<p>I’m looking for one that is low maintenance (easy to clean). Any opinions as to brand, stainless steel, black glass, etc.?</p>
<p>We just redid our kitchen – new granite, new appliances, including a conversion from electric to gas range. We bought a Maytag, chiefly because of a rebate offer if you bought more than one piece. Basically, go with a sealed-burner so food can’t fall underneath. I prefer the cast-iron grate to the shiny ceramic ones because the shiny doesn’t last. We went with black because it worked best with our granite but I’m not fond of stainless because it scratches easily. There are some sites on the 'net that carry every brand so you can compare one to another. Also check Consumer Reports On-line for their take. </p>
<p>I so love cooking with gas instead of electric. I put up with the electric one for 9 years…free at last!</p>
<p>We bought a jennair gas / electric model last year. The stove is gas, the oven electric. I love it. it has a frill on the two left burners, which I use from time to time. As much as I love it , the grill is a pain to clean. I put foil on the bottom when I am grilling, to make the clean up a little easier.
The oveen has some nice features too, like fast pre-heat and two seperate timers.</p>
<p>The one thing I made sure to get was a cook top whose grids formed a continuous surface see [Preference</a> Gas Cooktop (SGM)](<a href=“Page Not Found - SAMSUNG”>Page Not Found - SAMSUNG) This keeps pans from possible tipping over if the are not centered properly on an isolated cooking grid. And the grids are cast iron, which does not get crummy looking with use!</p>
<p>The only thing I do not like about my cook top is that the control knobs do not pull off, which makes thorough cleaning more difficult.</p>
<p>We have a maytag glass top with continuos grate. I love cooking with it but do not recommend it. It has removable knobs for easy cleaning but all 4 knobs broke quite quickly (though not quickly enough to be covered by warranty) and they are expensive to replace. They did not break from any abuse or being pulled off for cleaning - just normal use. My old cooktop was probably 30 years old and the knobs had never broken. It is quite hard to clean. I do like the continuous grate.</p>
<p>edit: In fact I just went in to the kitchen where my husband is cooking and noticed he had taken one of the knobs off - yes - it is broken again. We have had this cooktop for 2 maybe 3 years and this is the 2nd time the knobs are breaking. I will not buy maytag again.</p>
<p>Perhaps I should be glad that the knobs on my cooktop can’t be removed! Maybe there is something in the design … What a pain!</p>
<p>I love my Wolf gas cooktop!</p>
<p>When the old electric Jenn-Aire cooktop went bad a few years ago we got another but gas this time. I always wanted a gas cooktop, especially compared to those slooooowwww solid elements. We used the grill several times a week even though it’s a pain to clean.
On the new one: if you run the fan (which happens automatically when the grill is on) the flames on the burners get pulled toward the fan so you have to keep the pan off-center to compensate. The gas grill doesn’t heat as evenly as the electric and (naturally) flame-ups are frequent. Stainless is hard to keep clean.</p>
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Could be. It is the bit where the knobs attach to the cooktop that keeps breaking - they need to be metal not plastic. I was hoping the replacement ones would be stronger - can’t imagine why I would think that! Other than we must not be the only ones with the problem so you think they might fix the problem. Really annoying. I guess we will do what we did last time - move the less used knobs to where the most used and broken ones are. Then replace em again. Think I am going to write a letter to someone this time. I had been considering a Maytag fridge for when our 20 year old GE bites the dust - definitely not going with Maytag again for anything after this.</p>
<p>Marnik,</p>
<p>Glad to hear you like your Wolf. How does it compare to other brands you’ve had?</p>
<p>You might check out DCS. We love ours and have other friends with it. It is in the Wolf/Viking level of cooking appliances, but perhaps a slightly better deal (not sure). I had never heard of DCS until we remodeled a kitchen a few years back. </p>
<p>Ours has grates which butt against each other, so no tipping. Sealed burners, terrifically easy to clean. Grates can go in dishwasher, which is wonderful.</p>
<p>Great to cook on and in. Ours is a 5-burner model. It can regulate extremely high flame for quick boiling/sauteing. And it can go extremely low for a simmer. Hard to get that combination. </p>
<p>PS We also have had Dacor which had the butt grates, but not the sealed burners. And the grates themselves were NOT easy to clean - something about the finish on them. They may have solved this in more recent models.</p>