Bob said:Often one will see recipes that say "Cook on medium heat" or "Cook at a
low setting" ... in the last few days I've seen mention on a couple of TV
cooking shows that lead me to believe that the following may hold:
Medium corresponds to 350 degrees F
Medium-High corresponds to 375 degrees F
I have no idea if that's generally accepted or not. So, what's the
consensus here (right, like we're going to get a consensus!!) for:
High
Medium-High
Medium
Medium-Low
Low
Simmer
We'll leave it as an exercise for myself to determine what that means at
my altitude where water boils at about 195 degrees or so.
The reason those terms are so vague is there is so much variability when
using a cooktop. On gas stoves, the power of a burner "full on" can vary
more than two to one from a low end older stove (Magic Chef, 9000 Btu) to a
high end newer stove (Blue Star, 22000 Btu). If the burner controls were
marked similar to your list above, obviously the high on one would not equal
the high on the other, nor wouild any other position.
The other big variable is the size of the pan. Take these two examples, a
little six inch pan cooking two small link sausages, and a big twelve inch
pan cooking two big steaks. To reach the same surface temperature, the large
pan with the two steaks is going to take a far greater amount of power than
the little pan with the two sausages. There is more food to absorb the heat,
and more pan area to dissipate it with the large pan, so the burner will
have to be turned higher to get the same pan temperature.
So it is left to the cook to figure out where to turn the burner control.
Just as a rough approximation, one might say high is full on, medium is half
on, simmer is almost off, with the others in between. One then adjusts the
burner up or down depending on whether the food is cooking too fast or too
slow. With experience, one gets to be pretty good at it and no longer thinks
about it... but if one moves to a different stove or a different pan or a
different amount of food in the pan, one can get thrown off.
Another poster mentioned an electric pan with a thermostatic control. That
would make temperature settings actually make sense. I know years ago (mid
1960s) they used to make cooktops (both gas and electric models) with one
thermostatically controlled burner. My parents had a Caloric gas stove with
one, and it was called "Burner-with-a-Brain". I haven't seen anything like
it in years, at least on gas cooktops. Perhaps there are electric ones that
do have this thermostatic control.
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