Our tea kettle lives there as does our diffuser. It was my Mom's and I use it all the time when I simmer things. Julia Child had a great collection of them :) So I guess I am in good company. Nice thread idea.

idrive65, I'd love to have a red le creuset on my range top! Mom just passed on her 9 quart red one to me. Loving it :)

Trailrunner, love that it's both functional and sentimental :)

idrive65, I'd love to have a red le creuset on my range top! Mom just passed on her 9 quart red one to me. Loving it :)

Trailrunner, love that it's both functional and sentimental :)

Nothing. My DH is convinced the stove will spontaneously combust if we leave anything on the stove top. It's one of his pet peeves.

Technically nothing, but I feel like there is almost always a pot of beans soaking or something simmering.

Wintertime, the same...a kettle. Ours is copper though.

Summer time it becomes our countertop.

Gorgeous, Kent!!

Cathy, I have a friend who keeps a wooden cutting board straddled across 2 burners on her range. Makes me nervous!!

Usually there are two or three of our cast iron skillets scooted on the back burners.

Chrome tea kettle and the cast iron skillet I use to make eggs every morning. Oh, and small bowls of table and Kosher salt on the back.

Fun thread!

Just kidding;) ...about all three all the time of course. but more often than not, the #10 slant logo Griswold sits there ready to go

A copper Simplex tea kettle.

That's a serious setup, cytcdm ;)

A stainless steel trivet.

Just the tea kettle.

This post was edited by willtv on Tue, Apr 9, 13 at 17:50

Same as pirula, a copper Simplex tea kettle. No English kitchen should be without one.

This post was edited by allison0704 on Tue, Apr 9, 13 at 17:53

Le Creuset tea kettle, in the "accent color", of course ;-)

Just my stainless teakettle. Growing up my Mom always had one on her stove so I never thought of doing anything different.

Just for cathy and Madeline...the other side up though! LOL ;)

Right now my fake Le Creuset ( I wanted to make sure I liked cooking with cast iron) so I bought a Lodge before springing for the LeCreuset model. The thing is too heavy to keep stowing it away and taking it out so there it sits. My cook top will be induction so I don't think my cast iron will work. I also want to get a Simplex tea kettle but I don't know if that is induction friendly either.

I bought a LeCreuset to have on my cooktop - but I don't like it - it splatters and drools... It is the Zen model. I hope to figure out its problem so it can live on the cooktop - but for now it lives in the drawer..

Holly - your cast iron will work just fine!

Nothing on our induction cooktop.

We had a Caldera smooth electric cooktop (Not induction).

One night instead of going to bed, I came downstairs for some ice cream. The Caldera had unlocked itself, turned the biggest burner full on, and not that far way was a towel, had I not came down, I hate to think of what might have happened, or had there been a pot or pan on that burner.

Induction will not turn on without a proper pan there, although I have never seen a post about any induction cooktop turning itself on even with a pan on it.

For us, We just like the extra safety of nothing on the cooktop.

Gary

Stovetop espresso maker!

My red 5 quart le creuset gets a lot of use, so sometimes it vacations on the stovetop for days but it's not a permanent resident.

Grandmother's big Revereware kettle.

Trailrunner, when you say "diffuser", do you mean "simmer plate"? I have a cast iron simmer plate on my stovetop at all times. I can simmer bolognese sauce for 4 hours on the simmer plate, and the sauce's simmer level will stay the same, and there won't be a cold spot in the middle. Or I can keep something warm on the simmer plate for a good amount of time without cooking it any further. It's not that good-looking though; lots of scars from lots of use.

I also have an old Revere tea kettle like Circuspeanut. The kind that has the thick copper bottom, not like the later ones where the copper is pretty much just painted on. But I keep the tea kettle on a trivet right next to the range. When you have only a 4-burner 30" range, you need to have every burner available. For the same reason, I do not keep my LC dutch ovens out; they take up too much stovetop real estate. My "next" kitchen will have a six-burner, but that's a topic for another thread.

Ctycdm-- Oh my goodness!!! Was that a near catastrophe in your kitchen?!

Sharonite, what a pretty, sleek espresso maker. What's the brand?

ak...yes the same thing. I looked through the Google images and didn't see one like it. Momma got it somewhere and have no idea where. it is similar to one that Fantes sells. Not very heavy duty and it rusts...but it works very well. This is a great thread. c

a chrome Simplex teakettle

Nada.

Unless you count the grunge if I've been too lazy to clean it right away after some serious (and messy!) cooking!

I keep a couple of biggish pottery jars with utensils, a little pottery cup for the dead matches I used to light my burners and an old-fashioned mechanical timer. I have loads of "vacant" space on my range.

My large (48") stove formerly had a grill section running across two burner spaces front to back, but I hated it. So I took it out, capped the gas lines and had a remnant of some kind of black granite cut to fit the open space where the grill assembly had been. Now I have four burners, the granite slab and then anonther pair of burners to the right of it, if that makes sense. It makes the handiest cooktop I have ever had - I adore having the heat-proof granite section on the stove top.

I love the looks of a kettle but we never drink tea or coffee.

L.

We use our iron skillet so much that it goes right back on the stove top after cleaning it. Other than that, nothing else "lives" on the top of the stove.

For me, leaving the kettle on the stove is a hangover from growing up with a 1960's electric stove -- when you turn the burner off, it remains dangerously hot for a while, so one gets in the habit of sliding the kettle onto it while it cools down, as a matter of safety. Just one reason I switched to gas as an adult. :)

Flame Le Creuset Dutch oven. Used to have the tea kettle on top in the old kitchen, but don't need the tea kettle anymore now that we got instant hot water faucet.

Yep, a tea kettle. A spoon holder and my coffee cup too.

When I put up that shelf I told myself I wouldn't clutter it......well, just one more pretty thing won't hurt....ha.

{{!gwi}}

Oops, I must have edited and lost the pic. Here it is.

Thanks A2. I am anxious to use the induction. My current range is a radiant one and it is a total pain. The ONLY good thing about it is the flat cooking surface. It takes forever to boil anything and takes almost 10 minutes just to heat an eight inch skillet to do a grilled cheese for hubby!

A copper Simplex kettle. I drink herb tea by the bucket. There's also a grenadine Staub kettle atop my single, portable induction burner.

I smiled at the earlier comment that "no English kitchen should be without one" about a kettle - in fact, no English kitchen these days has one at all, because we all use electric kettles . . . . :)
Am I the only person here who has nothing on their stovetop?

Large Red Le Crueset Dutch Oven and a red tea kettle.

I keep my utensil holder on top of my griddle cover. It's handy there.

I make cocoa wheats every morning for my boys before school. That pan lives on my stove. No point in putting it away.

Zip. Zilch. I like the clean, open space. Well, for the few hours a day that my range top doesn't have active pans or dirty pans waiting for the DW to be emptied, that is. Those few hours make me happy.

Sara--I join you in the nothing club. I'm actually surprised to see so many people store things on their tops.

I used to have a blue tea kettle on the stove for exactly the same reason Circus mentioned. Then one day after having it for about 5 years of married life and getting tired of scrubbing the grunge off of it all the time, I asked DH why we even had it. I think we used it maybe 2-3 times in all those years so off it went to my MIL's house who has a serious love of cobalt.

I like the sparse look too, but I use my kettle every single day throughout the day - for heating water for poached eggs and coffee in the morning (so easy to just pour the boiling water into a pan for the eggs instead of waiting for a pan of water to come to boil) and tea in the afternoon. Yeah, it gets dirty from the old gas stove but a quick swipe now and then or a dunk in the sink works. I'm messy, so need the spoon rest. Why clean and put away the coffee cup every single time? : ) A bad habit from working in an office for 30yrs.

Sara - Nope, you're not alone.
Unless you count the mail and schoolbags for an hour when we first get home because the stove sits in the "drop zone".

Reason 1,512 why I need to get moving on the remodel.

Teakettle, cutting board over the griddle and a spoon rest on the cutting board. On the high back I keep an old grease strainer, a box of matches and an ironstone handle-less coffee cup to throw the burnt matches into.

Deedles--do you light your stove with a match then?

Sara,
My DH makes our morning French press coffee with an electric kettle because he thinks it's too risky to deal with flames before having coffee. LOL.

@Madeline: the espresso maker is a the 4 cup, stainless steel Cuisinox-Roma-Espresso-Coffee-Maker. We love it, it gets used at least twice a day. I like my shot in the morning, DH likes his after dinner.

we keep our griddle pan thing (over two burners). we also usually have pots from the night before :)

Thanks, Sharonite. It's really great looking. I always have trouble with burning the espresso or leaking espresso when I use the stovetop ones. That one looks so good I could get it just for display :)

Me too, amandasplit. We eat quite late and I just don't wanna do dishes at 9 or 10 at night. Otherwise, there's a blue teakettle sitting there, which is used daily.

Nothing but a spoon rest. With the smooth glass cooktop, I'm afraid of scratching it if I leave anything on top, and also worry what if the knobs get knocked to "on". We use an electric kettle, so there's just the spoon rest.