Hey, everyone.
We have a reheat for you this week that comes by request.
Hi, Sporkful.
This is Michaela.
I'm a Mainer who recently moved to central Vermont.
And I would love if you could reheat the episode from four or five I don't know years ago about gas stoves and consumer reports.
Because I think about this episode like almost daily.
Genuinely, this episode changed my perspective on both Consumer Reports and gas stoves.
So I think it's time for a reheat.
Thank you so much.
If you love our nerdier episodes, this one is gonna be right up your alley.
I mean, Consumer Reports is like the gold standard in terms of reviewing products.
I went to their lab.
I learned all about how they put stoves and other consumer products to the most extreme tests.
And I was nerding out big time.
And I think you're about to do the same.
Now, of course, as always, we take requests for these reheats as we just did.
Thank you, Michaela, for this suggestion.
You want us to reheat an episode you love?
Drop me a line at hello at sporkful.com.
Thanks so much and enjoy.
Before we get started here, I have to remain completely anonymous.
Okay.
Should we have a code name for you?
Call me Jim.
Jim.
All right.
They'll never guess now.
All right.
So, Jim, what is your job exactly?
I am known as an acquisition agent.
Jim works for a highly specialized and sometimes secretive organization, one that gathers intelligence on a range of pressing subjects.
He's part of an elite task force that consists of only three full-time agents.
Right now we're in his car, in the parking lot of Bed Bath & Beyond, somewhere in the New York area.
I can't say exactly where, because we're on a secret mission.
We're shopping for toaster ovens.
Why are we undercover?
Well, the more common term for Jim's job is secret shopper.
He works for Consumer Reports, which is known for testing everything from toaster ovens to frozen pizzas to luxury cars to tell you which ones are best.
He doesn't want people to know he's buying for Consumer Reports because he doesn't want manufacturers to have any chance to tamper with a product so they can score better.
Jim needs to be absolutely certain he's getting the same model that you or I would get.
Of course, nowadays, a lot of secret shopping is done online.
But still there are times when he needs boots on the ground, acquiring his targets in person, so he gets the right ones.
There are times where we'll have to buy say, nine of an item all of the same date and the same lot code.
So you'll go into a supermarket and try to secretly remove all the Campbell's chicken noodle soup cans off the shelf, turning them over, looking at the bottoms of the cans to try to find identical date codes.
To avoid attracting attention, Jim shops at busy times and tries not to mess up the store displays.
If someone asks what he's doing, he comes up with a cover story.
But still, his shopping habits make him stand out.
I recall an event where I had to go to Home Depot.
We were testing LED light bulbs and I had to buy, you know, 60 watt, 100 watt and 40 watt, a dozen each of GE and a dozen each of Philips and a dozen each of the store brand.
And I got up to the register and a lady behind me looks at me and she says, afraid of the dark?
So what's on our list here, Jim?
What are we buying today?
We've got four different toaster ovens that I'm looking at.
Can I say a quick look at this?
Sure.
So you're getting the... Correct.
The... The... And the... That is correct.
So, uh...
If someone comes up and asks you why you're buying all these toaster ovens, what's the cover story going to be?
I am in charge of a raffle for my local church.
Did you just come up with that just now?
Yeah.
You're getting a little too good at making up these stories, Jim.
Well, you've got to be able to think on the fly and not hesitate when somebody comes up to you and asks you.
Right.
Okay.
A raffle for the local church.
That's good.
All right.
And who am I?
I'm one of the altar boys?
There you go.
This is The Sporkful.
It's not for foodies, it's for eaters.
I'm Dan Pashman.
Each week on our show, we obsess about food to learn more about people.
Today, we go behind the scenes at Consumer Reports.
It's a nonprofit that tests and rates products and services.
They've been around since 1936, first putting out a print magazine, now with a flagship website.
In a world where anyone with a smartphone can post a product review, Consumer Reports has remained a trusted source for their 6 million members.
They never get paid to test or advertise specific products.
From identifying the things they test to the actual testing, to writing up their evaluations, we're gonna get an inside look at how they conduct some of the most rigorous reviews around.
But first, back to Acquisition Agent Jim in the Bed Bath & Beyond parking lot.
I used my phone to record him.
I didn't want my regular recording setup to raise any suspicion.
I was buzzing with the thrill of my first acquisition.
Is there any sort of special initiate mission sequence?
That's it.
Just go.
Lock and load.
When you first walk into the store does your heart start pounding a little bit to get a little amped up for the mission.
Not anymore.
Not anymore?
I do this in my sleep.
Here we go.
I see **** over here.
Oh, here's the **** six-slice toaster oven.
Okay, so that's... We were looking for the **** four-slice.
Oh.
So this is not the item that we're looking for.
That might be four.
This could be it.
Uh...
It's labeled in... Oh, four slice.
Four slice.
Okay, now the next thing we're going to test is, since they gave us a model number on this, we're going to try to locate that exact model number on the box.
So this is... That's an item we don't want.
Should we check the other?
I assume the other one will be the same.
Should we check... Yeah, same.
Okay, so that's...
After looking around the store for 15 minutes, Jim and I have struck out.
None of the toaster ovens are here, but I'm confident he'll complete his mission eventually.
You don't get into an elite squad of secret shoppers by being a quitter.
When there's a specific product with a specific model number and you're looking in the stores and you can't you're really struggling with this one and then you get to a store and you finally lay eyes on it and the model number matches.
How does that feel?
It feels great.
It feels great.
But then you've got to kind of give yourself a dope slap in the back of the head and say you know what?
But in the grand scope of things, I just drove 150 miles for a chocolate chip energy bar.
Even though Jim and I failed to complete our mission, there's still plenty of testing to do at Consumer Reports, or CR.
This is our main facility.
It's more than 20 acres of space we have here.
So I head up to CR headquarters just north of New York City, where I meet Paul Hope.
My name is Paul Hope, and I'm a home and appliances editor here at Consumer Reports.
Paul's main focus is kitchen appliances and cooking gear.
So I cover the five different kinds of grills that we test here, as well as ranges, cooktops and wall ovens.
Paul went to culinary school and worked in professional kitchens before getting into writing about kitchen gear.
The pivot suited him.
I just love sort of getting to the bottom of the best stuff and what makes a great range or a great chef's knife or whatever else.
Paul sometimes tries a product he's writing about, but he doesn't usually do the official testing himself.
There are experienced lab techs who do that.
Instead, I take all the ratings from the hard work that our testers do and I turn that into stories about you know more or less what you should get for your own home.
But a lot's got to happen before Paul writes up those recommendations.
First, a team of market analysts does a bunch of research to determine which products they should actually test.
What are the new models the major players are putting out?
What are people buying?
The analysts make lists for the secret shoppers who get the goods and bring them back here to HQ.
And this is where almost all of CR's testing happens.
Paul walks me through the building.
Where are we?
So right now, we're in what we call the atrium here at Consumer Reports.
So it's the main walkway.
It connects a lot of our lab space and office space.
There's skylights.
It's very pretty.
There's glass walls.
And you're seeing one of the telltale signs that we're in the middle of testing ranges, which is there's just sort of a pile of cake and pre-wrapped cookies on the table here.
These sugar cookies that are sitting out here.
These are just like out, where employees would just like grab cookies.
Exactly.
So we bake hundreds of cakes and thousands of cookies every year.
So this is a good place to work.
There's a lot of free food here.
There's an enormous amount of free food here.
You do get tired of it because it's very standardized.
We bake a totally standardized batch of sugar cookies in every single oven that we test.
We also do butter cakes on multiple racks at the same time.
We're looking for how consistent each cake is from one to the next.
So it is a lot of sugar cookie butter cake.
So, like, how old is the sugar cookie recipe?
It's got to be the same formula that we've been using for decades.
And we try to keep things as consistent as possible over time.
Makes a more valid test.
Exactly.
And you know, if somebody's going to our ratings and we've tested a brand new model and there's one that's still on the market from 15 years ago, we want those scores to be comparable to one another.
So we don't like to... rush to change any of our testing.
So these, have you ever released the recipe?
I have not.
And in fact, I don't know it myself.
Is that because you could get kidnapped?
It's honestly because I've never asked.
There are differences in these different batches.
There are for sure.
So right now we're looking at a cookie with a pretty dark outer ring and a pretty pale top.
That's not typically an ideal result.
It's not an ideal result?
Well, you typically want.
We're looking for uniformity that's reflective not only of how well it's going to bake you know, sugar cookies but how well it's going to do every task that you could imagine.
So if you're baking chicken thighs, you know you want Right.
You don't want them burned on the edges and raw in the center.
Exactly.
Right, I get that for chicken thighs.
So I guess for your purposes for testing, maybe this is valid, but I got to say, Paul, like...
The cookies I would gravitate towards from these different Kyles would be the ones with the crispy edges and the raw center.
Yeah, that's totally fair.
I stuff a few of the cookies that I think look best into my bag, and we move on.
As Paul said, these cookies are sitting out because they're testing ranges today in the lab.
So they're looking at both the stoves on top of the ranges and the ovens below.
It can take three technicians a week to do the full battery of tests on each model.
Those tests include how fast range can heat water, how steadily it can simmer things like melting chocolate, even baking, even and high temperature broiling.
And a particular favorite is the self-clean test which, as you'll see, is a just disgusting mixture of stuff that we bake onto the walls of every oven cabinet.
Is there a standard mixture?
Oh, yeah.
And it's either This is the most disgusting stuff on earth.
I want to see that.
Yeah, I won't spoil all the fun.
Every detail of every test is standardized in ways I never would have thought of.
We're starting with water that is the same temperature at the beginning of every test, poured into the same pot, assigned to the highest output burner on whatever range is being assessed, and then hooked up to thermometers that really can't be cheated or manipulated in any way.
Paul promises we'll see all the testing in action.
But first, I got to get some things off my chest.
So here's an issue that I have with my range.
It's one of these five burner ranges where the center range is kind of like an oval that could fit like a large Dutch oven.
But it also came with this flat top griddle thing that you can put on top of the big oval burner.
And the problem is that the I think I explained to Paul that even though this middle oval burner is about twice as big as a regular burner, it's still operating with the same amount of gas as the regular burners.
So the griddle doesn't actually get that hot.
Even when you put it on high, it's really only like medium low.
First, I got to let it heat for 10 minutes before it's hot.
And then even then it's still not hot enough to do anything you need real heat for.
For sure.
I mean that's those griddle burners are really best for things like grilled cheese or sort of like low temperature deglazing of a roasting pan.
You know it's definitely not like a high heat flat top like you would find in a professional kitchen.
What's your range pet peeve?
I would say, that's a tough one.
I have a lot.
Let me hear them all.
Let it all out, Paul.
This is the same space for you.
I've been waiting years to unload this.
I would say my, my number one pet peeve is a range with an uneven oven, because there really isn't a great fix for that.
And I don't just mean for baking, but I mean if you're roasting a chicken or cooking, you know, a strip loin or something.
I mean an uneven oven.
There's not a ton you can do on top of the stove.
If it takes a long time to boil water, you get over it.
So you know to preheat your water five minutes earlier than you think you need to for dinner.
Or even with a simmer, if a range can't hold a steady simmer, you can stir it more frequently.
You can turn the heat down a little bit.
With an oven.
I mean, you can try to rotate the food in an uneven oven, but you're going to let the heat out every time you do that.
And it's really a big pet peeve when a range, you know, doesn't heat evenly.
What else?
Hit me one more big pet peeve.
Let it all out, Paul.
Sure.
So the last one is the pro-style ranges.
Pro-style ranges are the ones designed to look like restaurant ranges.
They're stainless steel with hefty knobs and heavy burner grates made of cast iron.
Viking and Wolf are the big pro-style brands, and now Thermador and GE's Monogram line are coming out of the scene.
And of course, with that upgraded look and feel, pro-style ranges are pricey.
A basic range can go for as little as $500, but most pro-style ranges are upwards of $4,000.
But our testing really finds time and time again they are hands down the worst performers as a group of any of the range types that we test.
Worst when you take into account their cost or just flat-out period worst?
We're talking they'll often come up short of a range that costs $1,000 or less.
And we're working at models that cost anywhere from $5,000 to $8,000 in the pro-style world.
And they're getting whooped by entry-level $600 or $700 electric or gas ranges.
Wow.
Why?
When they first came on the market, they did have a few advantages, one of which was obviously they had these really high BTU burners.
And at that time, you couldn't really get a regular gas range with a high BTU burners.
Now you know a Samsung or an LG or GE range.
They're all coming with at least one high output gas burner like that.
And They've got you know, tens of millions of dollars for RD that frankly, a lot of these smaller pro-style range brands don't.
So they can really put a lot of money into developing a super high output burner that is going to boil water, you know, in some cases twice as fast as the burner on a Viking.
So how fast the water boils is not just about BTUs.
It's not a raw BTU count.
BTU really only measures how much gas it's using at its highest output setting.
But the actual design of a burner plays a big part of that.
So empirically, the pro-style ranges aren't any better than cheaper models, and a lot of times they're worse.
But Paul does say these high-end ranges are beautiful and their thick knobs and hefty construction make using them feel awesome.
Paul experienced that himself when he cooked on CR's top-rated pro-style range.
So I came in, I sauteed some peppers, I fried some eggs, I broiled some lamb kebabs, just to sort of get a feel for some of the different things.
And I have to say, experientially, it's really fun to cook on.
The first thing you notice is just the sort of sheer heft of the product.
You know, a typical range might weigh anywhere from 60 to 85 pounds, but a pro-style range of the same size might weigh 200 pounds or more, just from the vast quantity of stainless steel.
That's not going to obviously translate into water boiling any faster.
But when you're home cooking and feeling good about yourself and listening to music and prepping dinner for your family, it is a sort of nice thing to have experientially.
And it does sort of make you feel like a pro chef.
That doesn't necessarily get captured numerically in our testing.
How many people are buying them because they're serious home cooks who use their range all the time and who really think that they just need this to be able to cook well?
And for how many people is it just sort of like a showpiece and a status symbol?
I think a lot of it tends to be status.
I think a lot of it is sort of aspirational for people who want to become great home cooks and feel like this may be something that helps embolden them or makes them feel like a pro.
It's like buying pants that are a little too small.
You're like, I'll lose the weight.
Exactly.
And you're just, you know.
And then you're like a year later, you donate the pants.
Exactly.
Exactly, exactly.
Yeah, totally, totally.
Yeah, so it's a very similar phenomenon to that, I think.
Have you ever been in a position where you get invited to someone else's house and they know what you do for a living?
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, I'm picturing it already.
And they just bought a new range.
Mm-hmm.
And they're like, hey, Paul, look what I got.
I got this new fancy, super amazing one.
They didn't read the Consumer Reports ratings, so they didn't know in advance what you think.
And now they're like, well, check it out.
Yeah, it's it's.
It's like when your friend has an ugly baby.
It's like that initial moment of panic and then you sort of do something to buy yourself time and regroup and you find something very specific to compliment.
Oh, wow.
They went, you know, they built in an analog clock.
That's really nice.
Coming up, Paul takes me inside the Consumer Reports testing lab.
And remember that gross mixture they use to stress test the oven's self-clean function?
I ask to taste it.
Stick around.
Ooh, advertisements.
Yummy.
Welcome back to another Sporkful Reheat.
I'm Dan Pashman.
What should we do for this episode?
And I'll put up a poll.
So it gives you a chance to actually have input into the show.
So you can do it right now while you're listening.
Follow me on Instagram at the Sporkful.
Again, that's at the Sporkful.
Thanks.
Back now to Consumer Reports headquarters.
We've got 63 labs here now.
Paul and I leave the conference room where we were chatting, head through the atrium and down a hallway to those 63 labs.
After the market analysts decide which products should be tested and the secret shoppers acquire those items, the products arrive here in the testing facility.
I'm going to peek in here and see if we can just sneak in for a second.
So this is our refrigeration lab.
And ironically, we test refrigerators inside of refrigerators here, because you have to be able to perfectly account for the outside temperatures.
Oh, so like if one fridge is in a room that's 80 degrees and another fridge is in a room that's 50 degrees, then one's going to have to work harder than the other to get the same results.
Exactly.
Gosh, you've thought of everything.
We have.
I mean, I realize it's a little bit ridiculous to put a fridge in a fridge, but we don't know a better way yet.
So there's this gigantic steel door, and there's a little window.
Honestly, this looks like a maximum security prison for refrigerators.
It does.
But is there a windshield wiper on the window into this room?
What is that?
There is.
That is so that people can see into the room just to check on the testing without having to break the seal of this chamber door.
And then you can see on the other side of things here, on the other side of the chamber, see this enormous cluster of blue wires running into the chamber and then hooked up to a computer here.
Oh, I see.
So all those wires are connected to the refrigerators inside there and they're sending out data and this computer is gathering the data.
Exactly.
So these wires are called thermocouples, and they're very precise thermometers that we use.
And we use them in a lot of our testing, actually.
We use them to test how evenly a grill heats across the surface, but we also use them— to check the uniformity of temperatures within a fridge.
And many of them are actually buried in boxes of frozen spinach inside the freezer compartments.
We drill into packages of frozen spinach to set the thermocouple at the exact same depth in each box.
Cooking appliance lab.
Please knock before entering.
Okay, good, we knocked.
After you.
Sure.
Hi, guys.
Hey.
So we've left the place where the frozen spinach was getting its temperature taken and moved on to the cooking appliance lab, where all the ranges and other appliances get tested.
This room feels like a hybrid between like a school cafeteria and a high school chemistry lab.
It's big and open and there's ovens, big ovens and stoves and ranges everywhere.
But then there's also sort of like an area that looks like metal cabinets.
And I could very easily picture like Bunsen burners.
As I said, Paul doesn't do the testing himself, but he's still my tour guide.
So he shows me the GE Cafe range they're testing today.
So what's going on here, Paul?
Sure.
So right now we're assessing GE Cafe double oven range and it's got two ovens here a smaller one up top, a larger one on the bottom.
Looks like some brushed brass or bronze finishes and six burners, which is pretty impressive on a standard 30-inch wide oven range like that.
This GE Cafe brand is sort of a sweet spot between mass market and pro looking.
So it's got some of these nicer pro style finishes like these sort of chunky knobs here.
Continuous cast iron cooking grates.
This is what allows you to you know, start a pot of water.
Otherwise, if you have a big pot of water, you have to pick it up and move it to a separate burner.
You have to go get potholders.
If there's more production, you might spill some of the water.
Exactly.
And that was one of those features that originated on pro-style ranges.
How much does this cafe range cost?
This guy's a pricey one.
Looks like about $3,100 all the way up to $3,600, depending upon where you buy it.
It's got every feature you could imagine.
It has Wi-Fi.
It has two ovens.
It's a slide-in with no back panel, so it has front-mounted controls.
So it really does have pretty much every bell and whistle.
This cafe range has nice finishes and a double oven, which could explain why it's so pricey, even though it's not technically pro-style.
Now for the testing.
The first person I meet is project leader Tara Casaragola.
Well, I work in the ranges lab.
I mostly handle the data analysis part of things.
So we collect a lot of information on these ranges, a lot of test information, temperature information.
What's this thing here?
Digitizer calibration chart.
Oh, that's for our color measuring stuff. color measuring?
Yes.
You measure colors?
Yes.
It's an instrument that captures the color of something and then takes the color and it gives it a coordinate in 3D space, so a value, basically.
You're looking at the color of what?
Oh well, this instrument could do anything, but for our purposes.
We're just using it to look at cakes and cookies.
You see, they don't want to leave it up to the human eye to determine how evenly brown the cakes from different ovens are.
So instead, the technicians put the cakes into a machine called the digi-eye.
It essentially takes a photo and assigns a numerical value to the brownness of each cake.
The thing's practically the size of an MRI machine.
It looks like you could use it to launch satellites.
And they're using it to see if the cakes are baked evenly.
But I can kind of understand why.
It can be exhausting trying to look at these things and, oh, is this brown or is this browner?
Was this browner than yesterday's cake?
Right, right.
I feel like at 100 of them, you can't tell the difference.
You really can't.
You just become, everything's a blur.
Everything's a blur.
So this machine helps to quantify.
Yeah.
But they don't just check the color of the cakes.
Two other technicians, Sue Colum and Lee Wong, are taking the cakes' temperatures.
All our cakes get the temperatures taken on here.
And then, once it's cooled a little after the pictures, we're also going to cut them and measure the heights.
189.9.
199.9?
189.9.
That was high.
I know.
That could have totally swayed the ranking.
It's good that we clarified that.
I know it's my first day in the lab and just an hour ago I was extolling the virtues of unevenly browned cookies.
But I'm feeling bold, so I offer Paul my take on how the cafe double oven is performing.
I mean, there was some inconsistency.
The ones from the bottom rack had a nice golden brown.
The ones from the top rack looked kind of pale.
Yeah, yeah.
Our tests are fairly torturous in some cases.
I mean, these are oftentimes sort of the hardest scenario.
We're not deliberately misusing anything obviously, but we are doing sort of the most that you should ask any given range to do.
So we're baking the maximum number of cakes or cookies at once.
And we're also doing it in this case in both ovens because...
Ideally, you obviously want to be able to use them interchangeably.
Next, Lee, one of the technicians, moves on to the stovetop performance tests.
There's a pot with a jerry-rigged lid on it.
The underside of the lid has thermometers sticking out of it so they go into whatever liquid is in the pot.
Wires come from the thermometers through the top of the lid and connect to a computer, just like those thermocouples I saw in the fridge prison.
This one is we do speed of heat.
So this is all the thermocouple.
We have five thermocouple in all different spot.
Okay.
So we put four liter of water in the highest burner and put this lit on top of it, and then we start the test and see how fast the water will go up to like 195 degree on average for five points.
And so when those five spots average 195 degrees, then you say it's done?
Yes.
Now I know what you're thinking.
Why do they heat it to 195?
Why not 212, boiling?
Well, CR really just wants to know how well the burner works, how fast it can heat the water in the pot.
But when water approaches boiling, the burner is also expending energy to turn some of that water into steam.
So the relationship between burner output and temp increase is less clear.
They've thought of everything.
Coming up.
I observe one final test and ask to taste a substance that no one in the history of the Consumer Reports Lab has ever dared try.
That's after the break.
Stick around.
It's time to open up a can of advertisements.
Welcome back.
Let's return now to the Consumer Reports Lab.
Next, we move on to the final tests I'm gonna see today.
Can you show me the self-cleaning testing section?
Sure, so we can't look too much, because we're actually in the middle of a self-clean cycle, as we speak.
So this is so.
There's a range sitting here with sort of like a very makeshift looking hood above it.
It is.
It's sort of sequestered over here quite deliberately on the side of the range lab, because usually this test really stinks.
It stinks because what the self-clean does is heat your oven to 850 or 900 degrees in the hopes of burning off whatever junk is built up inside, so it can get smoky and smelly.
This one looks to be mid-cycle.
This is an induction range from IKEA, and we'll know soon enough how effective the self-clean cycle is.
You can see a little note here that says, for self-clean, bake mash at 425 for one hour.
But I won't spoil what mash is.
I've got to find out.
Should I ask them what the mash is?
Okay.
Okay.
So I understand that the stuff that you put inside the oven when you test the self-clean is called the mash.
It's the monster mash.
What is inside that mixture?
Oh my gosh.
I'll show you.
It's over here.
I'll tell you, it does not smell good.
So mash consists of cherry pie filling, tomato puree, egg yolks, mozzarella cheese, Velveeta cheese, tapioca, and lard.
And it all goes into the food processor and it comes out kind of like soft.
It reminds me of soft sand.
Remember when you're a kid and you could pick it up and then drop it and then make little castles?
Right.
Or it looks, or I don't know, my first thought was it looks like a child's vomit.
Well, it is orange.
And we paint this with a paintbrush inside the ovens.
But we weigh it out.
There's a certain amount you have to weigh out for each oven.
We have a regular paintbrush.
It gets painted on, then we bake it on for an hour.
Once it's cooled, then we can self-clean it.
So now the self-clean will be done in an hour and we're hoping it'll all turn to ash and then it wipes out nice and clean.
That is the goal.
Has anyone ever tasted it?
Oh God, no.
In all these years, you've never been tempted?
Come on.
Would you like to smell it?
I'll smell it, let me smell it.
Do you want to be the first one?
Doesn't smell good.
It doesn't smell great.
Do you want to taste it?
Not as bad as I thought.
You heard what was in it, right?
I mean, yes, I want to taste it.
Can I taste it?
I'm curious.
I'm legitimately.
No, don't let him taste it.
No.
You know what?
You know what?
The only thing is because they may not be fresh.
Fresh.
It might give me food poisoning.
Yes.
All right.
Finally, I won't eat the mash.
I was ready.
I mean like decades.
How many decades of consumer reports have been?
People have been baking that same mixture onto ovens and no one.
You've never at the holiday party.
Someone had a few too many drinks and tasted the mash.
Come on.
It must have happened.
No.
You've been here 30 years.
Has it happened?
Lee?
No, I never tasted.
And I don't remember I heard somebody taste it.
I leave the lab so that Lee, Sue, and Tara can finish their work.
The cafe range has to go through a total of 10 to 15 tests which, as I said, take about a week total.
Then we get to the final step of the CR process, writing up the results.
That's Paul's job.
A few weeks after my visit, Paul's finished his report on the GE cafe range that I saw them testing.
So we connect on Zoom.
All right.
The results are in.
The results are in.
Why don't you tell us, Paul, how did the cafe range do?
So the cafe range is now our number three rated range of double oven gas ranges.
And it earned an overall score of 78, which may not sound, you know, totally stellar to everybody.
But as you saw, we're pretty exacting in how we test.
And just for some reference, the very best overall score of any range of that type is an 86.
In the few weeks since I spoke to Paul, the overall score for this range actually dropped from 78 to 76.
That's because CR doesn't only look at their own testing.
They also check survey data that helps them predict the reliability of each product.
That reliability score went down, so the overall score did too.
But this range still tied for third place for double oven gas ranges.
Now.
Double oven gas ranges tend to be more expensive, but they offer convenience for people who are making two dishes at once at different temperatures, right?
Still, that convenience comes with a price.
The lowest price for this model right now is $3,600.
I remember on the day that I saw you test in the cafe, one or two of the cakes that came out of the oven looked a little uneven.
The browning looked a little uneven.
How did the range do on that test?
So of all of the performance tests we did on this cafe range, baking was definitely the lowest.
It earned a rating of three out of five, which we call a good.
You know, not as strong as some of the competition and also not as well as it did on some of the other performance tests.
It was really good at maintaining a simmer.
It heated water very quickly.
It broiled well.
And the oven capacity was really stellar in both cavities.
So it was really sort of the baking test that held this oven back.
So it's totally possible that if you're the type of person who bakes, you know one cake at a time, or one cake a year you're going to get great results.
We're not going in and rotating them, but that's certainly something people can do if they have an oven that doesn't heat evenly at home.
Right.
But if you're paying thirty five hundred bucks for your oven, you shouldn't have to rotate a cake.
I would agree.
And so, you know, if you are a serious baker, this is not the range that I would steer you towards.
Bottom line.
If your top priorities are aesthetics and convenience, and if you can afford it, this double oven range is a good option for you.
But if you're on a budget or if your top priority is baking precision, this isn't the one you want.
It's not uncommon, in the course of our testing, for us to find a 500 or 600 range that outperforms a 5000 or 6000 range.
And in this case with the Cafe, you know you are paying a little bit of a premium for some of the features double ovens, for sure, the slide-in design.
But yeah, you could absolutely spend thousands less and get a range that cooks every bit as well.
That's Paul Hope, home and appliances editor at Consumer Reports, along with test project leader Tara Casaragola and lab techs Lee Wong and Sue Collum.
You can see some of Consumer Reports advice for free on their website or become a paying member to access all their detailed reviews and ratings, including the ones for toaster ovens and ranges, at ConsumerReportsorg.
Special thanks to Lisa Chow and Doug Love for their help with this episode.
The Sporkful is produced by me, along with senior producer Emma Morgenstern and producer Andres O'Hara.
Our editor is Tracy Samuelson with additional editing by Devin DeComo.
The show is mixed by Casey Holford.
Music help from Black Label Music.
The Sporkful is a production of Stitcher.
Our executive producers are Colin Anderson and Eric Eddings.
Until next time, I'm Dan Pashman.
And I'm Johnny FD from Kiwi Crane, reminding you to eat more, eat better, and eat more better.
This reheat was produced by Gianna Palmer.
The team that produces The Sporkful today includes me, along with managing producer Emma Morgenstern and senior producer Andres O'Hara.
Our engineer is Jared O'Connell.
Music help from Black Label Music.
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