Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: common house stoves

[porcupin (porcupin]

John Poteet
Valley Oaks Village, Chico CA

In reply to your request about stoves there are a number of factors. 
Consider various factors.  There are three standards of stoves available
home grade, commercial grade and hybrid stoves.  The home grade stove is
the cheapest and most attractive.  The commercial grade stoves are more
expensive and require a large hood but significantly more powerful.  The
hybrid stoves have the power of the commercial stoves but have features
which make them more comfortable to use; they are the most expensive.

Home stoves are fairly cheap, $600 for a good model, and attractive. 
Unfortunately they just do not have the power to cook large quantities
of ingredients quickly.  You will not be able to heat pots of water for
spaghetti or vegetables to boiling in any reasonable length of time and
they will not have the heat available to saute 15 onions.  Forget stir
frying for more than 2 people at a time.
Commercial stoves can be had used in good condition for as little as
$1200.  The stove we have in Chico has four burners, two ovens and a 30
inch grill; cost $1500 used.  I can boil ten gallons of water on each of
the burners and still keep sauces or side dishes warm on the grill.  The
inch thick grill can fry fajitas for 40 people in one batch or fry
twenty vegiburgers.  It does require a huge, expensive, noisy fan but
large amounts of food cooking can create significant smoke, grease and
humidity.  These vapors have to go somewhere and your standard household
hood fan won?t do the job.  It also needs considerable clearance on all
sides as it gets quite hot.  You also need to light the burners by hand
as the pilots will use lots of gas and warm things up a bit.  It?s a
black and ugly beast at best but the only thing I would trade it for
would be....

The hybrid stove.  These have the best of both worlds.  Familiar
controls, electronic ignition, insulation and lots of space and power. 
I believe they still require a large hood fan as that is a function of
the heat output of the stove.  Viking makes the only models that are
affordable and they start at about $4000.  These are very, very nice to
use and are the preferred home stove of serious and/or wealthy gourmets. 

Other appliances you might seriously consider are restaurant dishwashers
and refrigerators.  Our dishwasher uses the same space as a home model
but does a load in 3 minutes.  Our refrigerator is a large, double door,
restaurant model.  It is a bit noisy but every inch of the space will be
full by Saturday noon to prepare for our Sunday community thanksgiving. 
This fridge is large enough that we can and do put whole cases of
produce straight in without repacking with room to spare.

I have a prejudice; I worked as a restaurant cook for several years and
intimately know the difference between commercial quality and home
quality equipment.  There are large and valid reasons that these large
commercial stoves are used in even the smallest cafes.  They are
superior.  

A simple test would be to find a cafe with about the same seating as you
are planning to have in your common house.  Look at the equipment
there.  Those cooks are feeding people in three or four seatings when
they fill their room.  You will feed everyone in one seating.  Common
house cooking is quite different from cooking at home and to confuse the
two is to invite disaster.  Yes these things are not pretty but the
reason you are in the kitchen in the first place is to prepare tasty,
nutritious food.  White enamel will never make up for soggy stir fry or
waterlogged spaghetti.

Seriously consider driving up to the north state and seeing the
different setups in Chico, Davis, Sacramento and Oakland.  You will be
spending about twenty thousand dollars on your common house kitchen and
poor choices are far more expensive than a weekends outing to view the
options.
Good Luck,
John