A cooks guide to cookers

The majority of serious cooks have a marked preference for gas cookers over electric ones. Gas cookers can heat food more quickly, and offer more precise control of the heat throughout the cooking process. Although electric cookers are invariably cheaper to buy and run, especially in this age of soaring gas prices, they are looked down upon by professional chefs and foodies alike as being a poor relation to the gas cooker in terms of performance. The recent TV-led boom in gourmet home cookery has led to a massive increase in demand for gas cookers, despite their increasingly high running costs. Cooker manufacturers have been quick to cash in on this surge of interest in gas cookery by unveiling more and more elaborate and professional-looking gas cookers.

A cooker could well turn out to be one of the most important purchases you ever make. If you buy a good cooker, and look after it, you may never need to replace it. Your first consideration when choosing a cooker should be whether a cooker is suitable for the type of food that you like to cook, and the way in which you want to cook it. Have a look at the features that are available on various models, and decide which ones you couldn't live without, and which ones you'd be unlikely to use. A basic gas cooker can be bought new for around £300. This should meet most of your basic cooking requirements and last you for a number of years.

If you are not an adventurous cook, or you do not have to cook for large numbers of people on a regular basis, this may be all that you need. As you begin to start looking at the more expensive cookers, you will notice that they usually have a lot more in the way of features, which may or may not be useful to you depending on your circumstances and cooking habits.The more expensive cookers tend to fall into the ‘professional' category, and feature a less homely, more industrial-looking sturdy stainless steel aesthetic.

If you don't feel you can justify the expense or hassle of a professional cooker, then there are many semi-professional cookers which share the architectural looks of a professional cooker but have a slimmed down feature set.These cookers can cost anywhere between eight hundred pounds and two thousand pounds, and represent a better option for non-professional cooks who don't want to skimp on quality or appearances.

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