One of the burners on my gas stove won’t light and it emitted gas with a sulfur like smell - does that mean I should replace the entire stove?

Do you still smell gas when you turn the bad burner off and it’s not in use?
Maybe you just have a bad igniter

No, the smell went away a minute after I turned it off.

@rockfan – Sounds like an igniter. If the flame on the other burners is blue, it’s burning cleanly.

I’m not sure if it’s considered a gas leak or not? The guys who installed the stove mentioned it was the igniter though.

It’s fine to use. A little gas will escape from the faulty burner but the others are fine. I had that with mine and was able to clean the burner and it worked. Or get a repair person in. It is not a gas leak to worry about. Just turn it off right away if it doesn’t light.

They add the sulfur smell to the gas so you can detect the leaks, and know if gas is coming in when the burner doesn’t light. If the smell disappeared when you turned the burner off, it’s fine.

@janbb I guess I owe you a coke. :-)

Since you can smell the gas, have you tried simply igniting the burner with a match?

Sounds like the igniter. You can use a long match to light it if you need to use that burner until you get it fixed. Just remember you have to light it as soon as you open the gas, you can’t wait and let the gas run into the air you can have an explosion.

Sometimes a deep cleaning is all that’s needed.
Lift the lid, there’s a rod to hold it up. Try to light it. If you see a spark, the ignitor is fine, it is just greasy in there somewhere blocking the point of ignition. Or, does it have pilot lights? If so, try lighting it to see if it will burn. If it does, all you need is to move the little stem closer to the burner. Do that gently. You don’t want to break it.
If it is electric ignition, and no spark happens, it could still be just dirty. After a good scrubby cleaning, I used to run a very fine grit sandpaper, like 120 or higher, after cleaning, and ample time to dry.

I have the same issue with one of the burners on my stove, and it’s been like that for month (I rent and live with my landlord, so I don’t worry about fixing it). I use a lighter and it immediately flames once I start the burner up. I could be using the burners that work but I tend to put my pan down on whichever burner and sometimes it just happens to be on that one.

If in doubt, have it checked out by a reputable repair person. I doubt the whole thing needs to be replaced.

You can light it with a match.

If it’s like mine, when any one of the burners is in sparking/igniting mode they are ALL sparking.
I turn on the one that doesn’t spark and turn on another one to the ignition/sparking zone and that lights the misbehaving burner, then I turn off the other one.
Cleaning did not help this problem for me, there’s something wrong in the knob that should turn on the sparkie system but doesn’t on just that one knob.

You need to remember not to turn on your burner and let it continue to spark. Besides letting toxic gas gas flow into your environment, it will ruin your sparker or whatever they call it and it would have to be replaced. I know because I’ve had to do it. As people have said above the simplest solution is keep a lighter handy for that burner. Alternatives are fix it yourself or call in an appliance repair guy.