When did you last look forward with anticipation and salivation to an invitation to an electric stovetop cook-in of tough grey steaks, mushy corn and instant mashed potatoes?
On the other hand, when did you last savour a thought similar to this one: A big barbecue, sizzling steaks, burgers and even humongous shrimp, seared over open flames―maybe even flames produced by hickory charcoal―accompanied by corn roasted in the coals and potato salad to take the edge off all that deeply satisfying, perfectly singed and lightly charred meat and the sweet roasted taste of the fresh corn.
No more need be said about the vileness of the electric stove. But I’ll say it anyway, since its inventor has, for many years, occupied the top spot of my list of "People I Would Willingly Consign to Hell."
The electric stove, no matter how good the cook, doesn’t produce delicious food, and often not even nutritious food. It produces colourless, lifeless, tasteless overcooked vegetables rather than crisp, tasty, nutritious ones, cooked fast. (There are rare exceptions. For example, cassoulet can be cooked almost equally well on gas or electric stoves. Click here for my favorite cassoulet recipe. Great hearty dish for bleak midwinter.)
It produces tough, grey beef, absent the luscious red-brown exterior a fast start and slow finish imparts to a roast or a grill.
The electric stove’s sins are no yolk
Even eggs are no joke to cook on an electric stovetop. You might be able to get by with fried eggs, if you let the butter or oil get truly hot and are willing to toss the pot around, on and off the hob, rather than just turning down the flame. Ditto for omelettes. But scrambled eggs? Forget it. No matter what temperature pot and butter are when you start, when you finish, in spots the eggs will be too runny to eat, in others overdone to the point of toughness. Tender scrambled eggs are not an option on an electric range. Worst of all, perhaps, you will be left with a goodly portion of the eggs stuck to the bottom and sides of the pot, requiring a good soaking and then a scrubbing, filling your steel wool pad with yellow bits that won’t wash out.
There’s no question about it: The inventor of the electric stovetop deserves a One-Way Ticket to Hell for his part in the Nightmare Kitchen (the additional essential nightmare equipment will be dealt with in subsequent columns).
Contenders for the Stove Hell Prize
There are a number of people who might get that One-Way Ticket to Hell from me, all men of course. I knew no woman could invent a piece of kitchen equipment that requires time to heat up, thereby wasting part of her life, and time to cool down, thereby risking injury to any children who might be in the house, and adding to the cooling bill in hot climates, while dissipating heat uselessly in cold ones. Inefficient, ineffective, dangerous, and low-functioning all describe the electric stovetop.
It is plain from the outset that the inventor must certainly have been a man. Not a man who is a chef, of course. A male chef would never countenance the miseries of an electric stove, nor would the restaurant patrons awaiting their badly cooked meal. Nope. This abomination was obviously invented by a man who had no business even thinking about kitchens. Sadly, there are two contenders for the ticket.
In 1859, George B. Simpson was granted a patent for an “electro-heater” said to be useful for warming rooms, boiling water and cooking food. His invention was, as Wikipedia calls it, “essentially an electric hotplate.”
The second contender is a Canadian, Thomas Ahearn, who introduced the electric cooking range in 1882. He and Warren Y. Soper were owners of Ottawa’s Chaudiere Electric Light and Power Company. Imagine the increase in their fortunes if home cooks gave up wood, coal and gas and started cooking with their product? A self-serving invention if ever there was one. Certainly, they didn’t install one in the exclusive Windsor Hotel out of charity; they installed it doubtless out of an attempt to make the well-heeled believers in their kitchen chicanery. It is apparent that, over time, their kitchen chicanery did, indeed, capture the public’s imagination, or lack thereof.
THIS JUST IN: And then there’s the matter of burning the feather stubble of poultry. This morning, I needed to roast a couple of duck legs for a cassoulet. But they were local free-range, in other words, not over processed. There was feather stubble. On a gas range, I’d have quickly burned them off. What to do? No one would want to eat the skin that way, except the dog. My husband suggested a candle flame. OK. It worked. It also covered the duck legs with soot, most of which washed off.
Gas cooking, 1: Electric cooking, minus-10 and counting.
No comments:
Post a Comment