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Rayburn efficiency?
On Sun, 15 Jan 2006 12:10:56 +0000, Chris Bacon
wrote: Andy Hall wrote: Chris Bacon wrote: owdman wrote: John wrote: [lots of stuff about Agas & Rayburns] Or quicker and simpler - go out and buy a proper cooker! Don't think I've ever heard of a quality restaurant (or a crap one, even) using Agas or Rayburns to cook for their customers.. presumably they use inferior cookers to cook their superior food.. LOL. That's a rather stupid remark. Coming from you with your arguments, that's a bit rich. No it isn't. My points are perfectly sound. If you don't wish or are unable to think laterally, then there is little I can do about that. Obviously the scale is very different. Commercial restaurants don't use domestic cookers either. Neither do they use commercial versions of Agas/Rayburns, do they. Of course not. I didn't say that a storage cooker was appropriate for large commercial scale cooking. Your argument is equivalent to suggesting that a car is of no use because it can't reasonably be used to stock a supermarket. There are, however, a few small country house hotels around which do use an Aga for cooking because their customers appreciate it. You mean B&Bs. No I mean what I wrote. -- ..andy |
Rayburn efficiency?
"Andy Hall" wrote in message ... On 15 Jan 2006 01:50:27 -0800, wrote: A conventional set up of a cooker or a cooker and hob is quite different. Firstly, insulation is comparatively poor for the oven and large amounts of heat (2-3kW) are released into the room when it is running. Secondly, the designs are poor. The one-size-fits-all fan oven is one of the worst services to proper cooking ever invented. Oh I disagree with that! I'm very satisfied with mine, it gives consistently better, more reliable results than any gas cooker I've ever had. It limits the range of temperatures available The temperature range on mine hasn't been found wanting for any of my demands on it. And I'm very demanding. and dries the food badly. Eh? Mary |
Rayburn efficiency?
"Steve Firth" wrote in message ... Andy Hall wrote: unlike Aga owners I can cook. That's a very silly thing to say. |
Rayburn efficiency?
On Sun, 15 Jan 2006 10:22:03 +0000, Andy Hall
wrote: The Aga produces heat at a virtually constant rate of around 700W. It is released in part in the kitchen and in part from the lower parts of the flue where it usefully warms the house. Just what's really needed between June and September. The cooking techniques are different from conventional cookers in that there are a wide range of temperatures available across the four ovens and a large proportion of cooking operations that would be done on the top on a conventional cooker are done in the ovens. Thus, the top plates, proportionately, are not used as much as the ovens. The cooking technique is exactly the same as any other oven/hob. The deficiencies of the Aga hotplates and the total lack of control over their temperature means things you would normally do on a hob you have no choice but to do in an oven. You can do exactly the same in any other oven. A conventional set up of a cooker or a cooker and hob is quite different. Firstly, insulation is comparatively poor for the oven and large amounts of heat (2-3kW) are released into the room when it is running. Ultimately every conventional oven, no matter what its insulation, sheds all its heat into the room it is in. The Aga is somewhat different in that it puts some of its heat out of the chimney to heat the world and dumps the remaining heat out into the room 24/7 whether or not it is needed. Secondly, the designs are poor. The one-size-fits-all fan oven is one of the worst services to proper cooking ever invented. It limits the range of temperatures available and dries the food badly. I'm not sure how you call control from 40 deg to 240deg "limiting the range of temperature available" but its a greater range and more controllable than an Aga. As for drying food out badly - mine doesn't at all. It is no different in that respect from an Aga, and I used one of those dreadful things for a couple of years. There needs to be much more use of the hob. You are able to use the hob more, you don't have to. At around 2-3kW per burner, it is very easy to be producing 10-12kW released into a small space in the kitchen while cooking. Not unless you are trying to process a horse all at once. I'm not sure what you would cook which requires all four burners on full power continuously for 3 hours but it wouldn't be a meal most people would recognise. If I'm cooking a fairly formal meal for 6 people it will take about 4-5kW/hr, a normal evening meal closer to 1-3kW/hr That is the essential point. There is no value in having this amount of heat released into a small space because it will overheat it, necessitating opening of the windows. In the summer I frequently open the windows, in the winter never. For the times of the year when the heating is on it is never necessary to open a window when cooking. At that point, the heat is wasted. This is a very different proposition to having 700W released on a continuous basis and forming part of the heating of the house. I really want a 1kW fire burning non stop in the kitchen all through the summer. If you think about the amount of heat required to heat a room in a typical house (whatever that is), it is generally much closer to 700W than 10kW. If I want to heat a house I'll buy an efficient heater I can control. Buying an inefficient heater with no control makes no sense. THere may be social reasons for buying an Aga, there are neither culinary nor efficiency ones. -- Peter Parry. http://www.wpp.ltd.uk/ |
Rayburn efficiency?
On Sun, 15 Jan 2006 12:06:24 +0000, Chris Bacon
wrote: wrote: Andy Hall wrote: [ about Agas/Rayburns ] I think that you must have missed my point. Yes I have - what is it exactly? That, flying in the face of reality as shown by replies here, and other *real world* experience, he's right, and everyone else is wrong? Do you actually have an Aga, or have you ever used or lived in a house with one? If you haven't, then how would you be in a position to comment either way? I have made the point, and so did TNP, that an Aga can contribute usefully to the space heating of the house. In that respect, when one takes the broad view, rather than the narrow one that you have, it is an efficient way of providing some of the space heating. I also pointed out, that IME, it is a great way to cook once you learn the techniques. I found that pretty easy, not everybody does. Some people feel that they can only cook on a gas flame that they can turn up and down because that is the only way they can control what's going on. For them, that may be the case, but it certainly is not the only way to do so. You have certainly missed mine! There's none so blind as those that *will not* see. Quite. -- ..andy |
Rayburn efficiency?
Andy Hall wrote:
On Sun, 15 Jan 2006 00:01:17 +0000, Steve Firth wrote: Andy Hall wrote: On a day like today, when it's cold and drizzling outside, it's a real pleasure to come in from an early morning walk, warm up, dry out and have some toast of unassailable quality prepared on the Aga. Funny how when Aga owners rant about their cookers the selling points seem to be toast, stews and keeping the pets warm. I don't need to sell anything in terms of cookers. Aga toast toast is legendary, And also the only advantage that Aga users can think of. It's also a downright load of old ******** since I get better toast out of a toaster. it is true; however one can cook anything else very well also, and certainly better than can be achieved in fan ovens and the like. Bull. Personally I don't think that's worth the energy costs, but then again, unlike Aga owners I can cook. Generally people who criticise storage cookers have never tried one or read something in a magazine, both of which make their comments meaningless. You pull that one every time I cxriticise Agas. I've owned both Agas and Rayburns. I've also removed them for the inefficient pointless piles of crap they are. If they have tried one, then either they had a very old or badly set up one or themselves are unable to cook, since it is really very easy. And very limited. No decent progessional chef uses and Aga. The ovens are too small, and the temperature is never right. Aga owners cook in a particular way, the food they produce is **** but they are used to eating it. |
Rayburn efficiency?
Andy Hall wrote:
There are, however, a few small country house hotels around which do use an Aga for cooking because their customers appreciate it. Name one. |
Rayburn efficiency?
On Sun, 15 Jan 2006 12:35:24 -0000, "Mary Fisher"
wrote: "Andy Hall" wrote in message .. . On 15 Jan 2006 01:50:27 -0800, wrote: A conventional set up of a cooker or a cooker and hob is quite different. Firstly, insulation is comparatively poor for the oven and large amounts of heat (2-3kW) are released into the room when it is running. Secondly, the designs are poor. The one-size-fits-all fan oven is one of the worst services to proper cooking ever invented. Oh I disagree with that! I'm very satisfied with mine, it gives consistently better, more reliable results than any gas cooker I've ever had. I wan't really comparing with conventional gas cookers though. It limits the range of temperatures available The temperature range on mine hasn't been found wanting for any of my demands on it. And I'm very demanding. and dries the food badly. Eh? The (Neff) one that we had certainly did. -- ..andy |
Rayburn efficiency?
On Sun, 15 Jan 2006 12:38:15 +0000, Peter Parry
wrote: On Sun, 15 Jan 2006 10:22:03 +0000, Andy Hall wrote: The Aga produces heat at a virtually constant rate of around 700W. It is released in part in the kitchen and in part from the lower parts of the flue where it usefully warms the house. Just what's really needed between June and September. It can be. We found this last year that there were very few days when a low level of background heating wasn't appreciated. The cooking techniques are different from conventional cookers in that there are a wide range of temperatures available across the four ovens and a large proportion of cooking operations that would be done on the top on a conventional cooker are done in the ovens. Thus, the top plates, proportionately, are not used as much as the ovens. The cooking technique is exactly the same as any other oven/hob. No it isn't. The ovens are used for many more things with the Aga because of the versatility and range of temperatures available. The deficiencies of the Aga hotplates and the total lack of control over their temperature means things you would normally do on a hob you have no choice but to do in an oven. Certainly not. It is not the temperature of the plates themselves that actually matters (although there are two plates), but the rate of heat transfer to the pans. The plates are substantially larger, and one can easily fit pans partly on or partly off them. Therefore, one can have a greater range of control with more pans than can be achieved on a typical 4 burner hob. This is evidenced by how easy it is to prepare things involving very gentle heating such as sauces and anything where very gentle simmering of milk without risk of boiling over is needed. Moreover, there is a warming area which is ideal for melting chocolate or butter. There is no messing around with basins in pans of water. You can do exactly the same in any other oven. The trouble is that you can't because you don't have the wide ranges of temperature available at the same time. A conventional set up of a cooker or a cooker and hob is quite different. Firstly, insulation is comparatively poor for the oven and large amounts of heat (2-3kW) are released into the room when it is running. Ultimately every conventional oven, no matter what its insulation, sheds all its heat into the room it is in. The Aga is somewhat different in that it puts some of its heat out of the chimney to heat the world and dumps the remaining heat out into the room 24/7 whether or not it is needed. It actually releases extremely little heat through the flue. If I go into the loft, the flue from mine is barely warm to the touch. In terms of space heating, for almost all of the year, having 700W or so of heat released into the house as background warmth is beneficial. I run the CH with night setback anyway, so this fits very well. Secondly, the designs are poor. The one-size-fits-all fan oven is one of the worst services to proper cooking ever invented. It limits the range of temperatures available and dries the food badly. I'm not sure how you call control from 40 deg to 240deg "limiting the range of temperature available" but its a greater range and more controllable than an Aga. Very easily. I can have that range of temperatures continuously available and they are used for cooking different things at different speeds simultaneously. The control comes about from moving the items to where you want them and how quickly you want the end result. In a fan oven, there is little or no range of temperature at a point in time, so much less flexibility. Either things have to be cooked sequentially with the temperature varied to suit, or carefully timed so that they are not finished too early or too late. With the Aga, I have flexibility of temperature, of timing and of position, and I also have places to maintain finished things without deterioration if they do happen to finish early, which is rare I can appreciate that some people have difficulty with this technique and perhaps never master it. Neother of us had any difficulty at all. As for drying food out badly - mine doesn't at all. Then you are very lucky. Mine certainly did, and it's rather obvious when one considers the effect of blowing air over things. It is no different in that respect from an Aga, and I used one of those dreadful things for a couple of years. You must have had difficulty with use, because we found a huge benefit in this respect. There needs to be much more use of the hob. You are able to use the hob more, you don't have to. With a limited range of simultaneous temperatures and reading from most recipe books, that is fairly inevitable. At around 2-3kW per burner, it is very easy to be producing 10-12kW released into a small space in the kitchen while cooking. Not unless you are trying to process a horse all at once. I'm not sure what you would cook which requires all four burners on full power continuously for 3 hours but it wouldn't be a meal most people would recognise. If I'm cooking a fairly formal meal for 6 people it will take about 4-5kW/hr, a normal evening meal closer to 1-3kW/hr In a well insulated kitchen, it doesn't take very long for the release of 10kW to heat it to the mid 30s - certainly not 3hrs. That is the essential point. There is no value in having this amount of heat released into a small space because it will overheat it, necessitating opening of the windows. In the summer I frequently open the windows, in the winter never. For the times of the year when the heating is on it is never necessary to open a window when cooking. With the Aga, we seldom find it necessary to open the windows at all from the perspective of losing some heat. Use of the ovens means that the extractor doesn't get a lot of use either At that point, the heat is wasted. This is a very different proposition to having 700W released on a continuous basis and forming part of the heating of the house. I really want a 1kW fire burning non stop in the kitchen all through the summer. Do you? Personally, I like the 700W or so of background heat in the evenings because my kitchen is partly shaded and faces north. If you think about the amount of heat required to heat a room in a typical house (whatever that is), it is generally much closer to 700W than 10kW. If I want to heat a house I'll buy an efficient heater I can control. Buying an inefficient heater with no control makes no sense. Really this perspective is all about control. In general, I like to be in control of things as well. However, I also look at issues laterally. The first point is that a gas Aga with a conventional flue is very efficient for space heating because almost all the heat is released within the insulated envelope of the house. That is my definition of efficiency for this purpose, although I can understand that for some people "efficient" means something that can be immediately controlled. The second point is that for virtually all of the year, I calculated and found in practice, that 700W or more of heat is needed to maintain the house at the temperatures that I would like. It is therefore completely sensible and reasonable for that to be provided by the Aga and supplemented with the CH system, which is able to modulate to very low levels or off entirely. In fact there are very few evenings through the year when the CH doesn't come on at very low level - at the bottom end, the radiators may only warm to 40 degrees or so. THere may be social reasons for buying an Aga, there are neither culinary nor efficiency ones. I can understand that some people have difficulty with learning how to use an Aga properly, or may have had experience of an old or badly adjusted one. Equally, I can understand if they are uncomfortable with the notion of something that they can't instantly control on or off. However, my experience is that they work well, contribute usefully to space heating and produce excellent cooking results. -- ..andy |
Rayburn efficiency?
On Sun, 15 Jan 2006 12:44:51 +0000, Steve Firth
wrote: Andy Hall wrote: On Sun, 15 Jan 2006 00:01:17 +0000, Steve Firth wrote: Andy Hall wrote: On a day like today, when it's cold and drizzling outside, it's a real pleasure to come in from an early morning walk, warm up, dry out and have some toast of unassailable quality prepared on the Aga. Funny how when Aga owners rant about their cookers the selling points seem to be toast, stews and keeping the pets warm. I don't need to sell anything in terms of cookers. Aga toast toast is legendary, And also the only advantage that Aga users can think of. Actually, I could mention a whole range of food where the results are better than from a hob and oven. It's also a downright load of old ******** since I get better toast out of a toaster. Possibly for you that's true. At least with a toaster you only have to put in the bread and press the button. On an Aga you do need to warm the toasting grid first and check the toast periodically. it is true; however one can cook anything else very well also, and certainly better than can be achieved in fan ovens and the like. Bull. I can only speak from experience and from that of others. Personally I don't think that's worth the energy costs, but then again, unlike Aga owners I can cook. Generally people who criticise storage cookers have never tried one or read something in a magazine, both of which make their comments meaningless. You pull that one every time I cxriticise Agas. I've owned both Agas and Rayburns. I've also removed them for the inefficient pointless piles of crap they are. Presumably because you didn't have properly set up ones or were unable to deal with the cooking methods - not that difficult for most owners. If they have tried one, then either they had a very old or badly set up one or themselves are unable to cook, since it is really very easy. And very limited. No decent progessional chef uses and Aga. In a commercial environment, obviously not. As I pointed out earlier, supermarkets aren't stocked using a fleet of cars either. The ovens are too small, and the temperature is never right. In fact, the volume of the ovens is quite large, and the continuously available temperatures range over more than 200 degrees. Perhaps yours needed servicing? Aga owners cook in a particular way, the food they produce is **** but they are used to eating it. Well, my dinner guests would disagree with you. Perhaps you produced **** when you had an Aga because you didn't take the time and trouble to learn how to use it properly? -- ..andy |
Rayburn efficiency?
On Sun, 15 Jan 2006 12:45:32 +0000, Steve Firth
wrote: Andy Hall wrote: There are, however, a few small country house hotels around which do use an Aga for cooking because their customers appreciate it. Name one. If you look with Google, you will easily find several. -- ..andy |
Rayburn efficiency?
Andy Hall wrote:
Well, my dinner guests would disagree with you. Only because projectile vomiting after dinner is regarded as impolite. |
Rayburn efficiency?
Mary Fisher wrote:
"Steve Firth" wrote in message ... Andy Hall wrote: unlike Aga owners I can cook. That's a very silly thing to say. Not half as silly as your reply. |
Rayburn efficiency?
Andy Hall wrote:
On Sun, 15 Jan 2006 12:45:32 +0000, Steve Firth wrote: Andy Hall wrote: There are, however, a few small country house hotels around which do use an Aga for cooking because their customers appreciate it. Name one. If you look with Google, you will easily find several. Oh look, it's dIMM. Name one or admit you lied. |
Rayburn efficiency?
On Sun, 15 Jan 2006 14:06:27 +0000, Steve Firth
wrote: Andy Hall wrote: Well, my dinner guests would disagree with you. Only because projectile vomiting after dinner is regarded as impolite. In that case, I would suggest that you refrain from doing it. -- ..andy |
Rayburn efficiency?
"Andy Hall" wrote in message ... On Sun, 15 Jan 2006 12:35:24 -0000, "Mary Fisher" wrote: "Andy Hall" wrote in message . .. On 15 Jan 2006 01:50:27 -0800, wrote: A conventional set up of a cooker or a cooker and hob is quite different. Firstly, insulation is comparatively poor for the oven and large amounts of heat (2-3kW) are released into the room when it is running. Secondly, the designs are poor. The one-size-fits-all fan oven is one of the worst services to proper cooking ever invented. Oh I disagree with that! I'm very satisfied with mine, it gives consistently better, more reliable results than any gas cooker I've ever had. I wan't really comparing with conventional gas cookers though. You said, "The one-size-fits-all fan oven is one of the worst services to proper cooking ever invented" That doesn't mention ANY particular type of cooker, it's all-embracing:-) It limits the range of temperatures available The temperature range on mine hasn't been found wanting for any of my demands on it. And I'm very demanding. and dries the food badly. Eh? The (Neff) one that we had certainly did. Ah, well now you're falling into the trap of some other posters, making a general statement based on your personal experience and even with only one model. That's not sensible, is it? Mary -- .andy |
Rayburn efficiency?
Andy Hall wrote:
On Sun, 15 Jan 2006 12:10:56 +0000, Chris Bacon wrote: You mean B&Bs. No I mean what I wrote. 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 |
Rayburn efficiency?
Andy Hall wrote:
On Sun, 15 Jan 2006 14:06:27 +0000, Steve Firth wrote: Andy Hall wrote: Well, my dinner guests would disagree with you. Only because projectile vomiting after dinner is regarded as impolite. In that case, I would suggest that you refrain from doing it. Not eating with those who cook using an Aga is the first step. |
Rayburn efficiency?
On Sun, 15 Jan 2006 00:23:51 +0000, Andy Hall
wrote: I don't need to sell anything in terms of cookers. Aga toast toast is legendary, 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. it is true; however one can cook anything else very well also, 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). and certainly better than can be achieved in fan ovens and the like. Matthew Fort of the Gruniad has written a rather nice piece on the Aga (http://www.waitrose.com/food_drink/w...cs/0509032.asp) "It is a life-support, lifestyle system designed for people who don't really like cooking, who like playing at cooking, for whom the image of cooking is more important than the reality." "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. " Generally people who criticise storage cookers have never tried one or read something in a magazine, both of which make their comments meaningless. If they have tried one, then either they had a very old or badly set up one or themselves are unable to cook, since it is really very easy. 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 http://www.ovolopublishing.co.uk/hou...-aga-help.html "The Aga cookbook is full of Aga versions of recipes. They can take a very simple conventional recipe ("Cook for two hours at 200 degrees C") and turn it into a major epic ("Put on the boiling plate for ten minutes. Cover and move to the simmering plate for 30 minutes. Transfer to a shallow pan and leave it in the simmering oven overnight. Finish off with 45 minutes in the baking oven before serving.")" 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 :-). -- Peter Parry. http://www.wpp.ltd.uk/ |
Rayburn efficiency?
On Sun, 15 Jan 2006 14:07:26 +0000, Steve Firth
wrote: Andy Hall wrote: On Sun, 15 Jan 2006 12:45:32 +0000, Steve Firth wrote: Andy Hall wrote: There are, however, a few small country house hotels around which do use an Aga for cooking because their customers appreciate it. Name one. If you look with Google, you will easily find several. Oh look, it's dIMM. Name one or admit you lied. From the first couple of pages..... http://www.brackenhousehotel.com/ http://www.cutthorne.com/ http://www.northcotemanor.com/index.htm http://www.dine-online.co.uk/ashel.htm http://www.travel-watch.com/romantic-london.htm http://www.cornish-riviera.co.uk/pdf/2005d.pdf http://www.iknow-lakedistrict.co.uk/...se-Penrith.htm http://www.virtual-shropshire.co.uk/...ol_bb_ex.shtml ... and that's before one gets into the substantial numbers of B&Bs You were saying........ -- ..andy |
Rayburn efficiency?
On Sun, 15 Jan 2006 14:35:27 -0000, "Mary Fisher"
wrote: "Andy Hall" wrote in message The temperature range on mine hasn't been found wanting for any of my demands on it. And I'm very demanding. and dries the food badly. Eh? The (Neff) one that we had certainly did. Ah, well now you're falling into the trap of some other posters, making a general statement based on your personal experience and even with only one model. That's not sensible, is it? 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. -- ..andy |
Rayburn efficiency?
On Sun, 15 Jan 2006 14:45:40 +0000, Steve Firth
wrote: Andy Hall wrote: On Sun, 15 Jan 2006 14:06:27 +0000, Steve Firth wrote: Andy Hall wrote: Well, my dinner guests would disagree with you. Only because projectile vomiting after dinner is regarded as impolite. In that case, I would suggest that you refrain from doing it. Not eating with those who cook using an Aga is the first step. Washing your hands and learning to eat with a knife and fork is another, and would also allows you to dispense with your bib. -- ..andy |
Rayburn efficiency?
"S Viemeister" wrote in message ... Andy Hall wrote: On Sun, 15 Jan 2006 12:10:56 +0000, Chris Bacon wrote: You mean B&Bs. No I mean what I wrote. 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. Thank you for that Sheila. |
Rayburn efficiency?
"Mary Fisher" wrote in message t... "Andy Hall" wrote in message ... On Sun, 15 Jan 2006 12:35:24 -0000, "Mary Fisher" wrote: "Andy Hall" wrote in message ... On 15 Jan 2006 01:50:27 -0800, wrote: A conventional set up of a cooker or a cooker and hob is quite different. Firstly, insulation is comparatively poor for the oven and large amounts of heat (2-3kW) are released into the room when it is running. Secondly, the designs are poor. The one-size-fits-all fan oven is one of the worst services to proper cooking ever invented. Oh I disagree with that! I'm very satisfied with mine, it gives consistently better, more reliable results than any gas cooker I've ever had. I wan't really comparing with conventional gas cookers though. You said, "The one-size-fits-all fan oven is one of the worst services to proper cooking ever invented" That doesn't mention ANY particular type of cooker, it's all-embracing:-) It limits the range of temperatures available The temperature range on mine hasn't been found wanting for any of my demands on it. And I'm very demanding. and dries the food badly. Eh? The (Neff) one that we had certainly did. Ah, well now you're falling into the trap of some other posters, making a general statement based on your personal experience and even with only one model. That's not sensible, is it? Is it necessary to be quite so patronising? and with how many models do you have experience? |
Rayburn efficiency?
"Peter Parry" wrote in message ... On Sun, 15 Jan 2006 00:23:51 +0000, Andy Hall wrote: I don't need to sell anything in terms of cookers. Aga toast toast is legendary, 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. it is true; however one can cook anything else very well also, 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). and certainly better than can be achieved in fan ovens and the like. Matthew Fort of the Gruniad has written a rather nice piece on the Aga (http://www.waitrose.com/food_drink/w...cs/0509032.asp) "It is a life-support, lifestyle system designed for people who don't really like cooking, who like playing at cooking, for whom the image of cooking is more important than the reality." "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. " Generally people who criticise storage cookers have never tried one or read something in a magazine, both of which make their comments meaningless. If they have tried one, then either they had a very old or badly set up one or themselves are unable to cook, since it is really very easy. 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 http://www.ovolopublishing.co.uk/hou...-aga-help.html "The Aga cookbook is full of Aga versions of recipes. They can take a very simple conventional recipe ("Cook for two hours at 200 degrees C") and turn it into a major epic ("Put on the boiling plate for ten minutes. Cover and move to the simmering plate for 30 minutes. Transfer to a shallow pan and leave it in the simmering oven overnight. Finish off with 45 minutes in the baking oven before serving.")" 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 :-). 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. |
Rayburn efficiency?
On Sun, 15 Jan 2006 14:49:31 +0000, Peter Parry
wrote: On Sun, 15 Jan 2006 00:23:51 +0000, Andy Hall wrote: I don't need to sell anything in terms of cookers. Aga toast toast is legendary, 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. Then why did you have difficulty? it is true; however one can cook anything else very well also, As the Aga lacks any form of controllable hob, has wildly fluctuating oven temperatures 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 (5 degrees) during a cooking session apart from when a door is opened. However, after that, recovery is very rapid because all 5 internal surfaces are heated. 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 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. and certainly better than can be achieved in fan ovens and the like. Matthew Fort of the Gruniad has written a rather nice piece on the Aga (http://www.waitrose.com/food_drink/w...cs/0509032.asp) Anybody who believes anything written in that rag is naive anyway and to rely on *anything* written by a journalist is questionable in the extreme. "It is a life-support, lifestyle system designed for people who don't really like cooking, who like playing at cooking, for whom the image of cooking is more important than the reality." "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. " 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. Generally people who criticise storage cookers have never tried one or read something in a magazine, both of which make their comments meaningless. If they have tried one, then either they had a very old or badly set up one or themselves are unable to cook, since it is really very easy. Of course it is easy as it limits what you can do - it is glorified haybox cooking. 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. 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). 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. 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. " This of course, is simply journalistic rhetoric. Another good article is at http://www.ovolopublishing.co.uk/hou...-aga-help.html Most of which is untrue - e.g. servicing, heat up time, and much of the rest being nonsense that the writer, Mark (whoever he is) has pulled out of nowhere. "The Aga cookbook is full of Aga versions of recipes. They can take a very simple conventional recipe ("Cook for two hours at 200 degrees C") and turn it into a major epic ("Put on the boiling plate for ten minutes. Cover and move to the simmering plate for 30 minutes. Transfer to a shallow pan and leave it in the simmering oven overnight. Finish off with 45 minutes in the baking oven before serving.")" 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). 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. 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." 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. "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. 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. 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 :-). 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. -- ..andy |
Rayburn efficiency?
On Sun, 15 Jan 2006 13:35:23 +0000, Andy Hall
wrote: On Sun, 15 Jan 2006 12:38:15 +0000, Peter Parry wrote: Just what's really needed between June and September. It can be. We found this last year that there were very few days when a low level of background heating wasn't appreciated. Ah, I didn't realise you had moved to Stornoway. The cooking techniques are different from conventional cookers in that there are a wide range of temperatures available across the four ovens and a large proportion of cooking operations that would be done on the top on a conventional cooker are done in the ovens. Thus, the top plates, proportionately, are not used as much as the ovens. The cooking technique is exactly the same as any other oven/hob. No it isn't. The ovens are used for many more things with the Aga because of the versatility and range of temperatures available. 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. The plates are substantially larger, and one can easily fit pans partly on or partly off them. Really good - one part burned the other cold. can have a greater range of control with more pans than can be achieved on a typical 4 burner hob. 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.) You can do exactly the same in any other oven. The trouble is that you can't because you don't have the wide ranges of temperature available at the same time. 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. Ultimately every conventional oven, no matter what its insulation, sheds all its heat into the room it is in. The Aga is somewhat different in that it puts some of its heat out of the chimney to heat the world and dumps the remaining heat out into the room 24/7 whether or not it is needed. It actually releases extremely little heat through the flue. If I go into the loft, the flue from mine is barely warm to the touch. In terms of space heating, for almost all of the year, having 700W or so of heat released into the house as background warmth is beneficial. I run the CH with night setback anyway, so this fits very well. Not everyone lives near to Norway in a house with no insulation or solar gain :-). I'm not sure how you call control from 40 deg to 240deg "limiting the range of temperature available" but its a greater range and more controllable than an Aga. Very easily. I can have that range of temperatures continuously available 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". and they are used for cooking different things at different speeds simultaneously. The control comes about from moving the items to where you want them and how quickly you want the end result. In a fan oven, there is little or no range of temperature at a point in time, so much less flexibility. 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). Either things have to be cooked sequentially with the temperature varied to suit, or carefully timed so that they are not finished too early or too late. Can't say I've ever found this to be a problem. With the Aga, I have flexibility of temperature, of timing and of position, and I also have places to maintain finished things without deterioration if they do happen to finish early, which is rare Indeed, finishing late (or not at all) as the temperature falls appears to be a more common problem. I can appreciate that some people have difficulty with this technique and perhaps never master it. Neother of us had any difficulty at all. 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. As for drying food out badly - mine doesn't at all. Then you are very lucky. Mine certainly did, and it's rather obvious when one considers the effect of blowing air over things. 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 is no different in that respect from an Aga, and I used one of those dreadful things for a couple of years. You must have had difficulty with use, because we found a huge benefit in this respect. It really wasn't difficult - just unbearably tedious. In a well insulated kitchen, it doesn't take very long for the release of 10kW to heat it to the mid 30s - certainly not 3hrs. Indeed, but not many meals require the expenditure of anything remotely like 10kW/hr of energy. I really want a 1kW fire burning non stop in the kitchen all through the summer. Do you? No, in a sheltered north facing kitchen it is pleasant in the summer just as it is. Personally, I like the 700W or so of background heat in the evenings because my kitchen is partly shaded and faces north. Each to their own. Really this perspective is all about control. In general, I like to be in control of things as well. However, I also look at issues laterally. The first point is that a gas Aga with a conventional flue is very efficient for space heating because almost all the heat is released within the insulated envelope of the house. That is my definition of efficiency for this purpose, although I can understand that for some people "efficient" means something that can be immediately controlled. 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. The second point is that for virtually all of the year, I calculated and found in practice, that 700W or more of heat is needed to maintain the house at the temperatures that I would like. 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. -- Peter Parry. http://www.wpp.ltd.uk/ |
Rayburn efficiency?
On Sun, 15 Jan 2006 14:26:09 +0000, Owain
wrote: Mary Fisher wrote: "Andy Hall" wrote Some people do have difficulty in learning the (what are really fairly straightforward) methods of cooking with a storage cooker. I agree. But what I wonder about is people wanting to do much cooking in warm weather Jam-making? Although I understand that Agas aren't great at concentrated batches of on-the-hob cooking like jam-making because the plates cool down. Owain 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. -- ..andy |
Rayburn efficiency?
Maybe this deteriorating thread should be in a cooking NG .
Don |
Rayburn efficiency?
On Sun, 15 Jan 2006 15:25:39 GMT, "Ophelia" wrote:
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. 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. -- ..andy |
Rayburn efficiency?
snipped
Well done Peter Parry, exploded the myths and BS about these ancient status symbols with an extremly entertaining contribution. Cheers Don |
Rayburn efficiency?
"Owain" wrote in message ... Mary Fisher wrote: "Andy Hall" wrote Some people do have difficulty in learning the (what are really fairly straightforward) methods of cooking with a storage cooker. I agree. But what I wonder about is people wanting to do much cooking in warm weather Jam-making? Although I understand that Agas aren't great at concentrated batches of on-the-hob cooking like jam-making because the plates cool down. 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. Owain |
Rayburn efficiency?
On Sun, 15 Jan 2006 14:26:09 +0000, Owain
wrote: Jam-making? Although I understand that Agas aren't great at concentrated batches of on-the-hob cooking like jam-making because the plates cool down. 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. -- Peter Parry. http://www.wpp.ltd.uk/ |
Rayburn efficiency?
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? |
Rayburn efficiency?
"Peter Parry" wrote in message ... On Sun, 15 Jan 2006 00:23:51 +0000, Andy Hall Matthew Fort of the Gruniad has written a rather nice piece on the Aga (http://www.waitrose.com/food_drink/w...cs/0509032.asp) "It is a life-support, lifestyle system designed for people who don't really like cooking, who like playing at cooking, for whom the image of cooking is more important than the reality." "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). 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. .... "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." 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 |
Rayburn efficiency?
"Andy Hall" wrote in message ... On Sun, 15 Jan 2006 15:25:39 GMT, "Ophelia" wrote: 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. 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. Thanks Andy but your description of how you have to make jam was enough to put me off. I make enough jam in the summer time for it to matter! |
Rayburn efficiency?
wrote in message ups.com... 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. I couldn't agree mo))) O |
Rayburn efficiency?
"Andy Hall" wrote in message ... I'm not sure why people eat stodgy rubbish like steamed puddings anyway, Oh Andy! Steamed puddings are anything BUT stodgy - they're light and airy (if made properly) and I wish I could afford to eat them more often. Nothing todo with finances - the waistline you understand ... 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. Why a thermometer? Mary |
Rayburn efficiency?
On Sun, 15 Jan 2006 16:00:39 +0000, Peter Parry
wrote: On Sun, 15 Jan 2006 13:35:23 +0000, Andy Hall wrote: On Sun, 15 Jan 2006 12:38:15 +0000, Peter Parry wrote: Just what's really needed between June and September. It can be. We found this last year that there were very few days when a low level of background heating wasn't appreciated. Ah, I didn't realise you had moved to Stornoway. No, although I sometimes think that it would be nice. The plates are substantially larger, and one can easily fit pans partly on or partly off them. Really good - one part burned the other cold. Not unless you are incompetent. It's pretty hard to burn something on the simmering plate. can have a greater range of control with more pans than can be achieved on a typical 4 burner hob. If you want to spend your life standing over the thing sliding pans around as the temperature drops and some boil over. The point is that you don't. If that was what you did when you had one, then you were doing things wrong. You can slide a pan to a certain position and pretty much leave it - for example simmering milk with zero risk of it boiling over. Same with rice or pasta. Hob time is relatively short in most cases because usually one initially boils the item there, transfers it to the simmering oven and then if need be, back to the top. On a modern gas Aga, the temperatures don't drop to any noticable extent during a typical cooking session. 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.) One has to wonder what on earth he was doing. It would be pretty difficult to achieve that, even for those of Darwinian stupidity. You can do exactly the same in any other oven. The trouble is that you can't because you don't have the wide ranges of temperature available at the same time. If I have 4 ovens I can have four temperatures. In the Aga you actually almost a continuum from bottom left to top right. I've measured it. In a given oven, there is, through convection, a difference between top and bottom. 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 have a broad range and can also vary completely under my control, and predictably, simply by locating the items where I want them. 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. Two oven Agas work perfectly well, but four is better. At the very bottom left, the warming oven warms plates and serving dishes and in the top of it, food already prepared can be kept, without drying out for latecomers. Above that, the simmering oven replaces many of the operations that would otherwise require lengthy standing in front of a hob. Ultimately every conventional oven, no matter what its insulation, sheds all its heat into the room it is in. The Aga is somewhat different in that it puts some of its heat out of the chimney to heat the world and dumps the remaining heat out into the room 24/7 whether or not it is needed. It actually releases extremely little heat through the flue. If I go into the loft, the flue from mine is barely warm to the touch. In terms of space heating, for almost all of the year, having 700W or so of heat released into the house as background warmth is beneficial. I run the CH with night setback anyway, so this fits very well. Not everyone lives near to Norway in a house with no insulation or solar gain :-). I'm sure they don't.... I'm not sure how you call control from 40 deg to 240deg "limiting the range of temperature available" but its a greater range and more controllable than an Aga. Very easily. I can have that range of temperatures continuously available Actually you have 4 rather indeterminate, uncontrollable, fluctuating and largely unknown temperatures available. Actually I don't. I've measured the temperatures in all four ovens, top and bottom during the course of a cooking session and they remain very constant, making timings easy to do. As Aga say "You don't set the heat with an Aga. You find it". With the predictability of temperature in a given place, that was very easy to do. I don't think we had a single disaster when starting, but that was several years ago. 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". Likewise, although I simply make a note on the recipe that it's a certain shelf in a certain oven. very easy. 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". I don't know where you got that from, but I've never heard of it. I have a 4 oven model, though. Can you identify the accessory on the Aga Cookshop site? and they are used for cooking different things at different speeds simultaneously. The control comes about from moving the items to where you want them and how quickly you want the end result. In a fan oven, there is little or no range of temperature at a point in time, so much less flexibility. You are simply making a case for having x ovens where x is a number determined by your requirements. Not really. I have the space for and wanted the four oven model. It also has the benefit of the warming area on the top. 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). You can't compare the two because the cooking techniques are different. People are able to cook perfectly well on a two oven Aga, but the four oven is more flexible. I don't have a space issue. Either things have to be cooked sequentially with the temperature varied to suit, or carefully timed so that they are not finished too early or too late. Can't say I've ever found this to be a problem. With the Aga, I have flexibility of temperature, of timing and of position, and I also have places to maintain finished things without deterioration if they do happen to finish early, which is rare Indeed, finishing late (or not at all) as the temperature falls appears to be a more common problem. It might do in a coal or old oil one. It changes very little in a modern gas one. Variations in time are almost always due to specifics of the ingredients or their starting temperature. I can appreciate that some people have difficulty with this technique and perhaps never master it. Neother of us had any difficulty at all. 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. ..... and added bonus then. As for drying food out badly - mine doesn't at all. Then you are very lucky. Mine certainly did, and it's rather obvious when one considers the effect of blowing air over things. 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. I should have sent you my Neff fan oven. It managed to easily. I have no idea why. It is no different in that respect from an Aga, and I used one of those dreadful things for a couple of years. You must have had difficulty with use, because we found a huge benefit in this respect. It really wasn't difficult - just unbearably tedious. In a well insulated kitchen, it doesn't take very long for the release of 10kW to heat it to the mid 30s - certainly not 3hrs. Indeed, but not many meals require the expenditure of anything remotely like 10kW/hr of energy. It doesn't need to be for an hour though. If you add up having 3-4 burners plus an oven running, you are using 10kW easily. Really this perspective is all about control. In general, I like to be in control of things as well. However, I also look at issues laterally. The first point is that a gas Aga with a conventional flue is very efficient for space heating because almost all the heat is released within the insulated envelope of the house. That is my definition of efficiency for this purpose, although I can understand that for some people "efficient" means something that can be immediately controlled. 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 was really talking about 700W. If you think about it, many people have that sort of figure in lighting and appliances. -- ..andy |
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