Gas hob help needed.

[oncemoreuntothebeachdearfriends]

I'm a competent cook, but I've only ever used electric.
My new home has a Smeg cooker, with 2 electric ovens (small one seems useless), & 5 gas rings.
1 large, 2 medium, & 1 small burner, plus a very large wok burner.
Problems :-

1. The small one has too big a gap for my smallest saucepan & frying pan, they're very unstable.

2. The wok burner is also unstable & unsuitable for my round-bottomed wok.

3. I keep burning things, and don't know what to do.

I can't RTFM, because there isn't one - & it probably wouldn't cover what I'm going to ask anyway.

I match the size of the saucepan to the burner, but whatever ring I'm using the lowest flame will not allow me to simmer.

All help gratefully received, & if anyone needs their shoes re-soled I've got a pair of suitable pork steaks from last night's disaster.

Get yourself a trivet or gas ring reducer, then your pan will fit. It also makes it easier for simmering as it takes the pan slightly further away from the heat. Hope that helps!

Thanks, I've ordered one.

Yes, the trivet is the secret and will help.

But, while I love gas in theory, this is why when I redo my kitchen, I will be abandoning it. It's too erratic. A couple of years ago SNG dug up all the gas pipes and replaced them, causing chaos. and it's been 10x worse. I have only one burner that gets even half way hot enough to properly cook things hard and fast. Simmer is a bit easier, but does rely on a large pot and amount of food.

I have been known to send DH out to fire up the gas BBQ, even in the middle of winter, if I need proper hot for more than one small steak or whatever.

Yes ours are a bit fierce, the smallest is pretty slow to get pans hot, but that is still a bit high to simmer, I spend a lot of time swapping pans around from ring to ring to get hot and then to try to simmer and move pans half off the ring. A trivet is good if you want something on low heat for a long time but slow to heat and fiddly for just doing veg

If your gas hob is like mine it has two settings, when you turn it (mine is a left turn) the full flame comes first and then you turn further left for the lower flame but you can also go to the right from the full flame as though you were going to turn it off and you can get a lower flame again. If too low it will cut out but there is a sweet spot where it works. If mine cuts out it doesn't matter as that automatically cuts off the gas and should be the case on all modern hobs, only much older ones would stay on, my last one did but it was 30 odd yrs old.

I have never had an issue getting a flame down low enough on the smallest ring say to simmer something. That said I know what you mean about some pots being unstable, that does annoy me a bit that my really small pots won't sit right unless I fill them first before putting on, my small frying pan keeps falling sideways and requires balancing carefully!

How many metal supports sections are there on your hob? On ours, there are three. At first glance, they look identical but if you look more closely you realise that one is for the centre as it is designed to support a saucepan on the centre ring and the other two supports are for the outside as they are both designed to support two saucepans each. Each time I think “why isn’t the saucepan balancing”, I realise they’re got swapped over. DH still hasn’t realised the difference and moans occasionally and is them very impressed at my magical ability to solve the problem