Many years ago, I often visited a friend whose parents ran Cringletie House Hotel (near Peebles). Mrs Morris was a a truly excellent cook, and her Aga was the first one I'd seen in use.
Sheila
Not eating with those who cook using an Aga is the first step.
It is certainly a legend, straight from their advertising literature. I've had and made lots of "Aga toast" and it's exactly the same as any other toast done under a grill. Lightly burning bread isn't exactly difficult to do.
As the Aga lacks any form of controllable hob, has wildly fluctuating oven temperatures and has no grill there are many things which can't be done on it as well as on a conventional oven. Serious grilling of any sort and stir frying are two obvious examples (yes - I know Aga will sell you a vastly overpriced Philip Harben frying pan they call a "flat bottom wok" but I prefer a real wok).
Matthew Fort of the Gruniad has written a rather nice piece on the Aga
"To take one small example, let us say that you want to cook a traditional Sunday lunch for a group of eight: roast meat, roast potatoes, Yorkshire puddings, carrots, greens of some variety, gravy and a nice treacle tart. That's not unreasonable is it?
Well, you can forget about the Yorkshire pudding and the treacle tart for a start. You see, when you start opening and shutting those boiling plates and simmering plates (to cook the veg and make the gravy), you immediately start reducing the heat in the ovens (which is being reduced anyway because you are cooking the meat in one of them and continually opening the others as you try to keep things warm or cook them). If you're lucky, you will just about get the fat hot enough to roast the potatoes, but you'll have to make the treacle tart the day before and nothing, but nothing, will save the Yorkshire puddings. They will be as flabby as an old man's dewlap. My mother was unable to make a decent Yorkshire pudding in the 30 years she cooked on an Aga. Of course, you could sacrifice the roast potatoes, but that isn't a serious option in our house.
I grew up with an Aga. I would like to say that I learnt to cook on an Aga but it simply wouldn't be true. As a cook, you learn survival techniques on an Aga; how to get by, how to rescue disaster, how to take pleasure in small triumphs. But you don't learn how to cook. "
Of course it is easy as it limits what you can do - it is glorified haybox cooking. The one I had was perfectly well set up by Aga. Every six months its own fitter turned up to service it at vast expense (and this also meant three days downtime - one to cool, one to be serviced and one to heat up again) - a cooker that needs 6 monthly servicing - I ask you! (I didn't own it BTW). However you looked at from any objective viewpoint it was large, obsolete and inefficient. As Fort says:-
"So what precisely is an Aga? An icon, a status symbol, a domestic statement, and a companion to the golden retriever, the faded jeans with the crease down the legs and the Ralph Lauren something or other, the four-wheel drive, the 2.4 children called Jack and Daisy and Ch-, and the holiday home in Tuscany. An Aga is anything but a machine to cook on.
Think of it like the ancient family retriever: much loved, but dozy and smelly and with dodgy back legs. It's time to have it put down. "
Another good article is at
Even Agas own suggestion for making something as simple as a steamed pudding (6 mins in microwave) is a masterpiece of fiddle - "Boil hard on the boiling plate for 10 minutes, before moving to the simmering plate for a further 20 minutes. Check to see if it needs topping up... After this initial 30 minute start, transfer the whole pan, water and all, to the simmering oven for 2 1/2 hours" (The 6 min microwave version also tastes rather better than the Aga one).
Other cooks have remarked similarly:-
"it does have a major drawback - it is most certainly not an accurate cooking tool that can maintain a uniform temperature without fluctuation. Leave one of the lids up and the temperature drops; leave both lids up and it drops even more; open the oven door and it plummets dramatically. We discovered this flaw while trying to cook a piece of pork shoulder at 70C for 12 hours. At such a low temperature, a 10C drop meant that the meat would not cook. In fact, we soon worked out that the temperature fluctuations were up to 25% in either direction, and when my wife telephoned Aga to inquire about this, she was told that it was quite normal."
"depending on what we were making, we had to make sure that nothing else was being cooked on top, to open and close the oven door to cool it down, to leave the oven door open for a few minutes or switch the meat from one oven to another."
The chap who wrote that probably came under your heading of "are unable to cook", his name is Hester Blumenthal.
Other celebrity chefs of course are quite effusive in their endorsement - Jamie Oliver waxes lyrical about them as underwear dryers omitting to mention that Aga paid him "undisclosed amounts" to supply and fit an oven for him. Other Agas regularly appear because the shows producers "happen" to have one fitted free by Aga in the kitchen they use for filming (usually the producers own kitchen). As Aga said "Our famous customers come to us because we are discreet, and we do not discuss the arrangements we have with them,". It's nice to know you are contributing to such worthy causes when buying an Aga :-).
From the first couple of pages.....
You were saying........
You have a point. However, I was able to compare the two side by side briefly while the kitchen was being remodelled.
Without a comparison, I can't see how one could say whether there is a drying effect or not.
Washing your hands and learning to eat with a knife and fork is another, and would also allows you to dispense with your bib.
Thank you for that Sheila.
Is it necessary to be quite so patronising? and with how many models do you have experience?
Thank you Peter. That is the kind of personal experience I was looking for. It seems to me you are correct in that it is in fact "a status symbol". Unfortunately some people will pay a fortune for such a thing and yet others like to be in the middle of it by pretending to have knowledge and make 'clever' comments :) It is something I decided I would have when we moved to the right house but you have changed my mind.
Then why did you have difficulty?
Not true in the case of a modern gas model since the burner modulates.
I've measured the temperature in mine (all four ovens) using thermocouples during cooking sessions and the temperatures vary very little ( and has no grill there are many things which can't
Not really. You can grill very effectively in the roasting oven.
I have no difficulty with stir frying either, although I tend to do so very rapidly using a pre-heated cast iron pan and that works well.
to rely on *anything* written by a journalist is questionable in the extreme.
He clearly didn't, which is surprising, because to cook a Sunday lunch of the type he describes is very easy. We do this periodically for
8 or more people and have none of the difficulties he describes.He is referencing a cooker that his mother must have had at least 50 years ago, probably rather more. He doesn't mention the fuel used. This is hardly comparable to a recent one with modulaitng gas burner which is more than capable of maintaining temperature.
Ones that you have used, might limit you, but the one that I do doesn't limit me in the least, and I have a very broad taste in food as well as being critical of poor quality.
I have no idea what that was. THe gas ones require a simple clean of the combustion chamber annually. It is cool enough after about 16 hours or so after turning off to do that. It takes about 3-4 hours to come back up to temperature.
This of course, is simply journalistic rhetoric.
the rest being nonsense that the writer, Mark (whoever he is) has pulled out of nowhere.
I'm not sure why people eat stodgy rubbish like steamed puddings anyway, but that aside, of course one can cook one in a microwave quickly. In terms of a more meaningful comparison of steaming a pudding on a hob vs. using the Aga simmering oven and not needing to do anything for some time, the latter is a lot easier.
Again, one can only conclude that he or she had an old model or not a gas one.
The temperature in the simmering oven on ours doesn't drop dramatically when the lids are opened, even if for quite some time, which is not the way that one uses the Aga anyway.
We periodically do an overnight roast in the simmering oven and it always works very well. Obviously one should always thaw it first and check with a meat thermometer and start and end of cooking. THat is the case regardless of the method of cooking.
THe article is clearly a nonsense.
Obviously the temperature in an oven drops when the door is opened, but it goes back up again very quickly because the heat stored in the thermal mass of the cast iron is hugely more than that required to heat the air.
If a joint is being cooked over a 10-12 hour period, there is no way that there can be a 10 degree or 25% drop in temperature due to oven doors or lids being opened.
Who knows? Either he was using an old Aga or one without modulating heat source, or was trying to use it like a gas hob.
What he is saying doesn't stack up with a recent model gas Aga.
Which is precisely why I would set little store either way where journalists or celebrity chefs (different kinds of showmen essentially) are concerned.
I prefer to stick with my own experiences of what I know works with what I have.
Having said that, I am quite sure that the marketing managers of any cooking equipment firm would cream their jeans at the opportunity to place their products somewhere likely to be on TV.
Ah, I didn't realise you had moved to Stornoway.
The oven is used more because the hotplates are uncontrollable and the heat loss if using both is so great the ovens rapidly become useless.
partly off them.
Really good - one part burned the other cold.
If you want to spend your life standing over the thing sliding pans around as the temperature drops and some boil over. One of the more impressive fires I once went to was someone who had tried making a large amount of jam on an Aga like device and had gone to answer the phone(I couldn't tell if it was a real Aga or not as by that stage most of the kitchen was lying on top of it.)
If I have 4 ovens I can have four temperatures. I haven't yet found a need for more than the two I have and I have two temperatures which I can vary quite independently and entirely under my control. I admit I can't have four ovens whose temperatures I can't control other than by opening and closing doors and where a change in temperature in one affects the others. On the other hand I can't see why I would ever need such excitement.
Not everyone lives near to Norway in a house with no insulation or solar gain :-).
Actually you have 4 rather indeterminate, uncontrollable, fluctuating and largely unknown temperatures available. As Aga say "You don't set the heat with an Aga. You find it". Personally I never saw the attraction in this. If I want to cook something at 170deg I want to put the oven at that temperature - not play "find the heat". The thing is so useless you can't even bake a decent fruit cake in the two oven version without buying an accessory "Baking box".
You are simply making a case for having x ovens where x is a number determined by your requirements. I find I need two so I have two. Compared with a two oven Aga this gives me far greater control and much greater flexibility (as well as more useable space). If I needed four ovens I would have four and have better control over them than an Aga can achieve (and more space in them).
Can't say I've ever found this to be a problem.
Indeed, finishing late (or not at all) as the temperature falls appears to be a more common problem.
Aga "technique" is very simple and takes about 30 seconds to learn. I did go on an Aga cooking course (paid for by the owner who thought it was essential) and sat through a dreary day the highlight of which comprised instructions on drying labradors in it.
Lids have been invented since the Aga came on the market. I've actually used over 25 cookers of one sort or another and varying states of repair including mains gas, bottled gas, electric and solid fuel as well as numerous more interesting things such as plastic explosive (which BTW is an excellent cooking fuel). Other than by using faulty technique I've never had a problem with any of them drying things out.
It really wasn't difficult - just unbearably tedious.
Indeed, but not many meals require the expenditure of anything remotely like 10kW/hr of energy.
No, in a sheltered north facing kitchen it is pleasant in the summer just as it is.
Each to their own.
No - that's effective. However something isn't efficient if it is putting out a kilowatt of energy non-stop every hour of every day whether it is needed or not. You may find you need a 1kW heater going all day every day I suggest that most would not. That alone makes the device inefficient.
I really find it difficult to understand why you need a heater going in the kitchen at 14:00 on a sunny July afternoon but there you go.
Again that depends on how you go about it.
You don't make jam with an Aga by using long periods of on the hob cooking.
For most fruits, the technique is to initially boil the appropriate ingredients on the boiling plate for 10 minutes and then to cover and transfer the pan to the simmering oven, typically for about an hour. It is then removed and again boiled for a short period - typically
10-20 mins to complete the job.If need be, the simmering oven can take four medium sized pans, so one can cope with large quantities.
In terms of temperature drop, this also depends on the model and fuel used. The burner is directly under the boiling plate and the burner has a sensor located between it and the roasting oven. Thus, quite shortly after the lid is raised, the burner modulates up to compensate the heat loss.
Maybe this deteriorating thread should be in a cooking NG . Don
I wouldn't believe what is written by journalists who are simply looking for an angle.
The best advice is to go to one of the two day classes on Aga cooking and then decide on whether you like it or not.
Well done Peter Parry, exploded the myths and BS about these ancient status symbols with an extremly entertaining contribution. Cheers Don
I don't understand what you mean by plates cooling down.
As for jam-making, I make masses of jam but wouldn't dream of doing it in warm weather anyway, on any device. I pick the fruit, freeze it in pickings and jam it when the harvest has finished and I have time and inclination.
They are not really very good at any sustained cooking (which is one of the reasons they are rarely found in commercial kitchens) because the maximum heat input is only about 5 times the idle rate and once you have lost the energy stored in the mass it takes time to recover. This is simply a characteristic of all stored heat devices.
Anyway Andy, nobody would argue that you like your Aga and I'm sure you can cook on it really well. But where you are p*ing into the wind is in suggesting that they are in any way economical or practical. Don't let that spoil your enjoyment. Steam traction engines attract enthusiasts who spend many harmless hours having innocent fun with them but nobody suggests that they are a practical alternative to a modern vehicle. Could be wrong here though - any minute now some bearded old chaps in boiler suits could be angrily stabbing at their laptops with oily fingers! cheers Jacob PS Come to think when I had a solid fuel Rayburn a boiler suit was an essential accessory - do they come with the kit if you buy a new one?
Well, that's enough reading. Matthew Fort (whoever he is) obviously doesn't understand about roasting meat and baking Yorkshire. Perhaps he's a southerner.
...
Do you know something?
We've only had even hit and miss thermostats in any ovens since the C20th.
I wonder how cooks managed before then?
Actually I don't, I know. And it's not difficult - if you know what you're doing. People who need to know that an oven is 125C or some other precise temperature must be cooking straight from Cooking for Dummies by Ms Smith or Master Oliver. I learned to cook from my mother and later at school - a very long time ago. My skill is based on understanding food and processes and being able to use an oven is a very small part of that.
This summer I shall be cooking outdoors in my home built stone bread oven -but it won't be limited to bread. How many who think that an Aga is no good would even understand that process? You think you might by Googling perhaps but have you done it? I have. It's the most satisfying cooking there is.
Mary
I couldn't agree more:)))
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