Make Sure Your Stove Is Ready For the Holiday Season

It is hard to underestimate the importance of kitchen appliances in the preparationsfor a lavish Thanksgiving or Christmas Eve dinner. This is why we strongly advise our customers to test their appliance before the holiday season – preferably one or two months in advance. This is especially true if you have not been cooking at home for quite some time.

If you find a issue with your stove, you would be able to spot the problem early, making it easier to find an efficient and timely solution before a big your stove stops working. Here we provide DIY tips for basic diagnostics and repair of your sove and other kitchen appliances.

Most Common Stove Problems

There is no doubt that the stove (or cooking range) is the centerpiece of any kitchen. There are, of course, many small and large appliances in your kitchen, but it’s the stove that gets the most use during the holiday season.. Luckily, most stoves are rather durable appliances that rarely break. Yet, we recommend testing each cooking surface in your stove independently. Testing a gas stovetop would be fairly easy – simply turn the knob and light up the gas, make sure the gas flow is steady and the flame is not flickering.

Testing a Gas Stove

The most common point of failure in gas stoves is either an igniter or a knob. Knob replacement is a simple task that requires no prior experience whatsoever. Igniter replacement may be more difficult, also keep in mind that sometimes you might have a problem with a damaged spark module that won’t generate voltage high enough to form an arc. With an electric stove, you may have to replace the whole electric burner. If you do decide to swap the burner, make sure the problem is actually with this part and not with the damaged wiring or shorted control board!

Testing an Electric Stove

Electric stovetops can be a bit trickier – to start with, they take some time to heat up, so you might want to try cooking on all of them separately, one by one. If you discover that one or more of our burners is not working – consider yourself lucky that you found it out beforehand! Now, you can of course just leave it as it is, but frankly speaking, repairing them is not always a big issue – depending on the source of the problem you can do it relatively fast and cheaply.

Oven Diagnostics and Repair

Electric ovens are far more widespread in the USA than gas ovens – and for a good reason – not only they are safer, but they also allow greater control over the precision of your cooking. Electric ovens, however, tend to break more often. The easiest way to test your oven is to try baking something in it.

Individual Heating Elements Are Not Working

In this case, it is very likely that you simply have to replace the heating element with a new one. Another possibility is that you might have a broken or shorted control board. Whatever is the case, we would advise you to look for professional help with both part replacement and finding the correct part that needs to be installed.

Test the Power Supply

Electric ovens can be rather demanding when it comes to power consumption. Most of the time you cannot just plug it in your regular power outlet, and most electric ovens warrant double-pole circuit breakers. Make sure the breakers are not tripped. If you have recently moved your appliance you could ensure it is actually plugged in. If the cable or the terminal is damaged, do not try to repair it yourself, call a professional instead!