Cooking on Gas
I love this phrase. It means to be going well or functioning effectively. I quite like to use it when a training session is going particularly well.
“We are cooking on gas!”
Generally means that we are flying, or going fast!
It is also my preferred way to cook. When we were looking to buy our new house, over 5 years ago now, so not so new after all, the type of cooker in the kitchen was an important consideration. In fact, the kitchen in this house is the reason I fell in love with it. It had a 5 ring gas range with an electric oven, as well as an island, and a dish washer. Perfect! I just knew we had to buy it.
I grew up being taught how to cook by my mum on a gas hob. It is what I am comfortable with. At university and in my first flat it was electric. I never quite got the hang of it. I was forever struggling to control the temperature, knocking the pans off the rings, or accidentally touching the rings when they were still hot as they took an age to cool down.
Induction hobs are a blind person’s nightmare. I will never be able to use one. For a start, any flat top hob is a no go. If there isn’t any tactile markings to distinguish where the rings are, then how will I know where to place my pan to ensure it is directly over the heat source? This is also an issue for some more modern electric stoves as well. It is far more difficult to know when and if the hob is on. At least with gas it makes a noise when it is on and when it is lit, giving me some audible feedback. I have only had to use a hob like this on a couple of occasions and found the whole experience so stressful that I never want to repeat it. I will stick to my trusty gas. None of these new fangled modernised methods for me.
A few months ago, we had a disaster! My perfect cooker, well the oven part of it anyway, blew up and we had to get a new one. Fortunately when you have very specific requirements, it means your choice is limited and so it didn’t take me too long to find a replacement that I liked. However I had to wait two weeks for it to be delivered. Leaving us needing to come up with a safe way to still light the gas hob without the electric ignition. The solution was a long handled gas lighter. Now the thought of a blind person wielding one of these scares even me. I can manage matches because the flame is so close to my hand and again, it makes a noise, but this was silent and I never felt like I really knew where the heat source was. Thankfully, I learnt to cope, just about, and my lovely kitchen remains intact.
When the new cooker arrived I just needed to get used to it. It has a different layout to my old one. The middle is still the biggest, the next biggest is front left and smallest front right, which is the opposite to how it was. It has a cast iron top, which means it heats up quicker and holds heat for longer. It also self ignites when you turn the gas on rather than having to use a separate ignition button. For the most part, it didn’t take me long to adjust but for some reason I just can’t seem to remember which knob turns which ring on. I’m forever trying to light the wrong ring. Fortunately when the gas is on I can hear it, so it is easy to quickly spot my mistake and rectify it. I have only once not noticed and fortunately it didn’t cause too much damage. I was trying to boil rice but I noticed the pan was cooler than normal when I went to strain it. I had lit the wrong ring. It meant we just had to wait an extra 10 minutes for our dinner. If this had been my retired guide dog Libby, then all hell would have broken loose. She doesn’t do waiting for her dinner anymore. Neil, on the other hand, was far more understanding, thankfully.
Have you had any mishaps like this when cooking? Please share so that I know I’m not alone.
Thank you for reading and speak soon.
Lora