Elite Gourmet ESB-301BF Countertop Single Cast Iron Burner, 1000 Watts Electric Hot Plate, Temperature Controls, Power Indicator Lights, Easy to Clean, Black

Lo uso en mi oficina para hacer café con la cafetera italiana, excelente calienta muy rápido

Small, easy to store, gets hot enough to boil water, meat, soups, pancakes, eggs, chili, popcorn, toasted bread, stir fry..I use mine everyday. Your basic model, nothing fancy but it works. I would recommend. As far longevity I don't know I only had it for a month. The numbers have already wore off. Some one might care about that, I don't, i pretty much cook everything on maximum.

I've been using my hotplate daily for 14 months now. It still works and (nearly) looks like new. It has served me well, because I recognize its limitations. If I cook in my 12" skillet or my super-large steamer pot, I expect to see longer cook times. That being said, I have made dozens of fried or sautéed dishes in the 12" skillet, and I've cooked pasta many times in the big pot, with excellent results. But, patience is required. However, if I use my 1-quart saucepan or my 8" skillet, I'm king of the hill. That is the size of cookware that this hotplate was made to handle. The saucepan will boil in only a few minutes; the skillet will cook an omelet in five minutes or fewer. (I would imagine one would get great results, too, using a 2-quart saucepan, or a 10" skillet, because they would still fit the heating element quite nicely.) The heavy iron pad on the heating element maintains heat evenly. I got the impression when I read some of the one-star and two-star reviews that people are expecting a Volkswagen to pull a rail car. One reviewer said he was trying to use this unit to heat a skillet on his patio. Hmmm... Ever heard the expression "if you can't stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen"? That is because kitchens need to be sealed environments. You don't have big open windows, and you don't have big fans, even in professional kitchens. It's impossible to regulate the heat or to obtain the heat you need if a breeze is blowing across your stove. If you plan to use this hotplate when camping, then you're going to have to find a proper shield for it. Folks, this hotplate contains a 1000-watt heating element. For comparison, consider that, on most commercially available electric ranges, the SMALLEST burner is 1200 watts. Often, one burner on that range top will meet or exceed 3000 watts. Obviously, this little guy is not going to perform like a built-in range. As to the complaint that the hotplate gets hot on the bottom and transfers that heat to the countertop it is sitting on; again, if you're trying to boil a gallon of water, or cook two quarts of chili, you're going to overheat this hotplate, and it's going to transfer that heat. I've been using my hotplate, as I said for 14 months, over a laminated countertop, and I don't have any burning or bubbling thereon. One final thing. The electric circuit that you plug into is going to have a big effect on the efficiency of this hotplate's 1000-watt element. If you're on a camping trip, for instance, and using a generator for power, or if you're on an electric circuit in some remote area, you may not be getting enough power in to get 1000 watts out. This hotplate has met all my expectations; thus, five stars. *EDIT* One reviewer said that their hotplate did not sit evenly on a flat surface. Please note that the hotplate comes with TWO DIFFERENT-SIZED RUBBER PLUG-IN FEET, three flat ones, and one that is thicker. By moving these, one can always keep the unit flat and steady, even if the unit should warp during use (which mine never has). I've never had to move the rubber feet around, but I thought I'd mention it since at least one reviewer was clueless.

I almost tossed this...glad I gave it a second chance. I bought it for cooking while traveling away from home. It seemed to be a good option for that...cooking in hotels or in an unfurnished apartment/home when on an extended stay. The first couple of times I used it it didn't seem to get hot enough to boil the water but in hindsight it seems to work better and get hotter after the first few uses. It kind of seems like it needs to burn off the coating first before it's fully functional, but once it does it works great and is pretty efficient just keep in mind that due to its reduced wattage it may take longer than expected to get hot. Think of the light as a preheat...when it first turns off, it only means that it's ready to start cooking. There is an initial smell that comes from the burner and maybe even a little smoke I'm not so sure about the smoke because I first used it outside and the room that I was in was fairly large and well ventillated not sure if the initial smoke was from what I was cooking or the residue. Whatever coating, residue, or what have you that causes it does eventually burn off and leave you with no smell but it did take quite a few uses (even after initially leaving mine on 1 much longer than the recommended time). There were a few options with the burner tops. Mine is the iron one. It retains some heat after the burner light cuts off. I saw some reviews complaining about this but now after using it I see it as a feature (if efficiency is important to you) because the heat turns off once the desired setting is reached yet the burner is still cooking. The downside is that sometimes you will need to turn the burner off (or down) earlier than you may be used to. At home I have an electric stove and while it does take longer to warm up or cool down compared to a gas stove, the response time is still much closer to a gas stove than it is to this burner. It can take quite awhile for the burner to completely cool down after turning off. A nuisance at first but now that I'm used to it I kind of like it since it does save me a lot of power. I'm on an extended stay now and there is a gas stove here that works great but I find myself using this burner most of the time to save my expense on gas. Recently got the electric bill and it was so much cheaper (a fraction) than the gas which was really great and I was using it the burner a lot. One other downside is that it takes the burner a lot longer than expected to heat up. I have been turning it on early to "preheat" it and this helps a lot to get things cooking. I have even used the burner to cook stock in a large stock pot. It did take longer to get the water boiling and I had to use higher settings but it worked fine otherwise. My only worry was whether the burner could handle the weight. The burner is still new (I've only been using it a couple months so far) so the jury is still out on that. All things considered I'm very happy with my burner and even considering getting another one. It is very efficient, takes very little space, and is great for travel or on the road. A second one will allow me to cook two things at the same time. Edit on March 29, 2023 - One other thing that probably deserves being mentioned. The settings are numbered from 1 to 6 (if I remember right, because my stove is currently packed somewhere since I'm not traveling at the moment). It will take some trial and error to find out which settings work best for your cooking preference. I recommend after the initial burnoff (per the manual), doing a test run first to boil water in your usual pot presetting to 4 first then allowing it to go until the water is boiling and then turning it down to see where you like it set at most for simmering, medium boil, etc. Then do a fry test run frying/sauting something simple (like onions and potatoes or similar) and starting again presetting at around 3.5 and then heating everything up in your preferred pan and seeing what settings you like best here as well for it to cook at the speeds that you prefer.

This is a sturdy little unit, that is just _barely_ sufficient for my purposes (a moderately sized pressure cooker that is incompatible with my glass-top stove). However! Outside of using gigantic heavy pots on undersized heating units, this thing is AMAZING. It heats up swiftly, it is robustly designed (the mere fact that it can take on a pressure cooker like a champ speaks to this), and it gets the job done. Excellent value!