Cooking With Gas Back to Library Menu When it comes to results, the majority of professional chefs agree that cooking with gas, whether propane or natural gas, is the best choice. According to a recent national survey, 96 percent of professional chefs prefer using a gas cooktop because gas offers precion control. Turn the flame to any setting, and gas responds instantly. Gas is flexible, providing an infinite number of heat settings instantly. Gas flames can be tailored to the size of any pan, permitting adjustment to keep the flame from reaching beyond the bottom of the pan. This eliminates wasted energy. Today's gas ranges light automatically without a continuously burning pilot light, and use about half the amount of primary energy (crude oil) as electric ranges. Propane Or Natural Gas? What a gas cooking appliance's flames should look like will depend on whether it is burning natural gas or propane (LP). You can see examples of each above. Propane is a byproduct of oil refining to produce gasoline. It is the first product refined from crude petroleum. For many years, propane was considered a waste product. Propane is actually liquid in tstorage anks because of the high pressure. Propane stoves use a smaller orifice and natural gas appliances. Propane is present in small quantities in natural gas, but methane is the chief component of natural gas. Natural gas costs less than propane. It must be hard-piped to an appliance from buried gas service lines. Natural gas is under low pressure with a larger orifice. Suppliers put sulfur compounds called sulfides and mercaptans to make the gas "stink.". Which Fuel Burns Hotter, Propane Or Natural Gas? We measure heat in BTUs (British Thermal Units), the quantity of heat required to raise 1 pound of water 1 degree Fahrenheit. The average home gas stove burner is about 10,000 BTU. Better stoves offer burners of12,000 BTU and deluxe stoves will have burners that are about 15,000 BTU. Models are available with both high and low volume BTU burners, but when using a pressure cooker we will generally choose the standard burner. Its worth noting that anything much above 12,000 BTU seems to be generally considered as overkill, even by serious chefs. Propane burns hotter than natural gas. This is mainly due to the fact that propane is a pure substance and natural gas is a mixture of many different elements therfore it will not burn as hot as propane. Liquid propane gas contains 2,500 BTU's per cubic foot, natural gas contains 1000 BTU's per cubic foot. Therefore, propane has more than twice the heat value of natural gas per cubic foot.