I first saw these on the Two Fat Ladies cooking show, and I began to lust after them (the stoves, not the Fat Ladies, God rest both their souls). They weigh a ton (the stoves not the Two Fat… right), so the floor has to be sturdy and they cost in the thousands. I looked at one here in town–the smallest they had–and it was over $3,000. They run as high as $20,000. I’m a renter now and probably will be for the rest of my life, so must say goodbye to this dream (and others, too).
I look for them now in the background of all the British mystery and travel shows that I watch. I’m surprised they haven’t caught on in our extreme foodie culture here, as IMHO, they are the Rolls Royce of ranges.
I’m fascinated by them too, but in reading up I came across a couple of drawbacks. Both come down to them being on all the time, unlike a regular range that you only turn on when you need it. First, they heat up your house, and two, they’re expensive to run. I realize there are gas and oil burning versions and they’re different, but somewhere I read something about $10K a year just to operate a full-size one.
A hob is the flat top of an oven and was used in the distant past to refer to a cooking surface in England.
No relation to hobgoblins. Also called just hobs, who may have been descended from Roman Household Gods ( Romans were dominated by religion ).
Modern Agas don’t have to be on all the time, but Esses are cheaper and have been made in Barnoldswick since 1854. Prolly not available abroad for all I know.
Hob was the name for a goblin ( and also a mediaeval christian name, descended like many, many names from the germanic **Robert **), hobgoblinsare related faeryfolk, that second link suggests your derivation.
In Scandinavia the goblins ( Nisses ) like porridge from their patrons, as Andersen related. This would require a hob.
AFAICT…
They’re always on, so you don’t need to wait to preheat them
They keep your kitchen/house warm (as mentioned)
They look traditional/smack of olde worlde charm to Americans
The original AGA was designed to operate continously, like your boiler / ducted heating. It doesn’t change temperature, which is part of its appeal: it’s always ready, always at temperature, not even drifting in use.
And the different chambers are at different temperatures: you’ve got your warming oven, your baking oven, your slow-roast…
Also, its big by design: it was for people who didn’t have central heating or electricity and wanted double ovens.
I don’t know much about Aga ranges (they had some on display in a high-end mall here in Jakarta…I scurried away since, as we only rent, there was no point in being tempted) but I share your affection for Two Fat Ladies.
We inherited a gas-fired Aga with the London house we bought 6 years ago. I have the following observations.
Yes, it was more expensive to run than a standard cooker, what with it being on all the time. Having said that, once it had reached operating temperature it required only a little fuel to maintain it. Once you started using it though it would start to suck gas again.
Someone above mentioned that it maintains a constant temperature, but that wasn’t my experience. After a long period of use (Christmas day for example) the operating temperature gauge would drop considerably. One mitigated against this by cooking slightly differently, eg never simmering things on the hotplates for the full cooking time, but bringing the dish to a boil, then moving it to the simmering oven. You more or less have to abandon the notion of cooking something at x degrees per y lbs plus z minutes, and go back to the method of “and cook it until it be ryte well dun”. Joints of meat did cook beautifully though (supposedly a radiance vs convection thing?)
The hotplates were never really hot enough. Certainly not for flash frying.
They certainly do heat up the kitchen, and how! Ours was switched off for at least 6 months of the year and we switched over to the gas hob / electric oven for the other 6, otherwise the heat would have been intolerable.Cozy in winter though, and yes, occasionally it was handy not having to wait until it heated up.
They can be fussy little bitches, well certainly the gas-fired ones. We had to have it serviced once a year. If we didn’t it would refuse to start after its 6 month hibernation.
So, unless you live in a cold climate (far north of Sweden perhaps), and you’re going to use it to provide heating and hot water as well as cooking… not worth it.
As it happens, we moved from London to the countryside about a year ago, and inhereted another Aga. This time though a completely knackered solid-fuel burning model. There’s no way we’re paying to have it renovated; who wants to get up at 5am every morning to fill it up with coke or whatever the damn thing eats. So we’re stuck with it, we can’t even get rid of it for scrap value :mad:
Just to expand on my point 2 above. The reason for not overusing the hotplates is because once you lift their (very heavy and well-insulated) covers they cause the whole oven system to lose heat very quickly. So if you were cooking something like a casserole, you would soften the onions, brown the meat etc on the hotplate, then once everything was in the pot and at a rolling boil, you’d move it to the simmering oven to finish cooking. You’re ideally aiming for a 20/80 split between cooking on the hotplate and the simmering oven.
The Aga ovens are capacious. They’re so deep that it’s perfectly possible, for example, to have one roasting tray at the back roasting your veggies while you have another tray in front of it roasting a joint of meat.
The areas around the hotplates on top are great for keeping sauces, gravies etc warm if you’ve prepped them a wee bit too early.
The Aga certainly made me think a bit more about how things cook. Instead of mechanically following the temp and timings of a recipe, I was forced to think much more about “done-ness”, if that makes sense?
The ovens are dead easy to clean. Basically anything that gets on the oven walls gets carbonised as they’re constantly hot, so they just need brushing out once in a while, they never get a build-up of gunk.
If you get the three oven model (roast / simmer / warm) apparently the warming oven is great for reviving a poorly lamb :dubious:
