Cooking with gas!

[FlyingClayDisk]

So, my wife and I inherited my In-laws house (long story that I’ve told before), and before my MIL passed I was going to have her teach me how to cook Mexican dishes (she was a phenomenal cook).

But she had and now we have her six burner stove. I’m having trouble figuring out how to get the small burners turned down low enough for a slow simmer. Perhaps there’s some device to raise the pot further above that I can’t find in her huge cupboard of cookware? My wife really doesn’t cook often and is no help.

I’m looking at you Augustas and FCD, as I know that you both have big gas stoves and would know…

Anyone else that knows, please chip in.

ETA, I was brought up with electric appliances so it’s pretty new to me.

Tecate

Sorry, I missed this one.

Not sure if you figured this out already, but most gas stoves have a burner flame adjustment set screw on the burner valve for each burner.  Depending on the brand of stove, the tool required to adjust this is either a tiny screwdriver (like a jeweler or electronics screwdriver), or a small allen (hex) wrench, or a special key.  My best advice would be to look up your brand of stove online and see if you can determine what type of tool is required and where the set screw is on the burner valve (it's usually right at the burner, but can be other places as well, so it's best to find out).  The set screw is usually tiny and it's inside a sleeve or guard (so you can't see it).

To adjust, you need to light the burner and turn it all the way up, and get a good sense of where the flame is.  Then turn the burner off and adjust the set screw a tiny, tiny, amount either clockwise or counter-clockwise.  Then light the burner again and see where the flame is then.  If the flame gets bigger, then you're adjusting the wrong way.  If it gets smaller make a note of how much smaller.  Then repeat as necessary to get it where you want it.  Once you get it down where you think you want it, light the burner again, but this time slowly turn the flame all the way down (very slowly).  You want to make sure it will stay lit all the way down to the lowest setting.  If the setting is too low, the flame will go out before you get to the "Low" setting (and you need to adjust it back upwards again).  It's a trial and error process until you get each burner adjusted properly.

It's not hard to do this, but it does take a little finesse.  You'll see what I mean after you do the first one.  It's not a 5 minute job, so plan on spending a little time with it and you'll get it right. 

Note - I can't stress enough about it being a tiny adjustment each time.  This is not like turning on your garden hose.  Some stoves are finer than others, but on our (8) burner commercial stove it's like 1/32nd of a turn for each increment.  When we installed the stove we had to convert it from natural gas to propane so we had to adjust all (8) burners from scratch after we replaced all the burner orifices (propane works different than natural gas).  The process took about an hour to do for all (8).  Then we had to cook with it for a couple days to see if we needed to do any fine adjustments (and we did).

Note 2 - You definitely want to use the correct tool the first time.  The very last thing you want to do is bugger up the head of the adjustment screw, because then you're screwed and you'll need a new burner element.  The screw is just soft brass, so it's not hard to bugger it up with the wrong tool.

Hope this helps.