How to light a gas stove manually
Peroty fails at cooking:
Gas stove. Electric lighter. Design FAIL! Cereal it is.You can still manually light nearly every modern gas stove with a match or lighter, even if the igniter is broken. Matches are safer and will work better than typical cigarette lighters.
- Turn gas on medium.
- Light match. Hold very close to the holes in the center of the burner that fire usually comes out of.
- Wait for full ignition. This should happen within about 3 seconds, and the burner should quickly light all the way around in a neat little ring-closing pattern.*
- Remove your match-holding hand (and the match) quickly.
* If this doesn’t happen within 3-5 seconds, turn the gas off, wait a few seconds, assure anyone else in the room that the gas smell is normal, and start over.
That said, if you’ve never done it or seen it done (anyone ever have a really old gas stove when you were growing up?), you might not want to try it. I think this is a pretty lost skill by this point. I can’t even find a YouTube video showing the correct procedure. I’m almost motivated to shoot my own video. But not quite.
This is a valuable skill to have. With it, you can still use your gas stove in a blackout or when the igniters fail. (Note that this procedure doesn’t usually work on the oven or broiler because the burners aren’t easily accessible.)
I nearly set my arm on fire attempting to re-light the pilot light in my broiler, because it was so far back. Having no long matches can be a real problem, and lying the floor with a small match also sucks. I used a rolled up piece of paper towel the second time, and it worked. Scary, though.
