What to do when your glass stovetop breaks
Posted in Around the House on 04/08/2010 06:47 pm by Donna
First you stand and stare in disbelief that you just created a GIANT hole in the heating element. Then you think to yourself that you will NEVER place a lid on the side of the pan which in turn will slide off the pan onto the heating element next to it. Explosion is what you get and a huge popping sound is what you will hear. Danger Will Robinson. Danger!
You may call around to find out that the replacement for the top is upwards of $500 dollars. At that point you decide that what the heck, you will work with one element for the time. Our time = a few months.
In the meantime you might place a wooden cutting board on top of the hole so it’s not so unsightly. That in turn may be a BIG mistake.
One night your child might request Macaroni and Cheese so you turn on the one heating element that works and it turns out you turned on the WRONG broken element and your beautiful cutting board catches fire. At this point your house fills with smoke and you wait outside for the smoke to clear. You remember your dog is inside and you rush back in to get him to fresh air. Your child pulls up in their car and asks why you are outside. You say to him, “YOU WANTED MACARONI AND CHEESE!!”
At this point you decide you really need to do something about the cooktop. You research some more and find a whole new stovetop sells for $100 more than the replacement glass so you go out and buy this…
A brand new GE JP346 Cooktop! You replace it yourself since the charge to have it installed was $150. You stand back and admire how shiny it is, then you think, WOW cooktops are expensive. No oven. Just cooktop. $666.74. Yup. The .74 cents is going to make it lucky! Never mind those sixes!
Hello Shiny Knobs!
Hello 12″ heating element with quick-response ribbons that heat straight up to the pan for efficient cooking. You are three times faster than a radiant element’s initial response (3 to 4 seconds for ribbon elements versus 12 to 14 seconds for radiant elements). Glad to meet you!
Hello Power Boil with your 8″ heating element. You boiled 4 quarts of water in 5 minutes. I am impressed!
So this is my story of what happened to us and our cooktop. I did read the entire owners manual on this. I read all of the warnings and there are a lot of them. 3 pages! Some highlights include: use proper pan size with flat bottoms large enough to cover the heating element, foods for frying should be as dry as possible, avoid heating an empty pan and my suggestion, do NOT place wooden cutting board on top!
I did read where cast iron skillets are not recommended. BOO! Anyone use a cast iron on their glass cooktop?
Anyhoo, I have a new cooktop and it’s all good.
~Donna