Ranges, Ovens, and Stoves

Ever find yourself wondering aloud – have I been wrong this entire time? Wrong about anything, whatever it is, it’s a nutty feeling, especially if you hold whatever it is sacred and infallible. For example, the earth being flat, the sky yellow, or being the best basketball player on the planet. These are things that we hate to break to you – you’re flat out wrong. We know you think that jump shot is air-tight, but you miss more than you make, and if the earth were truly flat we’d have all fallen off by now.

Something else that is head-scratching is figuring out the difference between a range, oven and stove. Talk about a messy situation. These terms vary country by country and nobody is quite sure why a consensus cannot be reached. The source of this confusion can be directed at our upbringing. Depending on where you were born and raised, your parents banged into your head stove, range or oven. And while they are indeed similar, if not the same for many of you, there are differences. For example, an oven at its core is a box that heats or cooks food. The engineering behind it is altogether more complex. But that is what an oven is and does, period.

From a definition standpoint, an oven can really be anything from a hole in the ground to something on a countertop in a house in Iowa. To get even further into the weeds, we’ve obviously got ovens that have the potential to cook 100,000 cheeseburgers in under an hour. A stove on the other hand is an enclosed space that occupies fuel to provide heat. While this might sound like an oven, it certainly is not. Plus, stoves get offended easily and the most typical way to do so is calling it an oven to its face.

Now, there are many stoves that provide heat but are not designed to cook food. Yet, many do … incidentally. You’ve got pellet stoves, coal stoves, wood-burning stoves, there’s a lot out there in the stove world. To put things into perspective, ovens are a natural sub-set of stoves, and all ovens are stoves. But not all stoves are ovens. Gotcha! To make matters more complex, stoves will include a stovetop, and wood-burning stoves that occupy radiant heat from a wood fire (internally) to heat up the griddle. Modern stoves however occupy electric burners or gas. A stovetop can also be separated from the stove and are then known as cooktops. You likely know of cooktops in their more informal use during camping.

Finally, the range. To get into the range, let’s harken back to stoves with stovetops. If a stovetop can count on its own fuel, and in turn be connected to an oven, you’re now working with a range. This is an integrated cooking solution, about as integrated as you can get. The range is quite popular stateside and gaining traction in Europe. If you’re still reading, then my quick wit kept you engaged. And if this is the case, then it’s likely you have a range.

So, at the end of the day, what do we call these things? You can call them all three (how utterly unsatisfying) while keeping in mind their differences. Not much of an answer, we know, but if the world can’t clear this up, you really think this blog could?