An experimental study was carried out on a newly developed, gas-fired radiant burner to optimize its performance for three different conditions of firing rate (80.5, 107.4, and 134.2 kW/$m^2$). The operational equivalence ratios ranged from 0.6 to 1.3. Gas temperatures along the mat and upstream/downstream of the ceramic mat were obtained to investigate the effects of firing rate and equivalence ratio. The temperature of the unburned mixture in the burner port decreased as the firing rate increased. The opposite trend appeared in response to change in the equivalence ratio. This was mainly due to mixture velocity and residence time. The mechanism of temperature variations in the mat with the equivalence ratio and firing rate was described in detail. Results on flue gas emissions, such as the concentrations of EINO and CO, were also presented. It was confirmed that in lean-mixture conditions, the concentration of CO remains below 100 ppm for all firing rates. Lastly, radiation and water-boiling efficiencies were measured as functions of the equivalence ratio, firing rate, cookware diameter ($D_p$), and height of the burner housing (H). It was observed that conduction heat transport dominated the radiation effect less as the firing rate increased. From these observations, the effective heat input in the present radiant burner was determined to optimize its performance.