Are modern boat cookers much better than older ones?

[Crinan12]

Hi all
The cooker on my boat is okay but not great. I assume it's quite old. I just wondered if a modern new one would be much better or are they all a bit limited by the type of gas bottle you have and therefore never going to be great ?( my gas bottle is a blue 4.5kg one)

The hob is okay- a bit slow but fine (no where near as fast as my camping stove thou)
Grill is rubbish- takes ages to toast bread
Oven seems pretty hopeless - never seems to get properly hot

Thanks

 

[dgadee]

Mine is giving up the ghost. Just looked at prices for replacement - £200 to £1500. Difficult to weigh up pros and cons.

 

[Kukri]

Having cooked when afloat on pressure paraffin stoves such as Taylor’s for the first fifty years of my sailing life I bought a boat with a GN Espace (that’s the really expensive one). Gas does take longer than paraffin, but it has a proper grill and a proper oven, whereas the cheap ones just get hot in the middle. I am learning to like it, but I do find gas expensive particularly with all the annoying business of gas detectors etc.

The GN Espace is a genuinely good stove. And their spares service reminds me of what Taylor’s were like forty years ago (that is a compliment!)

 

[Poignard]

I once installed a brand-new Plastimo gas cooker and, apart from having gas safe-fail devices, it wasn't noticeably better than the old gas cooker it replaced.

It has since been replaced with an Origo alcohol stove and that does well enough, except it has no grill, so toast in any quantity is a luxury we can only enjoy in marinas when there is a shore supply and we can use our electric toaster.

 

[Crinan12]

That's what I would have guessed poignard
The gas bottle must only produce gas at a certain flow so the flame will be limited I suppose
Cheers

 

[lw395]

I replaced a 20 year old Plastimo with a new one ofthe exact same model and it was a great improvement. It's nice when the grill makes things brown by toasting them rather than sprinkling rust on them.
Seriously, everything worked better.
Sold the old one on ebay to someone who could be bothered to rebuild it.

 

[Poignard]

That's what I would have guessed poignard
The gas bottle must only produce gas at a certain flow so the flame will be limited I suppose
Cheers

I hesitate to ask but have you given the burners a good clean?

 

[Crinan12]

No I must admit I haven't tried cleaning then
I'll give that a go
Thanks

 

[doug748]

I replaced my old stove with new purely to get the gas safety cut outs. It turned out to be a very good stove, a Spinflo Nelson - they have a generally good name on these pages. One is listed here:

https://www.thethetfordcentre.co.uk/nelson-cooker-w-searails.html

They make good toast you can do 3 or 4 slices at once ( with a bit of juggling), the oven works and has a thermostat. Around the burners is deeply recessed so spillage is not a disaster and the bodies are stainless inside and out. They do have a few drawbacks but nothing dreadful.
Sadly we have been told that they are no longer generally available, so the link above may be a dud. Used ones come up now and again.

If changing it might be worth seeing if the magazines come up with any recent comparisons, there have been compaints of dodgy toast and ineffectual ovens on many models over the years.

 

[VicS]

That's what I would have guessed poignard
The gas bottle must only produce gas at a certain flow so the flame will be limited I suppose
Cheers

The regulator controls the pressure of the gas supplied to the cooker.

The cooker should be marked with the type of gas ( propane or butane) which it is designed to use and the gas pressure

Modern cookers are usually suitable for propane or butane when used with a 30 mbar dual fuel regulator

(Blue bottles are butane)

It is recommended that regulators should be replaced every 10 years (and hoses every 5 years). Both should be dated, in the uk, with their date of manufacture.

It sounds as though you may be in need of a new regulator or maybe just an overhaul of the cooker.

As mentioned modern cookers have flame failure devices on all burners. Grills in my experience are seldom very good but I dont know why this is so.

 

[Caer Urfa]

I cooked for years using a Taylors 030L Paraffin oven but found controlling the heat very problematic especially the oven heat, plus points very cheap to run, minus points lighting it.

So I replaced it with a Nelson Spinflow gas oven and very pleased with it and much easier to control the heat, I also ran it off Camping Gaz which produced a lot better heat, also found although the Gaz bottle is slightly smaller than the Butane gas bottles the Gaz bottle lasted very well
View attachment 79981

 

[ip485]

At a price I can recommend GN Espace. They are almost as good as a domestic cooker, and especially roast very well, which is always a challenge. If you really enjoy cooking and spending the time on board, probably worth it.

 

[VicS]

I cooked for years using a Taylors 030L Paraffin oven but found controlling the heat very problematic especially the oven heat, plus points very cheap to run, minus points lighting it.

So I replaced it with a Nelson Spinflow gas oven and very pleased with it and much easier to control the heat, I also ran it off Camping Gaz which produced a lot better heat, also found although the Gaz bottle is slightly smaller than the Butane gas bottles the Gaz bottle lasted very well
View attachment 79981

Camping Gaz is a very expensive way of buying butane. Useful though to be able to use it where Calor butane is not available.

 

[dgadee]

At a price I can recommend GN Espace. They are almost as good as a domestic cooker, and especially roast very well, which is always a challenge. If you really enjoy cooking and spending the time on board, probably worth it.

Can't see any prices. Are they only sold direct?

 

[Crinan12]

Thanks folks
I'm glad my assumption was wrong and that It's possible to get something decent

Would an overhaul consist of a new regulator and cleaning all the burners - is there anything else that could produce a weak flame? I'll check the hose to the cooker is okay as well

 

[Mistroma]

We had a great cooker on our old boat, 1980 vintage. It still worked well when we sold the boat in 2009. It only had 2 burners but the grill was great and it also had a slot above the grill between the burners. Excess heat acted like a 3rd burner to keep things hot and it also had an oven below the grill. No flame failure devices of course.

A bit of a shock to move to a boat with a new ENO cooker in 2009. Still only 2 burners but the grill was inside the oven, not above it. No centre slot to simmer a 3rd pot and no way to cook in the oven at same time as using the grill. A step backwards and made worse by the fact that the grill could barely toast a slice of bread. The dealer said that they were all like that and the French didn't supply cookers with a decent grill.

We swapped the cooker for a new 3 burner ENO which looked identical in all respects apart from the extra burner. The grill was much better. I seems that it might be hit or miss how a grill performs and quality control might not be great for some manufacturers.

 

[Kukri]

Can't see any prices. Are they only sold direct?

They had a stand at SIBS last year.

Give them a ring - very helpful people. A genuinely world leading little British business.

https://www.gn-espace.com/

 

[fergie_mac66]

Switch to propane red bottle.
Will run at higher pressure 37mb and is higher thermal value.
Most cookers will run on butane or propane doesnt blow out as easy . Plus doesnt freeze in winter

 

[JumbleDuck]

The regulator controls the pressure of the gas supplied to the cooker. ...

Additionally, propane has an energy content of 46.4MJ/kg and a latent heat of vaporisation of about 400 kJ/kg, which means that you need only about 1% of the heat you are getting from burning to evaporate the liquid. When my car engine is producing 100hp, that's quite a lot of heat needed, but for a typical 2kW boat cooker ring, it's a measly 20W. Easily transferred from the outside world, so a propane bottle will produce all the gas you might reasonably use.

Note: Offer good for warmish days only.

 

[ghostlymoron]

I've only had one proper boat cooker which I think was a Plastimo, I didn't do any baking or roasting but heated up a lot of pasties and pizzas. The toaster was ok but required shifting the bread about to get full coverage.
Our caravan had a Flavel I think which was much better for no apparent reason as it uses the same bottles and regulator. We once roasted our Christmas turkey in it when our domestic cooker failed on Christmas Eve.
As Vic says, the regulator controls pressure not flow so there's no reason why the burners should not kick out their full rating provided the gas is not restricted by rust for instance. A good clean never does any harm.