My AGA Cooker

I love English murder mystery novels and back in the early 1980's I was reading one that featured an AGA cooker.  I was intrigued and went on the hunt to find out just what was an AGA cooker. That was before the Internet so I probably went to my public library to look it up, I really don't remember. But regardless, I was able to get enough information about the AGA, which is made in England, to decide I wanted one. Then I found out the price. Thirty years ago they cost $4000! 

Flash forward to the late 1990's when we were living in Zionsville, Indiana and made friends with Johnna, the owner of the Keeping Room kitchen design store and an AGA dealer. Our little house in the country outside of town was not worthy of an AGA but when we decided to move back to the Cincinnati area and build a house, the AGA suddenly became possible. Since it is built on site, the AGA could become part of the mortgage, which was a good thing since by then the price on a full sized, four oven AGA had climbed to $14000.00! 

The AGA was designed by a Nobel prize winning scientist who was forced to retire when he was injured in a lab accident. Once he was home full time he realized that his wife spent most of her day cooking their three meals.  He set about to design a cooker, as they call ranges in England, that would save time. The AGA is the result.

My AGA is the four oven style, though you can purchase a two oven AGA.  It is powered by propane  and is on all the time. That is to say, the propane is always burning, heating each of the four ovens to different temperatures so that the AGA is always ready to cook. This is a great time saver and with four ovens and two big burners plus a warming bad, you can accomplish a lot of cooking all at once. 

The good news is that the AGA also heats the kitchen to about 10 or 12 degrees warmer than the rest of the house. In my case the kitchen is the entire back half of the downstairs - its a kitchen/sitting room combination plus a powder room and mud room. I can shut doors closing the kitchen/sitting room off from the rest of the house and let the extra warmth from the AGA help to heat that back half. That way I can keep the thermostat (which is in the front of the house) set at 55 degrees all day while I am gone from home and the kitchen is still warm and comfy when I come home at night. I like a cool bedroom so I can just set the thermostat at 55 and forget it all winter (I have a down comforter and a heated mattress pad going most nights and a little high efficiency electric heater in the bathroom). It's amazing how much I save on electricity by keeping the furnace at that low temperature, not to mention propane!

When we built the house in 1998 propane was $.72 a gallon.  My furnace, hot water heater and AGA are all powered by propane, which is now $2.09 a gallon but which has been as high as $3.00.  The AGA drinks about a gallon a day, so its become rather expensive to operate, but I absolutely love my AGA and wouldn't give it up for anything. When I come down stairs in the morning the AGA is warm and cozy to stand by while I make my cafe au lait.  I once read about an Irish country house hotel where the male owner of the house sat on the warming pad of their AGA each morning while his wife cooked his breakfast!

The warming pad is great for incubating yogurt and drying gloves and a variety of other uses.  There is a roasting oven (400 to 500 degrees), a baking oven (300 to 375 degrees, a simmering oven ( 200 to 275degrees and a warming oven (140 degrees). I use the warming oven to dry corn, herbs, tomatoes, you name it. It's also great for keeping food warm!  The burners are two big 12 inch steel pads. One is for boiling and the other for simmering. They are the perfect fit for canning kettles, and the boiling pad boils water in about 90 seconds. The simmering pad doubles as a griddle.

The first meal I cooked on my AGA was breakfast. Bacon and pancakes.  On of the main things about an AGA is that you start things on the top of the stove and finish them in the oven, much like you see restaurant chefs cooking on television cooking shows.  So, I put the bacon on a rack in the roasting oven while I cooked the pancakes on the griddle pad up top. In just a few minutes I had breakfast on the table. I was a little taken aback at first. We'd paid a lot of money for that stove and I expected to spend some quality time with it - but true to its designers intent, my cooking time was cut way back.

The ovens are cast iron and radiate the heat around the food on all sides. This gives fast even cooking. I'd never consider frying bacon on top of the AGA, its just too perfect and easy cooked in the oven. It also does a great job of frying onions (again in the oven).  Pot roast and any kind of casserole comes out perfectly cooked each time - as long as I remember that its in the oven!!  Because the AGA is vented to the outside via a stove pipe (remember, its a real cook stove, burning fuel all the time) and the ovens are well sealed, you don't smell the food cooking - unless you are outside. Many times I've walked out to the back yard for some reason, smelled the food in the AGA cooking and hurried back in the house to check on it.

I love my AGA!