By Katherine Salant

Along with the cabinets, countertops and flooring for the kitchen of your new house, you also have to select appliances. If you haven’t bought any in the last ten years, you’re in for a very pleasant surprise. Appliances today are easier to use, easier to clean, more energy efficient, quieter, and to top it off, they look better.

The electric range has undergone the greatest transformation. You can still buy a range with electric coils, but now you also have the option of a glass top one with radiant elements below the surface. Most glass tops have at least one variable burner — depending on how you turn the dial, a burner can accommodate a small pot or a large one (this is particularly advantageous if your spouse is forever putting small pots on the closest, large burner). Some models also have a “bridge burner” — a smaller burner wedged between two regular-sized ones that is handy if you like to steam fish in oblong pots. With the low-heat simmer feature for melting butter or making slow-cooking puddings or sauces, you can kiss that pain-in-the-neck double boiler good-bye forever.

When you turn the glass top off, all models have a “hot surface warning light” that remains on until the surface cools off. Another important plus with the glass tops is cleaning them — you just wipe off the surface with a sponge or dishrag. If food cooks on, you remove it with a special cleaner.

Some of the coil ranges heat up faster than the glass tops, but this type does not have a simmer feature or variable burner sizes. The coil tops are not as easy to clean as the glass tops, but modifications have made them easier to clean than the old one you have now. Instead of having to clean spillovers by removing the coil and drip pan and then reaching in and feeling your way around with a sponge , you lift up the stove top and support it with rods (just like lifting the hood of your car) while you clean up the mess underneath.

More expensive coil ranges have porcelain drip bowls which are easier to clean (you can use a scouring pad without damaging the surface), and they look better longer so you won’t eventually be wrapping aluminum foil around them every week. Even better, one manufacturer makes a solid drip bowl without a hole at the bottom, so the spills are contained.

As you compare different coil top ranges, note the number of coils per burner. The lower priced ones have fewer coils for each burner and they won’t heat up as fast or cook as fast.

With both types of electric ranges, the dials on the back can be in the way when you try to put a very large pot on a rear burner. If you cook with several large pots at once (boiling pasta while making sauce, for example) make sure that both big pots can be accommodated on the stove at the same time.

The thermostats in electric ovens are now much more accurate, so you’ll have to recalibrate your cooking times. The old ovens were “fast” or “slow” because the thermostats often varied by as much as 25 degrees.

Besides more accuracy in temperature, the major change in ovens is the convection option. A fan distributes heat equally around the food, allowing you to cook more things at once, to cook them more evenly, and to cook them a little faster. If you like to bake up a storm, you can cook several pies and cakes at a time. As yet, there’s no industry standard for what constitutes a convection oven. Some manufacturers provide only the fan but others have a third, concealed element, which helps to maintain a consistent temperature.

Cited and actual oven capacity in new ranges can differ because the broiler element in some models can hang down. This could affect your ability to cook a 20-pound turkey at Thanksgiving, so before you buy the stove, check carefully to see if your big bird will fit.

Gas cook-tops have also changed, but not as radically as the electric ones. Almost all of them now have sealed burners that make the clean-up easier because there’s no space for spills to seep below. Because you can adjust the cooking temperature with more precision on a gas burner than on an electric range, many chefs prefer them. On higher priced gas cook-tops,

you can adjust the cooking temperature with even more precision because the dials rotate 180 degrees instead of only 90.

The burners on a gas stove are all the same size, but they can vary in the amount of heat or BTU’s that each one puts out. A lower-priced gas range may have burners with a maximum BTU output of only 9600; the food won’t cook as fast and stir-frying and sautéing will take longer. Higher-priced gas ranges will have at least one burner that goes as high as 12,000 BTU’s. Some professional gas ranges have burners that will go as high as 15,000 BTU’s, but many of them do not have sealed burners or the self-cleaning ovens that are now common on residential gas ranges.

If you are a chef who wants gas burners and an electric oven, dual ranges are available, but they are expensive. A residential dual range is about three times the price of a residential range that is either all-gas or all-electric. A commercial grade dual range is about five times as much.

Dishwashers now make the cleaning job easier. In the past, most dishwashers functioned as “final rinse and dry machines” because you had to make sure ALL the food particles were removed before loading the dishes. Low-end dishwashers still have a limited cleaning ability, but at the mid-price level and up, dishwashers remove food, wash, rinse and dry. The machines have an internal heater that gets the water hotter (it boosts the temperature to 135; to prevent scalding, your hot water heater should be set at 120 degrees) and a hard food disposer. With this combination, you can take the dishes straight from the table and load them.

The mechanisms of these better cleaning dishwashers include filters that catch food particles. American machines dissolve the food particles during the cleaning but with European models, you must manually clean out the filter. If you scrape off the biggest food particles before loading the dishes, you need to clean the filter about once a month. By scraping off the biggest food particles off before loading, you will also use less water and energy to clean the dishes (this is also true with American dishwashers). To conserve water even further, some machines have a soil sensor that detects how dirty the dishes are and adjusts the timer and amount of water accordingly.

Another difference between low and mid-priced dishwashers is the quality of the racks. The ones in low-priced machines are clad with vinyl, a soft material that can chip or tear, causing the metal underneath to rust and break off. More expensive machines have racks made of nylon, a more durable material that is unlikely to break or tear.

Another plus with the mid-priced machines: more insulation so the machine is quieter while in operation.

The most significant changes to refrigerators are not ones that you will notice. They’re quieter, better insulated and changes to the motor and compressor have greatly increased their energy efficiency. As of next July, they must be thirty per cent more energy efficient than they are today and fifty per cent more efficient than they were ten years ago. New refrigerators are also more environmentally friendly. The old chlorofluorocarbon refrigerants, or CFC’s, that were shown to be harmful to the ozone layer have not been installed in new refrigerators since 1993. The hydrochlorofluorocarbons refrigerants, or HCFC’s, used today are a significant improvement. The hydrofluorocarbons, or HFC’s, that will be phased in by the end of 2003 are even more environmentally benign.

Getting the Appliances You Want

If you are working with a custom builder, you will be picking out the appliances yourself, and you can specify exactly what you want. If you are working with a tract-builder, the kitchen appliances will already be specified. If you stay with the same manufacturer that the builder is already using, but want to upgrade it, the builder should be able to get it from his distributor and credit you for the unit he would have ordinarily installed. For example, if the standard dishwasher is a GE Potscrubber (about $250), but you want a GE Profile to get the better cleaning features (about $400 to $500), he should only charge you the $150 to $250 difference. If you want to upgrade the builder’s standard refrigerator, which is likely to be a top freezer model, to a side by side type, make sure that it will fit, as the side by sides tend to be wider.