Dacor Millennia Distinctive 30” Dual-Fuel Range DR30D
6 April 2010
“Out of Reach”
The Dacor Millennia Distinctive 30″ Dual-Fuel Range is one of the slickest-and sleekest-ranges yet created for the modern kitchen. Every once in a while I like to write a blog on a kitchen glory that would actually fit in my own kitchen when I remodel it. The problem with our kitchen is that it is much too small and destined thus to remain. But, as I have sometimes pointed out, it butts on a large family room, and with the recent trend towards living-in-the-kitchen as opposed to simply preparing meals there, my wife and I may actually be on the cutting edge for a change! But, be that as it may, the plain fact of it is that the kitchen we have is small, and it will stay that way. The other part of the problem is that we are relegated to a range no more than 30″ wide and one that is gas.
Actually, the gas is not so much a limitation as it is a blessing. If you’ve never cooked on gas, believe me, using a gas range for a week or two will quickly make a believer of you. Turn it on, it’s on; turn it off, it’s off. And even though it may seem impossible to regulate the flame, you quickly become accustomed to it. And after that, you find yourself agreeing with those who point out that all the good chefs cook on gas. So with that I can tell you about Dacor’s Millennia Distinctive 30″ Dual-Fuel Range, which is a mainstream brand that I could actually use in our kitchen.
The controls are nice and visible, and at my age, that sort of thing is becoming increasingly important. But, really, when you think it through a bit, all of us will eventually end up quite a bit older than we thought we would get, and that being the way of it, products that are designed to age gracefully with us are just the ticket. But the cool thing is not the visibility of the controls but what you can do with them, which is a lot, as it turns out. The Distinctive range actually has six different cooking modes: Convection Bake, Convection Broil, Convection Roast, Pure ConvectionTM, Bake and Broil. OK, OK, I was going to make a joke about their having five more methods than our one, which is just burning everything, but I am seriously impressed with what is going on here. What Dacor has done, pretty much, is revolutionize a lot of what goes on with what has heretofore been “just another kitchen range.” Let’s start with the oven.
Dacor has developed what they call a 4-part Pure Convention Oven which creates uniform temperatures throughout the oven. Our present range is the same, essentially cheap, kitchen range we have always cooked on, and the oven does NOT distribute the heat evenly, a factor that shows up at once when you put items on more then one rack; the bottom one always bakes first. Dacor eliminates that problem, but it’s more than just a fan in the back of the oven, now. They also have a unique convection filter that captures grease and flavor particles within the oven cell, which means you can bake numerous dishes and do so without worrying about how well they will heat or whether the flavors of one will transfer to another.
They also have an 18,500 BTU SimmerSear burner with a Melting Feature that enables you to cook just about anything on top of the stove, up to, and including, simply melting a cube of butter. They also have a one-piece porcelain-enameled spill basin beneath the burners for an easier cleanup of the inevitable food spills and Continuous Platform Grates to make it easier to maneuver pots and pans about the stovetop, which is the sort of thing that comes in handy at Thanksgiving. But the other aspect I find myself particularly admiring is the Dacor Perma-Flame Technology, which actually forces the automatic re-ignition of any flames that go out unexpectedly. If you’ve ever been simmering a sauce over a very low flame and had it blow out, you know what a boon something like this is.
Really, Dacor Millennia Distinctive 30″ Dual-Fuel Range is about as well-conceived a range as I have yet reviewed for this site, and I can’t help wishing we had it in our kitchen. Man, if I had a range like this one, I could cook things that would make other chefs tremble-and I say that even though my wife, with considerable reason, calls me Hamburger Boy. But that’s OK. As Robert Browning put it, “a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for?”
Joseph
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