KitchenAid Ranges and Stovetops with Professional-Grade Options
26 March 2010
“My Bleu Heaven”
These range and stovetop designs from KitchenAid are the stuff dreams are made of, to paraphrase the last line from “The Maltese Falcon,” because, really, when you think about it so much of good kitchen design is fantasy. Let me explain. If you are reading blogs like this because you have decided to remodel your kitchen, there are any number of courses of action you can take. One is to simply paint what’s there, the why-the-heck-are-you-even-bothering-with-this approach, I call this. But, budgets are budgets, I guess, and there are a lot of people who are convinced that for a thousand dollars or so, they can end up with a kitchen that looks so fresh and bright that everyone will think it’s been remodeled. I’m not really sure who they’re fooling-probably just themselves-but that’s the kind of thinking that goes on in some quarters. You can also reface the existing cabinets, but I know a guy who used to do this for a living, and he referred to it as putting new crap on the old crap. You can also replace everything that’s there, but keep the existing footprint. Finally, you can just flat out remodel that baby. With each step up the ladder, of course, more money is spent, and there is more need for the insights of a professional kitchen designer, the “serious bucks” step, I call this.
Eventually, you get to the “wouldn’t it be nice if we could.” and the moment you do that, you have passed out of kitchen design and entered into Fantasy Land. But that does not mean 
that those dreams are so impractical that one just has to give them up right away. Start with the heart of anyone’s kitchen appliances, the range. What we would like, of course, is one of those professional ranges used in professional kitchens, perhaps of a type that would be comfortable in Le Cordon Bleu, that sort of thing. Well, who can afford that? So, we’re right back to fantasy.
But it is also possible to look around a bit, to see what is available, and to inquire into what we actually need for our kitchen. Those ranges have a wonderful professional look to them, but think it through a bit. What is it we really like about these ranges? Really, it’s just the looks of them, right? We’re not professional cooks; we’re not serving several hundred meals a day from our ranges; how much range do we really need?
And in saying that last, I am mindful of the fact that KitchenAid has actually designed some truly glorious commercial-style cooking appliances and powerful ventilation hoods. Their ranges are among the most powerful and best performing ranges they have ever offered.
Premium features include a 20,000 BTU Ultra Power Dual Flame Burner, which is one of the slicker items I’ve seen on ranges. It has a dual-flame stacked burner design with two flame levels, making it versatile enough to handle both the quick searing one gets with high temperatures and the
precise, low temperatures necessary to an item that simmers over low heat. They also have 15,000 BTU burners and 5000 BTU simmer/melt burners that can be lowered to as little as 500 BTUs. And don’t scoff at the latter, because those lower temperatures can be very useful at times. Our ancient, run-of-the-mill range has a vent at the back of the range top that lets the heat escape from the oven when it’s in use. Whenever I bake, I find it most useful to simply put a cube of butter in a dish, set it in front of that vent, and let it melt as my bread bakes. It’s ready for basting when the loaf comes out of the oven.
They also have ovens with just about every whistle and bell a body could ever want and, truthfully, a fair number of things I’ve never even heard of. The one I find especially intriguing is steam-assist technology which enables the user to do considerably more than steam vegetables. It’s a scientifically designed oven feature that actually introduces steam into the oven at precise intervals, which brings the absolutely perfect level of moisture to those meats and poultry that one would normally bake with dry heat. But if you’ve ever endured (there’s no other word for it) a hopelessly dried out turkey breast, then one can immediately see the benefits of this feature. And seafood is said to flake perfectly when it comes out of this oven
So, that brings us back to where we started, doesn’t it? KitchenAid would be the first to acknowledge that a commercial-style range is not the same thing as the range one would actually find in a commercial kitchen, but I’m not at all convinced that the difference would be either discernable or important to people like you and me. Even though these ranges and stovetops are not likely to be in Le Cordon Bleu any time soon, they are still kitchen appliances that have been designed for the serious cook. That’s a heaven that works for me!
Joseph
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One Response to “KitchenAid Ranges and Stovetops with Professional-Grade Options”
March 27th, 2010 at 7:58 PM
I like kitchenaid for middle of the road pricing. The newer pieces have a great aesthetic also. Nice detailed post! I am going to print this one too !