The best Roast dinners are made in an Aga! [OC]

[u/Mohawk200x]

[u/AlmanzoWilder]

I got an AGA. Looks great but it sucks big time.

[u/gingerbreadman42 → u/AlmanzoWilder]

Why does it suck?

[u/mallchin → u/gingerbreadman42]

They take up loads of room but are tiny inside. Boiling a kettle takes ages. Running them all year round is costly and good luck knowing what temperature it is inside.

[u/squintpan → u/mallchin]

My MIL has one, and it is gorgeous, but the temps fluctuate wildly and you can nearly fit anything in there. We never know what’s going to happen with a frozen pizza. And Every Thanksgiving we have to cook the turkey in our ugly oven and drive it over.

[u/AlmanzoWilder → u/gingerbreadman42]

It's actually not the usual AGA. It's a conventional oven. It's not deep enough, front to back. All other ovens I've seen are plenty deep enough. I had to bend some of my larger trays to get them to fit. The worst is that it takes 30 minutes to heat the oven to 400 degrees F. You gotta plan ahead with this one.

[u/Eelpieland → u/AlmanzoWilder]

Aren't you basically supposed to never turn off an aga?

[u/theroch_ → u/Eelpieland]

They take a day or so to warm up so turning them off is not a great idea

[u/cateml → u/gingerbreadman42]

My mum has a gas one (grew up in the countryside with one, wanted to bring herself back to her simple country living times and we were comfortably off so got one when I was a kid):

• Heating the house is sold as a benefit, but - its heating even when you don’t want it to. So in very hot weather (which is more frequent and extreme now, thanks global warming…) she turns it right down (but not off because you’re not supposed to) which makes it basicallly redundant for everything other than suuuuuuper slow cooking. So you need to be prepared to have a whole other oven as well, or live off microwave/air fry shit often. And of course you’ll be paying for both that and the AGA at the same time if it’s a gas one, because you can’t turn it off.

• Personally I find having just two set oven temps and two stove top temps pretty limiting. Compared to any other modern gas or electric oven, it’s a bit annoying. Maybe there are some expert AGA chefs going to come along and roll their eyes at how wrong I am, so maybe I’ll qualify with “if you’re used to cooking in another oven it’s a learning curve”.

• More worry about it setting fire to shit and your kids burning themselves on it. Really hot on the outside and no child lock possible.

• My mum’s was installed too close to the wall by the installer people. Was prohibitively expensive to move it (since they’re built in place, would have to totally rebuild the whole thing from scratch) so it just… leaks insane amounts of heat out of their kitchen wall. Like, police helicopters would assume something was going on levels of heat leaking.

Great for drying clothes though. And keeping take-away warm.

[u/bazby2106 → u/gingerbreadman42]

It appears you’ve just found a load of people who have no idea how to cook in an aga. Basic research would rectify most of their issues below.

[u/ElephantsGerald_]

They look great and they convey a certain old fashioned British pastoral homeliness but my god they’re horrible for the planet

[u/David_W_J]

My sister-in-law had a very old coal-fired Aga that needed to be refilled with smokeless fuel every morning, together with clearing of ashes. It's recently been replaced, and Aga took it for their museum!

[u/slackermannn]

Is the thought that counts

[u/jackconrad]

They're made about 5 minutes away from where I live!

[u/thebanishedturnip]

Correction... The best burnt dinners are made in an Aga

[u/kj_gamer2614 → u/thebanishedturnip]

That’s just you not using it well… could burn dinner in any sort of oven if you use it wrong

[u/magicherry]

It's pronounced Miele. Meel-eh. Mee-l-uh. Mee-leh.

[u/mintmouse]

Whoa, a stove powered clock… but it’s always roasting time for some reason…

[u/forkedconcerns]

I prefer them coming from my La Cornue CornuFé 110cm Induction Range Cooker. It has much better temp control and its a much mkre elegant design.

[u/mrpoopsocks]

That's a good looking oven/range whatever.

[u/kj_gamer2614]

I love me an AGA. Fuck that people that said they suck, they absolutely don’t, make great roasts, good stoves and ovens, don’t need any pre heating just straight in, and are incredibly cozy to snug up on the floor in front which is what I did as a child almost all the time, even now visiting my parents I do that often. If I could hoist and install an AGA up to my apartment now I absolutely would, I miss cooking with it and it giving warmth in winter a lot

This one is a little small I must say, my parents one has 4 doors but also 2 stoves like this one

[u/baldriansen]

I love my AGA! How is this powered? Gas or electric?

[u/MeenScreen → u/baldriansen]

It's powered by middle class aspiration.

[u/baldriansen → u/MeenScreen]

Wow