 PM on January 16, 2019

I have four burners: a little one, two medium ones and a wok burner. I never used all four at once, but I absolutely do use the three different sizes (at different times) and sometimes two medium ones at the same time.
posted by quacks like a duck at 11:02 PM on January 16, 2019

5 "burner" induction hob user here: Personally I find it quite rare to be using all 5 at once. However - having a flat hob surface changes the usage model a little: large containers such as roasting trays can be placed over multiple burners for de-glazing, etc. Also any space can turn into additional kitchen counter space for preparation. Having 5 burners also leaves a little more room to have stuff that has finished cooking hanging around while I am still cooking new stuff. Finally 5 burners allows a little more physical space to work around each other when there are 2 of us cooking at once

(I recently read a "Day in the Life" chapter in Anthony Bordain's "Kitchen Confidential" where he described carrying out his chef duties at Les Halles - hundreds of covers per day - with a 6 burner hob - my guess is that after a certain number of burners it becomes a better idea to have more than one hob).
posted by rongorongo at 1:06 AM on January 17, 2019 [2 favorites]

Best answer: I have 5 burners - 1 small, 2 medium, 1 large, and one giant one in the middle. I've used at most three at once, but I like having the different sizes to choose from - small for our smallest saucepan, medium for most day-to-day stuff (I'd say the most common usage is using the 2 mediums at the same time), large for the large frying pan, giant for a wok.
posted by EndsOfInvention at 1:41 AM on January 17, 2019 [1 favorite]

We had a 5-burner, with a tiny keep-it-warm or butter-melter in the center, in our last range.

When it died, we got a 4-burner-plus-griddle, and that turns out to be much more useful for us -- we're Texans; the griddle is awesome for warming tortillas, in addition to more traditional griddle pursuits like pancakes, bacon, etc.

The 4 on this guy are divided into "normal" (x2), "dang hot" (x1), and "holy JESUS supernova!" (x1).
posted by uberchet at 6:25 AM on January 17, 2019

I have an older gas (well, propane) range with four burners. The right rear one is smaller than the others and it simmers like a champ. I think of it as the Risotto Burner.

And yes, I've used all four burners at once, but not often, and only while entertaining.
posted by workerant at 11:58 AM on January 17, 2019

I've got a 5 burner induction cooktop. The layout is 2 on the left side, one in the middle and 2 on the right side. The burners on the sides can be linked together to form larger cooking areas. I don't know if we've used more than 3 burners at any given time, but we have put 3 larger pots and pans on and wouldn't have had enough space on something smaller.

Every stove I've had before had 4 burners and it was always tough to use once larger pots and pans got involved.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 12:12 PM on January 17, 2019