Thank you for linking the article. I found the specific information about range hoods helpful.
Unfortunately, the article didn’t address the elephant in the room, open plan kitchens. For the record, I despise them.
With open plan kitchens:
You lose an entire wall on which you could put appliances, cabinets and countertop.
You can’t contain the cooking grease and odors.
I bake and I have pets. I need to be able to close the kitchen doors to keep the pets out of the cooling baked goods.
I’m a night owl so I cook and bake after midnight. During summer I particularly like to cook and make jam in the wee hours. If I had an open kitchen I would wake up anyone who was sleeping in the house.
I agree with you. It looks like a labeling mistake to me by whoever labeled the diagram. And the refrigerator is normally considered part of the work triangle, as far as I know, so there’s that too.
Went back to the article—you’re right. That is certainly a point where I would disagree with the article as written. Actually for me it’s best that my kitchen work triangle includes the dishwasher right beside the sink. I include stove, fridge, sink + dishwasher in my real-life work triangle.
That, to me, is an odd take on the refrigerator. I am always finding myself having a mid-cook need to grab another ingredient that I overlooked or under measured in my mise or just got inspired to add, and it is often in the refrigerator…vermouth, Marsala, capers, cream, crema, citrus, cheese, and so on. The D/W, at least for me, is better placed next to the sink.
We are waiting on a Whirlpool fridge per advise of our local dealer. They steered me away from an LG which ticked all my boxes because of compressor issues. Been there done that with a GE years ago.
We were appliance shopping this am, and this is the Whirlpool for me.
Bottom 2 doors are side by side freezers with pull out drawers. No big frozen turkeys for us, but can not remeber the last time we had on in the freezer.
now. . . .considering the sink-to-dishwasher marriage, this triangle is not entirely cookoo - as “definitions” do vary.
my input to ‘recommendations’ for x, x, x, y, z . . . .
avoid anything Viking - “professional” or otherwise. it’s junk. my six burner cook top has been unplugged for years and years because no not-even-local organization could offer a potential “date” or "it could be , , , " solution.
the biggest issue is “service” - all things break/fail - but when your nearest service availability for the dishwasher is three weeks away . . . that ueber quiet Bosch machine is not really all so attractive.
I practice mise en place by taking out and measuring every ingredient first thing when I begin cooking so I don’t need the refrigerator to be close by.
On the other hand, I clean as I go. As soon as I’m done with a pot/pan/dish/utensil I rinse it and put it in the dishwasher. I need the dishwasher to be right next to the sink.
This may be the preferred practice when prepping for a meal. And I do it often myself, but not always.
Let’s say you are just going to make something ad hoc, and during your cooking (let’s say you’re making instant ramen) and inspiration strikes and your mise en place has not taken into account serendipity. What then?
In that instance, I would want my fridge to be part of that triangle. Not the dishwasher, which I never use anyway.
Same here. Even if I have everything, I find myself want to put things back into the refrigerator too. Either takes things our or put things in. A nearby refrigerator is important to me. I suppose everyone is different. For those who need a dishwasher closer, they are thinking about the cleaning up steps.
I am thinking it comes down to focusing the food preparation of cooking vs the cleaning part of cooking. For me, I am more focus between the food prep and cooking part, and I often take food in and out of the refrigerator. On the other hand, I don’t focus too much at the cooking to cleaning stage. I can see for people who want to streamline the cleaning part to put a higher priority for the dish washers. They want everything in the dishwasher when they are done. I think another reason I did not appreciate this is because many of my cookware are not even dish washer safe — say carbon steel knives and clay donabe.
Please help us decide between these three. We currently have a GE which has served us very well since 2007 and recently went belly-up (after a few signs of illness over the past three years). Here’s what online research has led us to. Which would you choose?
