Performance of Our Propane Cookstove with Battery Ignition

We shared our new battery powered, propane cookstove with you a while back. I wanted to update that information with it’s performance now that we have used it for a while.

First, the oven. I have checked the oven temperature with a hanging oven thermometer off and on, just to make sure the thermostat is accurate, and it is. The difference between this oven and our previous one, is that this new one takes more time. If I fix a batch of biscuits that normally will bake in 10-12 minutes, this oven takes 20 unless I increase the temperature. So things don’t bake like I am used to, and don’t taste quite the same. Another downside is that if it takes longer to bake, it uses more propane.

I wasn’t sure if I would like the open burners or not. I have used a gas stove with open burners before, but it has been a long time, and I couldn’t remember any problems accept the occasional piece of food dropped down through the hole. The top is easy to lift, prop open and clean under. So, we haven’t really found any downside to the open burners.

The burners are all the same size. I knew it would be nice to have a larger one, but figured this would be fine. They are all 9100 Btu, and just like the oven, take longer to cook things. Since the output on the burners is less than our old stove, I’m not sure if it uses more propane or not. Unless the meal I’m cooking takes a while, my cast iron skillet doesn’t heat evenly across like it did with a larger diameter burner that put out more Btu’s. For me, that is a negative. If I’m trying to cook a burger, I have to turn it around so all sides will cook and brown evenly on both sides. I have made the necessary adjustments, but if we had it to do over, we would have gotten a different stove.

One of the comments on our previous stove post mentioned Premier stoves. They have a larger selection of stoves with battery powered ignitions, which was the reason we bought the Hotpoint. In our research for this type of stove, Premier never came up. If it had, we would have bought one, probably like this one. 

Overall, the quality of our stove is lower than we would have liked. It doesn’t appear to work as efficiently or effectively as the stoves we have had in the past. The quality of the stove reminds us of one you would find in a cabin that was used for camping or vacation use, not everyday cooking or canning. But, if the power is out temporarily, for an extended period of time, or forever, we will still be able to cook, at least until the propane runs out, and that was our goal.

Is this stove meeting our overall goal? Yes. Would we like for it to be a heavier quality stove? Yes. Do we wish it had one larger and one smaller Btu burner? Yes. Does the battery ignition work? Yes it does, and it works quite well. When we installed the stove, we put in a 9 volt rechargeable battery in the battery slot, and it’s still working fine to this day, which is a little over three months now. This time the old adage, ‘experience is the best teacher’ applies. We didn’t know anyone else that had ever had a battery powered ignition on a propane or gas cookstove, so we just had to find out for ourselves.

Until next time – Fern

Visit Thoughts From Frank and Fern at http://thoughtsfromfrankandfern.blogspot.com/