Electric cookers tend to be preferred by those who are more concerned with saving money than the quality of their cooked food. With the increasing interest in home-based gourmet cookery, fuelled in part by the proliferation of television cookery shows and celebrity chefs, gas ovens have soared in popularity.

When you begin to look for a gas cooker, the first thing you should consider is the way that you tend to cook, and perhaps the way that you would like to cook in future. Have a look at the features that are available on various models, and decide which ones you couldn't live without, and which ones you'd be unlikely to use.

A basic gas cooker can be bought new for around three hundred pounds, and unless you have some ambitious catering planned, you might not need anything more than this. The more expensive a cooker is, the more features it tends to have, and the more it starts to resemble a professional cooker of the type seen in restaurant kitchens.

The question that you need to ask yourself, if you are looking at units such as this, is whether you really need a cooker that is powerful enough to be used in a commercial catering kitchen.

It will certainly help you to feel more like one of the professional chefs that you see on television, and if you are cooking exotic, multi course meals for large parties every day, then they may well be ideal for you.

However, if you are hardly ever in the kitchen, it could start to resemble an expensive vanity purchase before long. However, if you have money to burn, and you want your kitchen to look, literally, the business, then a professional gas cooker could well be the one for you. If you like the look of these professional cookers, but don't intend to open a catering business any time soon, then you might be better off with a mid priced cooker which combines the stainless steel looks of a professional cooker with more modest features and a smaller size. These cookers can cost anywhere between eight hundred pounds and two thousand pounds, and represent a better option for non-professional cooks who don't want to skimp on quality or appearances.