I should have qualified my answer yesterday - sorry. I was brought up with a solid fuel Rayburn No 1 - which provided the cooking and heat source for the house :) My parents changed this to a later model in 1970 and switched to an AGA in the late 1980s. My mother still loves the AGA but more as a piece of kitchen furniture and source of heat and not long after my father died, had a separate electric ceramic hob fitted. She also uses the microwave more now too, but to be fair that is more down to mobility issues. The ovens on the AGA are wonderful for casserole cooking, roasting meat and turkeys - but I've had trouble with pastry and some cakes (I usually need to put pans of water on to boil on the plates to take some heat away and therefore cool the ovens), and have never made a successful Yorkshire Pudding in any of them! Plus - unless your kitchen is very large, the AGA makes the kitchen overly warm in the summer. You need to be at home a lot to really benefit from an AGA and the heat it produces whilst you're not cooking :)
You have to learn about your AGA's individual foibles and much depends on the model of AGA you're looking at - i.e. a heat storage type or range type; one friend of mine was seduced by the whole 'country lifestyle' thing and went with AGA 6:4 which looks like an AGA but is in fact a hugely expensive range cooker; she admits to having problems with regulating the oven temperature too. Another friend has a four oven gas fired model with a gas companion alongside - fuck knows how much that cost - and she adores it. This is probably down to having these different ovens for steaming, roasting, toasting, etc.
Overall, I wouldn't choose to have an AGA fitted from preference, but it wouldn't stop me buying a house if it had one! Hope this helps :)
Yes it does. So in very basic terms - if it is on heating water & the house it's just churning out heat. And there is no way to regulate the cooking end of things (other than manage the heat it's already producing - as in pans as you mention)?
The more modern models manage the heat the cast iron block produces for cooking by having more ovens to make best use of the heat differentials across the AGA. So nearest to the block is the roasting oven and grill and further away are the simmering/steaming ovens. You'll also have a boiling plate and a simmering plate on top which gives you some variation in temperature for stove top cooking. Like I say, you'd have to learn the individual characteristics of your particular AGA. I understand from my friend with the large AGA that you can buy special AGA cookware that you use in the ovens to increase flexibility. I've just had a quick look around and this explains things quite well. All the best!
Cheers! This makes sense. There is an AGA shop in nearby Wilmslow - home to most of the Man Utd team and the wealthy Cheshire set. I've never even looked inside! I must say it still doesn't appeal very much...
We'll probably end up in a new-build flat and have no need of thsi knowledge, but it helps for considering options.
You have to learn about your AGA's individual foibles and much depends on the model of AGA you're looking at - i.e. a heat storage type or range type; one friend of mine was seduced by the whole 'country lifestyle' thing and went with AGA 6:4 which looks like an AGA but is in fact a hugely expensive range cooker; she admits to having problems with regulating the oven temperature too. Another friend has a four oven gas fired model with a gas companion alongside - fuck knows how much that cost - and she adores it. This is probably down to having these different ovens for steaming, roasting, toasting, etc.
Overall, I wouldn't choose to have an AGA fitted from preference, but it wouldn't stop me buying a house if it had one! Hope this helps :)
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We'll probably end up in a new-build flat and have no need of thsi knowledge, but it helps for considering options.
Thank you.
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