AGA Oven...

We are moving to a place with an AGA oven.  Never cooked on one before.  The Brits love 'em.   I don't get the attraction.  Any insight or recipes would be welcomed!

Trade you!!  Please? Please? 

I have never actually owned one so cannot advise... but still... I want one...

ooooh.  What colour is it?

 

http://www.aga-rayburn.co.uk/30.htm

and

http://www.aga-rayburn.co.uk/14.htm

The Aga, it heats yer food and yer kitchen My grandmother used an Aga, and two of my aunts still do. Bitchin' ovens.

Our house had a Stanley, which is probably more like a Rayburn, as it also did our central heating AND hot water.

I loved it.  It was especially good for baking because it heated up evenly.  Every oven is probably different and in my experience with Stanley, you had to plan a little bit because if you had a precise oven temperature, the cooktop stayed "moderate."  And vise versa; if the cooktop was precise, the oven was moderate...  I think this may be true of Agas as well.

Stanley was my only cooker.  Ideally, I would have loved at least a two ring hob.  But, I managed quite well on it for all those years.

I'm sure that you'll love it once you master it!

Do you find it ti make your kitchen too hot in the summer?  btw - it is green with 2 hot plates & 3 ovens.

It didn't make the kitchen too hot in the summer.  However, it toasty in the winter when the heat was on.  This was especially so when we entertained because we would light a fire in the kitchen for ambiance as well (we had a fireplace in the kitchen, too.)

It didn't bother me too much as I like it very warm.  However guests would swelter a bit so when entertaining we would turn the heat off and crack a window or too.  When everybody left, we'd put things back to normal.

It was absolute heaven coming downstairs into our kitchen in the winter.  I LURVED it!

Will yours do heating/hot water as well as cooking?

I think it is heating/cooking only as it is a standard AGA.  There is a separate water heater and boiler on the house.  Did cooking times take longer?  Does it take a while to get use to?

Stanley didn't take as long to get used to as I thought it would.   I imagine there are some differences between a Stanley and AGA, although the principle is probably pretty much the same.

I found that the oven and cook top were hotter in the winter when the heat was on.  So in the summer, if I was boiling water, for instance, it took longer for the cook top to heat up.  Whereas in the winter when the heat was on, I could simmer a soup/stew/chili all day on the cook top without even turning the cooker on. 

But, I'm sure you'll get used to it faster than you think and you'll not know how you got by without one.  I don't know anybody who had an AGA/Rayburn/Stanley and hated it. 

Why not check out Amazon or your local bookshop and get an AGA cookbook?  That will probably have lots of good ideas to get you started!  I'm telling you - baking in those things is a dream!

From last Sunday's Observer magazine...

With the new addition to his kitchen, Nigel Slater anticipates slow-cooked stews, epic toast and endless warm tea towels. If only the cat would get out of the way ...

Sunday February 13, 2005
The Observer

I ran my hand along the length of its glossy top, pressed the back of my legs against the solid warmth of its doors, gazed at my reflection in its glistening lids. I stroked it, polished it and at one point whispered 'welcome'. And not only did I poke my head round the kitchen door before I went up to bed, I even came down again in the middle of the night just to make certain it was settling in. If you told me 10 years ago that I would ever fall head over heels in love with an Aga, I would have thought you quite, quite mad.

While Aga evangelists praise their cookers' ability to do everything short of the washing up, I really only intend to use mine for the sort of cooking you put in a heavy casserole dish and forget about. Everything that has come from this oven so far seems particularly unctuous and juicy. The deep, thick walls of the twin ovens have already produced a singly moist result for lamb shanks (with vermouth and rosemary); pork ribs (with honey and five-spice) and a pot roast chicken with thyme and leeks, whose juicy meat fell lazily from its bones.

None of this means I am about to throw out my wok or retire my charcoal grill, or for that matter invest in a farmhouse-style kitchen and a labrador. It simply means that I now have the added pleasure of an oven slow enough to braise even the toughest cuts of meat to a sticky tenderness, a permanent supply of warm tea-towels, somewhere other than the radiator on which to balance a bowl of proving bread dough and, best of all, the facility for making the best toast in the world. Believe me when I say there is no toast like Aga toast. Of course, it has its downsides, least of which is that after 20 years as my permanent shadow, the cat has barely moved from its side since the day it was installed.

I was worried that the fact that my oven is now on non-stop might mean I had just bought the cook's equivalent of a gas-guzzling SUV. Yet already its presence has enabled me to lower the main heating thermostat and regularly avoids having to put the oven on just for a couple of baked potatoes. I will continue to test all my recipes in the standard domestic oven upstairs, but I find the black beauty in the basement more tempting with each passing week. The braised oxtail with mustard I made last night which we ate with spoonfuls of sloppy, milky mashed potato seemed just what this oven is made for.

I can't wait to try a slow-roast leg of lamb I read about that takes about six hours. Or one of those Elizabeth Davidesque bean hotpots I've meant to cook for the past 20 years. Real slow food, anyone?