Many homes often have electric cooking stoves. They have had electric stoves all of their lives, and know nothing about upgrading to gas stoves.  I personally feel that a natural gas stove can be a  better choice for a  stove than the electric stove counterpart.  Of coures, it helps if your home already is equipped for natural gas.  Homes with oil heaters may not ever been fitted for gas pipes and thus it might not make sense to upgrade. If however, you decide to change out your home’s heating method and covert to natural gas heating stoves, it might also be wise to make sure you repipe your home to accomodate a gas cooking stove and perhaps even a gas dryer for clothes.

One convenient feature of gas stoves vs. electric stoves is that gas stoves tend to heat up quicker and more evenly than electric ones, and subsequently also cool down faster. You will find that you are spending a lot more time in front of an electric stove vs. a gas stove. With an open flame, you are able to heat up pots and pans more incrementally and precisely than an electric one. You can dial in an exact flame height and temperature on a gas stove quite easily, where as on electric ones you only have settings from 1 to 10  or High to Low.   Aside from this, in electric stoves, you have to wait for the electric coils to heat up or cool down and this takes longer than just shutting down an open flame.  You can  generally also get a more consistent heat a lot easier also, if you put the flame too hot, you can turn it down with relative ease, if the pan is not hot enough, make the flame bigger and you get instant response for your cooking.

You cannot leave the food on the stove while it is cooling down or else it will burn. However with gas cooking stoves, the heat source is removed automatically when the flame is extinguished and you can leave the pan where it is or simply slide it a bit off the stove grid.  I find that it is a much more convenient option than electric.

As an aside, camping can be another great opportunity to consider using gas cooking.   Trying to cook your own food when you are camping can be a nightmare for some. Fortunately, you do not always have to cook your food over an open campfire. Gas cooking stoves can be found in sports and recreation sections of major department stores. They are a quick and easy way to cook food fast when you don’t have a conventional way of cooking. It is also a good idea to keep a gas cooking stove in with you home emergency kit in case a disaster happens and you are unable to cook food because you are without gas or electricity.

Finally as mentioned at the outset, if you have been living in your home without using natural gas, it may make sense at some point …depending on the fluctuation of oil prices…to consider converting to a natural gas furnace.  Along with this, you may consider upgrading to a gas heating stoves as a good alternative to fireplaces in your home. These mini gas heating units are generally not built into the wall, so they can be put virtually anywhere. You must take proper precautions before installing a gas heating stove to make sure your family will be safe. Make sure there is nothing around it that will catch fire (no carpet or anything that will melt) and make sure it is in an area where it can vent (usually by an outside wall). These can be a wonderful option for heating up your living areas, and provide some nice scenery for you home.