Discussion
PaulPGreen said:
blueg33 said:
I guarantee the everyone who has an Aga also has a Dualit toaster - both are overpriced and don't do the job as well as other options available. People buy them for the name and then spend lots of time justifying them.
Everyone I know who has an Aga also has a regular normal oven for doing things like normal cooking in. How does an Aga manage to be so huge and have such tiny ovens.
Shows how much you know.Everyone I know who has an Aga also has a regular normal oven for doing things like normal cooking in. How does an Aga manage to be so huge and have such tiny ovens.
We have an Aga and a Kitchen Aid toaster.
I try to run a house that only has intelligent tech and preferably none at all and that thing justs asks for a punch in the face every morning. It makes me look
Forward to winter when I can use the big dumb Aga instead.
AndrewCrown said:
blueg33 said:
I guarantee the everyone who has an Aga also has a Dualit toaster - both are overpriced and don't do the job as well as other options available. People buy them for the name and then spend lots of time justifying them.
Everyone I know who has an Aga also has a regular normal oven for doing things like normal cooking in. How does an Aga manage to be so huge and have such tiny ovens.
Perhaps... But the best toast in the world is made on an Aga. Everyone I know who has an Aga also has a regular normal oven for doing things like normal cooking in. How does an Aga manage to be so huge and have such tiny ovens.
Amateurish said:
StanleyT said:
Amateurish said:
We have an AGA, I hate it.
It is rubbish at cooking.
It is hugely wasteful of energy.
I just spent £2k on repairs after the control board failed.
Cripes who charged you that. Not AGA I hope.It is rubbish at cooking.
It is hugely wasteful of energy.
I just spent £2k on repairs after the control board failed.
We had all the burner and thermo-control gubbins re-done by AGA for £600. Yours is gas not electric? Though the installer did joke, and I thought it was a joke at the time, that they fit the same controller and burner be it a two oven like ours, or the four oven, they just charge twice as much for the four oven. Perhaps not a joke, installer was from AGA Wirral.
Semantically, though, AGA I'm sure told me your cooker is an "AGA" if it is thermal (gas, wood, coke) and heats water etc. If electric. It is an AGA Range(master?) cooker? The difference being in the quality of the moisture in the air surrounding the cooking object - in a thermal (none electric AGA) there is a significant airflow due to combustion that you control with the oven baffles and grill plates and that is what makes the difference in cooking as you keep putting fresh moist air near your meat whereas in an electric oven you just dry the meat out as it is radiative heat transfer rather than convective and the higher heater temp / food temp required makes the food dry out quicker.
Or so the butler tells me.
Here is an old picture of the cooker when it was 59 years old, had just had the town gas burner replaced and a new electric thermal control unit put in the brown cupboard to the left. Now 72 years old. I got the history of the cooker out of the myriad of old house documents. Turns out that when on owner moved from here to a house two streets away, the cooker moved. 10 years later, that house was bought by a cousin who then moved back, with Aga, into the same house, the AGA that was in our house, then being moved next door. Next door sold it around the time we moved in for about £900 (I think for the weight of metal). The component list for ours is 140kg cast iron and 500kg firebricks.
My mother won one in a competition. It was worth 10k and this was circa mid-1990's. It replaced a legacy rayburn.
Gas fed. During the winter it heated the downstairs. Turned off during the summer.
It was used every single day when turned on - breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Toaster etc.
It was still there and working when they sold up in 2015.
Gas fed. During the winter it heated the downstairs. Turned off during the summer.
It was used every single day when turned on - breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Toaster etc.
It was still there and working when they sold up in 2015.
Arguably makes more financial sense than renting a nondescript German car for £400 a month limited to 5000 miles a year, or a stainless steel Rolex.
Each to their own, I don't have a chimney in the right place, don't fancy electric and have no social standing, but I can go for nearly a week without leaving home so the warmth in the kitchen would be appealing.
Each to their own, I don't have a chimney in the right place, don't fancy electric and have no social standing, but I can go for nearly a week without leaving home so the warmth in the kitchen would be appealing.
StanleyT said:
If you haven't got thermal combustion heat recovery on your AGA (very few electrics do) then yep expensive to run and they don't have the same cook quality of thermal AGAs.
How would that work? There's no combustion, so no waste heat? Either it's heating the cooker, or the cat.StanleyT said:
Semantically, though, AGA I'm sure told me your cooker is an "AGA" if it is thermal (gas, wood, coke) and heats water etc. If electric. It is an AGA Range(master?) cooker? The difference being in the quality of the moisture in the air surrounding the cooking object - in a thermal (none electric AGA) there is a significant airflow due to combustion that you control with the oven baffles and grill plates and that is what makes the difference in cooking as you keep putting fresh moist air near your meat whereas in an electric oven you just dry the meat out as it is radiative heat transfer rather than convective and the higher heater temp / food temp required makes the food dry out quicker.
Surely air enters the combustion chamber via a vent at the bottom and the exhaust goes up the flue. It doesn't go through the ovens at all.ETA if you want things brown, dry is good. Which is why a fan oven (aka convection oven...) works so well.
Edited by Bill on Friday 15th November 07:15
StanleyT said:
AndrewCrown said:
blueg33 said:
I guarantee the everyone who has an Aga also has a Dualit toaster - both are overpriced and don't do the job as well as other options available. People buy them for the name and then spend lots of time justifying them.
Everyone I know who has an Aga also has a regular normal oven for doing things like normal cooking in. How does an Aga manage to be so huge and have such tiny ovens.
Perhaps... But the best toast in the world is made on an Aga. Everyone I know who has an Aga also has a regular normal oven for doing things like normal cooking in. How does an Aga manage to be so huge and have such tiny ovens.
DonkeyApple said:
StanleyT said:
AndrewCrown said:
blueg33 said:
I guarantee the everyone who has an Aga also has a Dualit toaster - both are overpriced and don't do the job as well as other options available. People buy them for the name and then spend lots of time justifying them.
Everyone I know who has an Aga also has a regular normal oven for doing things like normal cooking in. How does an Aga manage to be so huge and have such tiny ovens.
Perhaps... But the best toast in the world is made on an Aga. Everyone I know who has an Aga also has a regular normal oven for doing things like normal cooking in. How does an Aga manage to be so huge and have such tiny ovens.
PaulPGreen said:
blueg33 said:
I guarantee the everyone who has an Aga also has a Dualit toaster - both are overpriced and don't do the job as well as other options available. People buy them for the name and then spend lots of time justifying them.
Everyone I know who has an Aga also has a regular normal oven for doing things like normal cooking in. How does an Aga manage to be so huge and have such tiny ovens.
Shows how much you know.Everyone I know who has an Aga also has a regular normal oven for doing things like normal cooking in. How does an Aga manage to be so huge and have such tiny ovens.
We have an Aga and a Kitchen Aid toaster.
Shoukie said:
PaulPGreen said:
blueg33 said:
I guarantee the everyone who has an Aga also has a Dualit toaster - both are overpriced and don't do the job as well as other options available. People buy them for the name and then spend lots of time justifying them.
Everyone I know who has an Aga also has a regular normal oven for doing things like normal cooking in. How does an Aga manage to be so huge and have such tiny ovens.
Shows how much you know.Everyone I know who has an Aga also has a regular normal oven for doing things like normal cooking in. How does an Aga manage to be so huge and have such tiny ovens.
We have an Aga and a Kitchen Aid toaster.
But Shoukie... you're missing out on the dimples!
Most people I know with an AGA are country/horsey/farming types, and don’t have them for ‘image’. We have them because our houses are old and cold and we spend a lot of time outside. An AGA gives a nice warm kitchen, a place to dry clothes and stuff, and and they last for generations. Plus they cook simple food in large quantities at little notice, which sorts the country lifestyle too.
We actually have an electric one (using green electricity) which is not quite as good at cooking as an oil AGA tbh, but does everything else equally well. Plus we can turn it off on hot summer days, which was one of the few things I didn’t like about our old oil one.
But amazed at the level of hostility coming from folks who don’t own them. Honestly, if we lived and worked somewhere warm and dry, and planned to move house ever, we wouldn’t bother with the expense either. But given the country lifestyle I wouldn’t be without one.
We actually have an electric one (using green electricity) which is not quite as good at cooking as an oil AGA tbh, but does everything else equally well. Plus we can turn it off on hot summer days, which was one of the few things I didn’t like about our old oil one.
But amazed at the level of hostility coming from folks who don’t own them. Honestly, if we lived and worked somewhere warm and dry, and planned to move house ever, we wouldn’t bother with the expense either. But given the country lifestyle I wouldn’t be without one.
Flibble said:
paulrockliffe said:
I have a bandsaw in the house. Far more useful than an Aga and the woodburner. I wouldn't have an Aga, but I do have two woodburners.
I have two bandsaws, but only one woodburner. 
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