It’s not SMEG but it’ll do.

I grew up in a gas stove house. But I hate what gas does to your pot handles — in my opinion, electric plates work best for simmering. But of course electric plates take ages to heat up (spirals are not too bad, we have those at Amperbo at the moment, but they have a habit of trapping bits and needing disassembly to clean). At Tanya’s place we had a small solid plate electric, which worked well (but took ages to change gears) until the oven door hinge broke. We replaced it with a small all-gas unit, which is OK, but I discovered that gas ovens don’t work so well. Clearly, the oven should be electric.

But when it comes to choice of hob, the answer is clearly… both.

There are some really lekker combo hobs on the market, they’re also really lekker expensive. As an alternative, I’ve been eyeballing the “domino” hobs — small units you can fit together to build larger systems, with the option of gas or electric or “ceran” or you name it — from Defy at around R1000 for the least expensive (gas plate) to systems clocking R7k per domino.

So I hied myself off to Tafelberg Furnishers in Durban road, spoke to Werner a bit, and decided on the Whirlpool range. Same price as the Defy (i.e. bargain basement), nicer look. Bought two AKT301 gas dominos, one AKT315 “radiant” electric domino, and an AKP286 thermofan oven. Cost a little under R7k for the lot

It’s not SMEG but it’ll do.

Tags: impending bankrupcykitchen