Whirlpool Kitchen Appliance Gallery
11 August 2009
“Calling All Shoppers”
I want to tell you about the Whirlpool Upgraded Kitchen Suite, but before I do that I really just want to rant about appliances in an old kitchen—namely, mine!—not because it’s unique so much, as simply because it’s the kitchen I know. But if you’re seriously considering remodeling your kitchen, you know what I’m talking about, right?
You go into your kitchen day after day, looking at cabinets that really need to be replaced and appliances that are mismatched and, frankly, not particularly cutting edge. Oh, let’s be honest. They’re just barely serviceable, on their last legs, ready to go at any moment, hanging on by their fingernails, but we cling to them because we don’t want to replace them until we’re ready for our new kitchen. And at that time, we would love to get matched kitchen appliances, just like the ones you see in those fantasy kitchens. But at what cost? That’s always the rub, right?
Well, I bring that up because with the Whirlpool Kitchen Appliance Gallery, they have done much to alleviate that by coming out with not just one or two, but actually four different kitchen suites: Standard, Upgraded, Premium, and Premium Built-in.
Whirlpool claims that “everything about your kitchen works better when you use appliances that work together,” and I honestly think there’s some merit in that. Oh, I know, a stove’s a stove, but I already have a stove like that, and by gosh, I’m tired of it! Truthfully, it reminds me of one of my woodworking instructors at Palomar College who always insisted on making glorious maple and walnut jigs whenever he needed such a thing, as opposed to simply throwing it together out of any available scrap like the rest of us did. When we teased him about it once, he said, “I just think it makes me do better work to justify the time spent on the jig,” and since all of us knew by then how good he was, all we could do was nod our heads.
But to return to our subject, the Upgraded Suite is “all about conserving energy and conserving time.” More and more these days, various computations of the chips that drive this computer are being used to create things like the intelligent controls in Whirlpool’s Upgraded Kitchen Suite. Because of space constraints, I can’t tell you about all four of the items in the suite, so I’m going to concentrate on the stove, because that baby’s hot!
Given its relatively modest price, the WFG381LVB free standing gas range we’ve presented here has a long list of features. It has five sealed burners that range from a 5000 BTU AccuSimmer Burner to two 15,500 BTU Power Burners, and a 5.0 cubic foot oven with an astonishing number of whistles and bells that, once used, will become necessities you won’t know how you ever did without!
The oven has an Adjustable Time Self-Cleaning System that allows it to be adjusted in 15-minute intervals and a Delay Bake that actually allows you to put food in and have the oven start on your command! The huge oven window allows better visibility of the oven interior, so you can monitor the contents without opening the door, thereby keeping oven temperatures steady and undisturbed. And they have gone that feature a HUGE one better! The WFG381LVB has an AccuBake® Temperature Management System.
So how does the AccuBake® work, you ask? Hey, ask me about table saws and wood planes. But, even so, as one who actually has done a fair amount of cooking and baking, I can tell you that the concept strikes me as very exciting. In a nutshell, the AccuBake® temperature management system uses a sensor to monitor the oven temperature which makes it ideal for baking cookies and pizza because it can deliver consistent results. If you do much baking you know at once what they’re talking about because you know that cookies that are supposed to bake twelve minutes at 400º may, depending on whether your oven runs hot or cold, need correspondingly more or less time. Well, with AccuBake®, you can pretty much throw that scenario out the window.
I started this description by saying that the WFG381LVB was modestly priced, but really, so is the Upgraded Suite. The MSRP for the entire suite is only $3250, and if you can’t beat the deal on that, you’re really not shopping around at all!
Joseph
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