Dacor Cooktops
18 December 2008
“Brains and Beauty”
Dacor is one of the leading manufacturers of ranges and cooktops, and when one explores a bit on their website, it’s not hard to figure out why they have been one of the industry leaders for so many years. What I especially find myself liking about the Dacor line of cooktops is how they look and how they work, because function without beauty is drab and beauty without function is, well, like Paris Hilton, if you consider her beautiful.
But to return to that dream kitchen all of us are in search of, cooktops have a utility that is hard to beat. I first saw one some thirty-six years ago when my parents bought a new h
ouse and installed a new kitchen. All of my life I had seen regular freestanding stoves, so the idea of an oven elsewhere and a cooktop that could go on top of a cabinet which could then be used to store pots and pans, thereby keeping everything in one place, just blew my mind. All these years later it still does, which may mean that I need to get out more. But I digress.
Dacor has recently introduced its new Preference Style 30″ and 36″ Renaissance Series gas cooktops, which gives one a choice of four or five burners respectively. The 30″ gas cooktop has three dual-stacked sealed burners—two with 9,500 BTU each, one with 12,500 BTU and one SimmerSear burner with 650 to 15,000 BTU range, while the 36″ Renaissance cooktop offers an additional SimmerSear burner with 750 to 18,000 BTU range.
One of the things I find myself particularly liking is the safety features they’ve included in this line. The Illumina™ Burner Controls have a blue glow when they’re on, and the SimmerSafe™ Indicator light provides an additional reminder that the cooktop is on, even though the flame may be barely visible while simmering. They also have wide, continuous grates, which provide plenty of room for those who have oversized pots and pans. And the bead-blasted finish on the spill tray and the sealed burners make cleaning easy, which is a feature that makes my heart go thump, thump, thump.
The other Dacor cooktop I wanted to discuss is the Dacor cooktop from the Millennia Series, which comes with scratch-resistant ceramic glass surface and is available in 36″ and 30″ widths in either Black Graphite or Stainless Trim. In all honesty, I prefer gas for cooking, but I can get by with electric, and this type of cooktop has one enormous feature, its utter ease of cleaning. My mother’s last cooktop was this type, and after a lifetime of pulling splash guards and burner grates, she found herself absolutely loving the idea of simply wiping down the cooktop with a damp washrag. As a matter of fact, when I helped her in that kitchen, I found myself liking it a lot too! It brings back the words of that old street philosopher, “brains and beauty, a rare combination!”
Joseph
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2 Responses to “Dacor Cooktops”
December 18th, 2008 at 8:27 AM
We have a GE Monogram electric smoothtop cooktop in our kitchen and we love it. Like you said Joseph, these things are pretty easy to keep clean. I personally would not want a gas cooktop except maybe for wok cooking. Now I need to get a nice flat bottomed wok to use on our smoothtop!
Joe D.
December 18th, 2008 at 9:07 PM
I spent many hours researching different high-end kitchen appliances and finally settled on a Dacor Epicure range. I am incredibly happy with it. You are right–”brains and beauty” describes my Dacor perfectly.