What to look for when shopping for a gas cooktop

Gas cooktops in Australia are really difficult to compare due to no standards being in place like Electrical/water devices/fixtures with Star ratings.

The 3 things which determine the performance of a gas cooktop

(Westinghouse 90cm cooktop with Faux Brass burners which add nothing)

MJ - The amount of gas the cooktop/burner uses

KW - The amount of power the cooktop/burner produces

Gas connection - The size of the piping going to the cooktop can be a limiting factor on high performance

Most brands and sales people will talk about MJ as it’s been the go to number and most of the time the ONLY number provided by manufacturers, but saying a car goes quick because it used 15L per 100km we all know is not how it works.

So this should make everything easy, just rate it on the KW produced right? Wrong… Because the companies don’t provide this in Australia. Only the companies who are using more efficient burners will provide this number. There is a way to work out KW’s but it’s pretty boring, so instead lets focus on MJ as everyone produces the MJ number with the lowest allowed efficiency (48% Is the minimum all cooktops must pass) and what it offers.

Most Efficient Gas cooktop on the market (Blade burner by Smeg)

20MJ Any type of Char cooking like 5-10 min Wok cooking

17MJ Any type of meat sear cooking where you don’t want a puddle of water coming out of the meat

14MJ Any type of stir fry for 10-20 mins and above will be fine

Great, we have a number to look for! But you’re still missing one thing: Control (No point having a sports car that starts at 80km)

Cheaper cooktops don’t install good valves to control gas flow which can make cooking on low temps for food like pancakes extremely annoying as you constantly burn them and the butter.

To summarize the above and what to look for in a cooktop

Above 17MJ with good control over lower temps will do 90% of people. If you Char cook in a wok then I would recommend any full brass burner (Putting a brass cap on aluminum doesn’t count Westinghouse!) cooktop with 22MJ. The common theme though is almost all Ceramic black Glass as the Stainless steel would warp due to the heat reflection