Making good food easily

Author's Rating:

Pros: Finally a home stove with high BTU output!

Cons: Confusing oven functions and oven probe that is difficult to use on smaller items.

The Bottom Line: 
Oh, go on! Splurge on yourself and get a nice stove this next time.

Author's Review
Having worked in restaurants for many years (and having been a chef for two of those) I have very high standards in cookware. All of my knives are hand forged and are babied. My pots and pans are all high quality, heavy wall stainless. And my stove is a GE Profile. And it's awfully nice!

The convection oven (that's the big one) rocks! It heats up in under 5 minutes - even to the highest temps. Everything that we've cooked in it so far (nearly every night for two months) has come out better than ever before. Convection is cool! And the door stays cold - even when you're broiling. This is awfully handy when you have, say, a precocious toddler toddling about.

We're just gearing up to have another little one so we haven't had any dinner parties yet, but I can bet that we'll be using all 5 burners at once when we do. For now we have the griddle set in place of the central burner. It's quick and easy to use and just as easy to clean. It is a little hard to say if it's running at full temp - if that's all the higher the flames are supposed to get coming from it. Given that the manual says to preheat it for 5 minutes before using it, I imagine that we really are getting full output. It is not easy to tell or know this and it is impossible to navigate through GE's phone directory to get any information at all on the subject.

We haven't used the lower oven yet, but, again, when we have our next dinner party the need will surely arise. And won't it be awesome to be able to bake that much stuff and at two different temps? Yes!

There are a lot of buttons and features and stuff (view any vendor site and they'll tell you all about them!) and all that we have used thus far have worked fine.

Overall we have been very pleased with this stove and wouldn't hesitate to recommend it!


Update:
A bit later, we've had those dinner parties and have used more burners at once and more features.

Lower oven: whoa! Don't forget that you need to run it at a high temp for an hour or so before you actually use it for the first time! Really nasty smoke will pour out filling both ovens and spilling out into your living space!

Lower oven 2: It takes a long time for this oven to warm up! If you want to use it for baking (while using the main oven for something else) you'll want to plan ahead and get it warming very early!

Upper oven: Hmm. You need the manual to know how to use it to the fullest! I attempted a roast duck this past week and I didn't know what setting to use. Choices include bake, convection bake and convection roast. And don't forget the temperature probe! I tried the convection roast setting with the probe set to 180 degrees. Given the length of the probe (around 6 inches) there was nowhere that I could stick it in the duck where it was entirely in the bird and measuring a relevant temperature (that would be under the leg, near the joint, if you were wondering). This was a problem as it appears that the probe was measuring ambient (oven) temperatures and not the meat temperature. I quickly abandoned the probe and used a "normal" chef's thermometer to test doneness periodically.

Griddle: It takes a few minutes (!!) to warm up, but it works great!

Burners: It's too bad that you can't adjust the flames any lower. Hmm. I'll look around (in the manual?) and see if there are hidden adjustment screws or something. Well, it would be nice if you could adjust things lower. Ha! Without losing the high output of full throttle, of course!