AGA Cookers (ranting on)

[dj-gabriele]

Hi everybody! During my last trip to the UK I had the "honour" of cooking on an original AGA cooker. Well, those things, in my imagination, with the classy and glamorous publicity around them should have been the best thing in the kitchen since the invention of the fire itself!

I was my friend's girlfriend parents in theirs country house.
The thing was in the kitchen with attached beautiful conservatory.

The first thing that struck me was the presence of 4 holes, I ended up using the top and bottom right ones as I was told one was the high temperature one an the other was for slow cooking.

Second thing, there were only 2 big burners, same again, fast and slow cooking.

Now, the menu was "cappelletti al brodo" (handmande previously by me and frozen) and stuffed courgettes with beef and parmigiano filling.

Thank god we brought the broth with us. A pot with around 4 liters of broth took half (yup) half an hour to boil from cold and by the time the cappelletti were ready the broth had almost not started boiling. Well, how fast the burner should be? I guess, not induction speed, not even gas speed ( 10-15 minutes was a decent time for me on a 3.5 kW burner) but snail speed...
The courgettes were put in the "fast" and "hot" oven (temperature unknown, they need 200°C and one hour), well, after 2 hours in there they were still kind of raw and they were only a little "bronzed", if I left them that long in any electric oven at 200°C they'd have gone completely dry and burned.

I've been told that they're energy efficient too. At first, thinking that the machine was so slow at cooking, it had a small burner (gas), I agreed, but I learnt that the average power consumption for those is around 200-250 kWh per week. That is the amount of power that I use in a month, all power combined with all my appliances! That's absurd!
Also I was ashamed to tell my hosts that I was sorry at how shitty the dinner was because I wasn't able to cook it properly.
The cappelletti were gluey and the courgettes were undercooked. Hopefully I decided not to bake a cake!
Oh, and did you see how small the ovens are?! More than half of my trays wouldn't fit.
I don't know how you can prepare meals that require high boiling speed (even average ones!) on a hob or temperatures higher than 160 (my guess) degrees. Also I wouldn't ever be able to live without a broiler/grill and a standard forced convection oven.

The extreme power consumption could be (partly) justified that the machine also heats the surrounding room, as any other oven and hob, and a kitchen with a 3x6 meters conservatory attached needs quite a lot of heat. But what about in the summer?
I speak for Italy, we need air conditioning 5 months per year, what about that time of the year? I the UK Midlands that is less a concern but it gets hot too and the AGA stays on all the time (programmable or not)!

 

[toggleswitch2]

The AGAs now can be had with a 50cm (20 inch) addition to the side that is a regular gas hob and oven to match the AGA cooker itself, for those of us accustomed to a regular hob and oven.

 

[tomturbomatic]

With the AGA, you have one hot place, like the firebox in the cooker for the source of heat that is distributed throughout the cooker to the various cooking locations, but the one "HOT" hob will drain the heat out of the entire appliance, meaning that if you are trying to boil a sizeable amount of water on the hob, everything will eventually cool down. Maybe that is what happened to you. It's not like having a 3kw bake unit in the oven and a 3kw broil element and surface units ranging from 1.5 to almost 3kw. AGAs would originally work on coal, peat, gas or electric. You said something about a small gas burner, but then mentioned the kwh consumption, so I guess it was electric? I wonder if it heated using off peak rates and was maybe near the end of its stored heat when you used it.

The amount of room heating it does has been a roadblock to sales of the original cooker in this country. Before Home Expo went under they had AGAs for sale, but they were mostly models constructed like regular stoves with the oven under the hob, all of it gas without the stored heat stuff and ugly as home made sin. Did the family have a clothes drying rack up at the ceiling over the AGA or was it too fancy a home for that?

Does anyone remember that wonderful British TV show Two Fat Ladies? Sometimes they cooked in places with an AGA. Most of the food they cooked was so full of fat that it could be considered an instrument of death. I do not remember them ever cooking large quantities of food with the AGAs except when they would put together a dish of something that was baked in the oven, but like you said the ovens do not take very large pans.

My grandmothers cooked for a time on wood stoves, my mother's mother until the mid 50s. A friend of our family in Illinois in the mid 1950s had a wood stove and an electric stove in her kitchen. I remember the warmth radiating from the big wood stove when you walked into the kitchen.

 

[maytagbear]

Clarissa Dickson-Wright

in her wonderful autobiography, Spilling The Beans, tells lively tales of how she and Jennifer Patterson despise the AGA.

I would not want one as my only means of cooking, but would think it would be a marvellous thing for a place in the woods or at the lake.

In some British cookery magazines, particularly BBC GOOD FOOD, many people have a conventional cooker as well.

Lawrence/Maytagbear

 

[petek]

I remember back when in the 80's and the AGA's appeared at the Home and Gardeny type shows and expos here with their horrendous price as well. I can't see having one heating the house all summer even here when you need a/c to get rid of heat not bring more in.

 

[danemodsandy]

Remember:

The AGA is a British invention, and in that climate (further north than Maine, and rainy), it does have its advantages. However, AGA owners there are now faced with a problem, in that EU environmental regulations have forced changes to the fuel they use, which is causing the cookers to have problems with clogging of their burners. Frequent servicing resolves the problem, but that's expensive. Given what an AGA costs to run, I really don't see how the company can hang on very much longer; the fuel costs are insane nowadays, even with the warmth from the AGA contributing heat to the rest of the house.

 

[peterh770]

Serendipity

I just completed watching all 4 seasons of the Two Fat Ladies on DVD and was going to post an inquiry to our European members about the TFL shows, their "receipts" and the AGA cooker which they used in the kitchens of probably 80% of their shows. In the first episode, Clarissa makes a comment about the AGA which I took to be not complimentary, but that was the only comment made.

I remember the AGAs at HD Expo and completely baffled about how they work. The bit on Wikipedia about them make them sound extremely energy inefficient, let alone cooking with only 2 "burners" and ovens at one seemingly constant temperature.

The TFLs cooking was so haphazard, unhealthy and generally unappealing to me that I thought it is no wonder the Brits have a reputation for horrible food! The amount of offal used I found baffling! I think in all the shows I watched, there were only 3 recipes that I wanted to try. How do TFLs compare to a Jamie Oliver or Nigella Lawson, or did people watch them for primarily entertainment?

 

[luxflairguy]

But I love AGA's!

I used to demonstrate AGA's at a store here in Seattle. I never had any trouble and the HOT plate was Hot! I used to use 3-2 qt pans at once and people could watch how fast water came to a boil. The LOW plate was more problematic. And more mater what, there was never enough space on the hobs!It did taking some getting used to the ovens, though...
But! I learned that there were several setting for the main burner to compensate (maybe not the right word) for different times of the year.
Perhaps these people had NOT turned the burner up for the winter--or as mentioned--it needs cleaning. AGA's, especially if oil fired, "gummed" up on a regular basis. If it is gas fired on "bottled" gas, could indicate that the gas pressure was low.
AGA's do have a learning curve. Just like me right now learning to cook on a smoothtop! I miss my gas!
Greg aka Luxflairguy

 

[ronhic]

I'd love to hear from.....

....some Brits who have used them please....

Though I have cooked on my grandmothers wood stove...loved it and it was a real learning curve to get the oven hot enough for scones...

In fact, hers which was simmilar but smaller than the one below had a back boiler for the hot water service...and I managed to get it to boil...the whole thing 30 gallons of boiling water!

 

[dj-gabriele]

@tom (Tomturbomatic): the stove was gas fired on methane, so no closed chimney nor low gas pressure.
I guess that's what you said, you can't really cook more than one thing at a time! I guess I'm spoiled about a 12 kW gas burners and independent electric oven.
Oh, about the clothes, nope, they are a fancy family and had separate room for laundry with john-lewis rebadged electrolux heat pump dryer and washing machine.

Anyway, you measure power with kW and energy in kWh (not standard) or Joules, regardless of the power source. With the gas, changing units, it would have been a consumption of around 853.000 btu, IN A WEEK, or 900 MegaJoules (millions of Joules).

@greg (luxflairguy): I understand about the learning curve but after having used gas, induction, radiant halogen, electric hotplates and even a wood fired stove. I must say that the AGA simply is not powerful enough for serious cooking or you can have that power at the expense of using only one thing at a time. Plus I find it a terrible safety hazard as I had to always use silicone lined insulating gloves when my oven door is so cold I kiss it while baking at 280°C.

@sandy (danemodsandy): the stove was serviced at regular intervals as those people care for it and don't mind the expense...

 

[dj-gabriele]

Oh, my bad:

12 kW gas burners as follows:

one 3,5 kW, one 3,1 kW, 2x 2,2kW and one 1 kW

 

[hunter]

I am not british...

But I do have a bunch of Delia Smith cookbooks.

You have to remember, that food preferences get set due to circumstances. Many Europeans, in general, eat more offal than we do in North America, because they have had less meat, so eat more of the animal.

In addition to this, during WWII, offal was unrationed in UK and US so folks ate more of it. And if you like it, why not keep eating it?

Steak and kidney pud is good. Due to CJD I can't bring myself to eat brains.

Hunter

 

[hoover1100]

"The AGA is a British invention"

It's Swedish, invented by Dr.Gustav Dalen.

But yes, the climate does make the excess heat less of an issue.

I have a friend who has one, but they turn it off and use the electric oven during the warmer months. In winter cosying up against it and warming your hands on it is just wonderful.

Matt

 

[mixfinder]

Culinary Twister

I catered regularly for a family that remodeled and installed an AGA. It was a nightmare when cooking multiple dishes to remember where everything was and how it was doing. Fast burner for braising, slow oven for cooking tender, high oven for browing, moving to slow oven to finish, warming oven to hold and warming plate on top for extra space. Opening the hobs with a lid that looks like a toilet seat cover and trying to fit more than one pan on a birner to cook. No timer, no window and total isolation from the smells of cooking because the ovens are vented outside with the fumes of the cooking fuel. More than once I would lose track of which oven, which dish, how long and where does it go next. For the amount of money it cost, the limits of capacity and efficacy, there were better choices. I used to long for their old kitchen back with a Hotpoint drop in range and second wall oven.

 

[foraloysius]

You have to remember, that food preferences get set due to circumstances. Many Europeans, in general, eat more offal than we do in North America, because they have had less meat, so eat more of the animal.

Quite a statement! I wonder on what your statement is based.

 

[norgeway]

what on earth???

Is offal??

 

[toggleswitch2]

Wartime shortages are universal. My aunt came to this country because she remembers the U.S. flag on crates of food and rations that were gifted to Greece by then President Truman. "Uncle Truman" as she refers to him from her youth.

Desperation does many things.........EVERYWHERE

 

[ronhic]

Norgeway

Offal....

Are the organs of an animal

- brains
- liver
- kidneys
- stomach

...etc....and before anyone dry wretches, 'proper' sausage skins are made from sheeps or pigs intestines...so are also offal..

 

[hunter]

my observations about offal has been from viewing recipes in

Certainly, I shouldn't have said folks EAT them...LOL. But I do view a lot of cookbooks that I can find in English from various countries - UK Ireland France mostly but some Italy ... I have less info on other Euro nations.

Ah, remember, I NEVER NEVER generalize ;-)