Rayburn efficiency?

[The Natural Philosopher]

But what energy costs? Agas are MORE efficient than CH boilers.

Only when you don't need CH at all do they 'cost' and then we switch em off.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Well it is right, if you take the trouble to set it up and use an internal rack hung thermometer.

What it isn't, is rapidly and easily adjustable.

Which is why the pro chefs who have to produce just about anything in a hurry won't use em.

Quiet a few have them a6 HOME though.

It can be shit, but then I vidily remember walking into a college friends mothers immaculate and hige kitchen, and being invited to lunch..I thought 'wow, with a stove like that, and worktops everywhere, she miust be a real good cook'

Imagine my disaapointment when te ginsodden woamn removed a load of frozen burgers and chips from the deep freeze, shoved them on a tray in the oven, and heated up a tin of baked beans..

Shit food cvan be produced on any cooker.

Good food is understanding what you have and using it to its best. I've produced excellent meals on a butane camping stove.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Never used a hob instead of an oven meself :D

Seriously though, totally agree on grilling and stir frying. The toast IS a little better since it takes longer and its less violently heated. I wouldn't 'die' for it though. Its good, but not that good.

The hob technique is simply a question of realising both the temperatures on the hobs, and the inevitable deacy of those if you go in for prolonged hob work, and the chances of dropping the oven temps if you do.

The aga is promarliy a damned good oven, the hobs are useful, but a lot of modern style food seems to be based on what chefs can turn out in fancy restaurants in 5 minutes - a lot of stir fry, grill and flash frying. The Aga comes from a more lesiurely age when meals were preapred in advance.

I'd back roast meat and two veg in an aga aginst any competition anywhere.

Also cake and bread baking, pizzas and the like.

Thats it basically. If you want lightly seared tuna steaks on a bed of couscous with roquette salad and a balsamic drizzled garnish, an aga is of very little use to you.

If you want roast pork, roast potatoes, roast parsnips, red cabbage and apple simmered for seveal hours in the bottom oven, hot plates and a place to stand the Rioja to warm it, frankly an aga is unbeatable.

As ar as strir frying goes, even an electric hob is a real struggle. Only gas really carries the hot gases up around the curved sides and heats a wok properly, although I have had a fair successes on an openb charcoal fire. We actually find that the best a;lternatie is to roast vegetables at the top of the oven after tossng in a coating of oil.

Steaming is easy - put your puddings ins a 'bain marie' in the bottom oven..

Scrambled eggs? again I use the microwave..it is far less likley to separate the millk. Its also fantastic for CRISPY bacon..suaages and bacon may be fried, but I tend to use the oven instead. Chips - REAL chips - are done in a wok on te hot hob...whilst fried eggs are dne on teh cooler one

Pasta and sauces - its perfect. Garlic bread in the oven, sauce made on the cooler hob, and the pasta boils on the hot hob.

The biggest danger of te aga - and its reputatin for gghahstly food - comes from stupid housewives who have discocvered that the warming oven means never having to time your meals properly..meat that gest cooked too early, and just about anything else, goes in there to wait for te veg to be ready. Result is soggy and disgusting.

But then in any other scenario, it would be worse - over cooked meat or raw vegetables..

As I said, those are not really much good even on an electric hob.

Ther are sadly a lot of aga owners like that. There are also a fair few who are not.

This is just rotten technique.

We use roasting dishes with covers that can be removed to adjust teh heat, make sure the oven is hot to start with, and te majority of te roasting is done BEFIRE teh vegetables are set to boil.

The treacle tart goes in just as the main course is removed, at the top of te hot oven, which will be down from its 210C to about 180C - just right for te tart. By the time the main course is finsihed, the tart will be perfect.

The yiorkshire puds go in late, on te oven top, when te meat has been put in te bottom oven to alow the temperature to stabilise. Its better than 'tresting it' as the outside cools off less.

The gravy and te veg are all doen last of all on the top whils the roast potatoes are still roasting and the puds are baking.

It sounds like he still can't.

Bad workman etc.

I learnt to cook on a one ring gas hob in college.

Mad. I turn mine off the night before, the man comes in and is gone again by 2pm, and its up o temp by teh time the next meal is readu to be cooked - or would be if the annual service awasn;t arrianged to coincide with the summer, when its off anyway.

This must ahve been an old coal fired one...those are vile, but when you haven't got an elternative, they do work..just. however they need to be filled up with coal at least 4 hours before cooking starts, because any attempt to pile coal on later will simply LOWER teh temperature.

No, its a n attactive space heater, that can be harnessed to provide free energy for a certain style of traditional cooking, which it does very well indeed.

IF you have the intelligence to understand how it works.

It doesn't actually.

I have never found it that bad.

You do get an imediate drop on opening te doors, but it son goes away - the air mass is trivial compared to the mass of the cast iron.

Using tehobs does reduce oven temperarres - but not by 25%. I see about a

30 deg C variation on 200-210 C on tehe maoin oven, and a lot less on te cool oven - noramlly from around 105C down to 95C or so.

Yep. a nouvae wanker undoubtedly.

I don't think they are the greatest cookers ever made, and people who buy them as fashion statements won;t be able to cook on them just by gazing at pictures in magainbes, either.

But they are servicable enough if you take the trouble to play to their strengths and work around the weaknesses.

I didn't buy ours purely as a cooker. Its there to add warmth (phsyical and aesthetic) to a very large kitchen, and being well aware of its limitations, it has the aga companion electric cooker bolted on the side (which has even SMALLER ovens..)

That plus a microwave covers all the bases we need.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Yes. For example, the use of e.g. Le Creuset cast riron pots that are equally at home on the hobs or in the oven is one useful trick.

Sizziling up onions and browning off meat before adding stock to simmer in the oven becomes second nature.

Using the ovens in summertines insead of having stuff on the simmer on top of a conventional cooker also reduces kitchen heat.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Thery are not if you have learn by trail and experience yoyr standard cuts and the oven..but in terms of when e.g. you are doing a dibner party, with a larger chuink than yoiu normally use, or of a different cut, they are so cheap, that to not have one seems a waste.

KNOWING that youy beef is EXACTLY rare in the middle enables you to get it more right.

And knowing that your turkey isn't dangerously raw in its armpits and crotch is also very useful.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Yes, but what did you spend on heating the house?

That heat doesn't go up the chimney, it heats the kitchen.

Reducing CH needs.

If you are telling me you can get through a winter on 336KW of total heat per quarter, then you mnust live inside a polystyrene block.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Mm. Of course if te vermiculite is in poor sahpe, it WILL bleed 700-600W instead of 50-600W...

Since its normal to whip the hobs off anway, that check is about 15 seconds worth of activity.

And at least on an aga the doors fit well enough for te rope seals to be something worth checking - unlike many electric cookers I have had that simply need to be twisted straight before you can SHUT the door.

Actually all the oil fired aga needs is the feed pipe annually cleared of carbon build up - the rest you check on a 3-5 years basis.

[The Natural Philosopher]

It is more ffeicient than teh gas boiler you use.

Sadly it also priduces a lot of water vapour.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Actually, in midl equuinioctal weather, you need a couple of hundred watts,if that, to heat a smallish room.

I agree Agas in small well insulated kitchens simply are stupid. We have an aneormous kitchen and open doors through to orgerareas - and a bedroiom above, It heats the lot. Except in freezing weather,

[The Natural Philosopher]

And there it is. The balanced view.

It works in some sutuations for some cooking styles.

It suits my situation and MOST of my cooking styles. I like it.

It doesn't f in a modern well insulated house with a pokey kitchem, toflash fry ditzy food from the Guardian color section

[Andy Wade]

That's complete nonsense, surely? How can an open-flued non-condensing appliance possibly compete with a modern condensing gas boiler?

[Ophelia]

Thank you:) I will give it some thought:)

O

[Chris Bacon]

If you must wibble everywhere you go, at least learn to snip.

[Peter Parry]

I don't think there is a difference. Certainly I have never observed one. The claim first appeared in the advertisements of a number of "range" cooker manufacturers in the mid 1920's and in Aga advertising in the early 1930's.

I suspect it arose because the competition they were facing in those days came mainly from one gas cooker, the Radiation Ltd New World H16, which was the first cooker to incorporate thermostatic control (using a similar modulation system to the one now used in the gas Aga). Introduced in 1923, one year before the Aga was made, it was probably the biggest single advance in cooker technology of the century. This cooker and its successors virtually killed off the range stove industry over the next two decades.

Because it used an open gas flame at the back of the oven it had to have a vent at the top and a constant air flow to keep the flame burning. The range cooker manufacturers, all of whose designs used more or less sealed boxes, jumped upon this as a flaw and claimed the airflow dried out food cooking in the oven. Aga have used the claim ever since.

[Mary Fisher]

...

Round here they don't use newspapers to wrap chips any more.

Mary

[Peter Parry]

They are not more efficient than a modern oil or gas boiler - the range cooker industry even had to negotiate a category of their own for water heating because they found it difficult to reach even 85% efficiency, most still wallow around 75%.

Something else which needs to be factored in is price. A new four oven gas Aga today costs over GBP 7,000. If you want the companion module - a simple double oven and hob it adds a staggering GBP 2,600. On top of that you need to add the cost of reinforcing the floor.

GBP 9,600 for a cooker which then costs a further GBP500 a year to run simply isn't worthwhile when set against its mediocre performance.

[Andy Hall]

We weren't discussing water heating. Other than as a backup in case of electricity failure, it isn't interesting to heat water cylinders at a rate of 3-5kW.

In terms of space heating, if one compares flue temperatures at exit from the house it is clear that a gas Aga with conventional flue is very efficient.

Why?

Why would you need to reinforce a concrete floor?

1) At the measured rate of 700W, at a gas price of 2p a unit, that adds up to around £120. 2) You may have had mediochre performance with some old model at some point in the past. I achieve rather better.

[Andy Hall]

I disagree. I can sear oily fish very well on the griddle. I don't bother with the couscous and limit the balsamico.

Unnecessary as well. Timing is pretty easy.

... or they can be refreshed instead.

Runs a restaurant in Bray which isn't bad, although he does specialise in scrambled egg flavoured ice cream.

>

[Mary Fisher]

I wondered that too. If you want something you pay for it. If you want the best you pay for it.

A son bought an all singing all dancing cooker in stainless steel, which I wouldn't give house room. It cost a LOT of money but it's what he wanted and he can afford it (hmm, I wonder if that was the meaning behind the question?).

His cooker does have the advantage over mine in that its large oven will accommodate a pig's head or a proper whole ham. I'll be using in it at some time but it wouldn't be worth my having an oven as huge as that for most of my cooking.

Each to his own.

Or a solid earth one or a stone flagged one or... well, perhaps if you have a flimsy modern house it might be necessary. Our 1930s wooden floorboards didn't sag at all.

Mary

[John]

Come on Andy, The flue of an Aga has a draught break which entrains lots of cool air so any temperature after such flu break is NOT an indicator of efficiency I used to laugh when I came across test point holes drilled after flue breaks, usually with service record cards dutifully filled in with combustion analyser results taken straight out of the manual but quite obviously not the readings from the point :-(