Heavy Range Cookers

jonewer

Hello all, we are looking at buying a house and one the things I have always wanted is a heavy cast iron range like an Aga or similar cooker.

Looking at a website by cosi it appears that Aga cookers are outrageously expensive to run because they have to be on all the time. I'm aware that buying a heavy range is an extravagance and not very MSE, but I just want one. (I want a spitfire and an aston-martin and a younger wife too, but thats all for another thread). So I have been looking at other makes like Esse and Rayburn which apparentley have heat-up times short enough to mean you dont have to run them 24/7.

I reckon that gas is a better option than oil, because oil would mean getting a tank fitted and basically be more hassle than its worth. I dont believe these things will deliver good economy for hot water or central heating so will be looking at a "dry" cooker.

Does anyone have experience with Esse and/or Rayburns? Do they perform well cooking wise? Are the two ovens big enough to cope, they seem a bit small to me? How much do they cost to run in terms of fuel and servicing? How about installation?

Basically if anyone has a view on these and how practical they really are (or are not) then please let me know!

Thanks! :beer:

Keldin

We put in a second hand Rayburn a couple of years ago. It replaced a busted boiler and now runs our CH, DHW and does our cooking. The Rayburn stays on just like the Aga so if you don't want an always on Aga then the Rayburn won't be for you. The oven sits at idle until you need to turn it up (takes 20 minutes to heat up or longer depending on the temp you want) and it's well insulated.

I can't tell you how much it costs to run as I've never worked it out and since our old boiler packed up within weeks of moving in I can't compare it with that. It's not as efficient as a modern condensing boiler (although I think they have made one now) but compares with a standard boiler.

As far as price goes I scored a bargain with this one which I don't think you will be able to match. It's an 80,000 BTU boiler model and I think new they are around £5000. I opened ebay one day and saw it going for £350. I was the only bidder and also found someone on eBay who collected it the next day and drove it 300 miles and delivered it to my kitchen via my neighbours back yard (we had to take the fence down) for the princely sum of £100. He was already doing an Aga delivery for someone on the same route so he didn't charge me full price. For 90% off new price it doesn't matter to me that it may be more expensive than a condensing boiler to run. It also fitted in perfectly with teh kitchen layout and where the old boiler was in the chimney breast.
Go with natural gas. The oil models are for peopel who don't have gas.
If you want one get one. Makes the best roasts I've ever done.

tradcookers is a good place for second hand ones.

K

Keldin

Forgot to add:
2 oven Agas and Rayburns come in 2 types. Some have a warming oven as the second oven which can't really be used to cook in and some have a hotter simmering oven. The simmering oven is half the temperature of the main oven and can be used to cook rice and vegetable etc in sealed dishes while you cook in the main oven.
The main oven in a Rayburn is slightly smaller than an Aga's (it's not as deep) but I've had no problem cooking a roast turkey with everything or a large leg of lamb with teh bone in.
If you are getting an Aga I would say go for the 3/4 oven as it gives you more options (2 main ovens that are about 40 degrees different I think) and more space to cook.
The ovens are smaller than conventional convection ovens but you don't need much free space around the food. The radiant cooking of a cast iron stove is much better as well.
In general you are supposed to cook 80% of the food in the ovens so you don't waste heat through the top plate cooking with pots and pans the old way. It's a different way of cooking where you start things off on teh plate and then move them to teh oven to finish them. You get the best fillet steaks this way.

K

benood

We put a two oven Aga (from Ebay) into our previous house and thought it was great, when we get around to the kitchen here will do the same again. We didn't even have a back up cooker but many people would want to so something to think about if you're likely to be selling in the next few years.

Cost is high - I reckoned it used an additional 1000 litres of oil a year.

We just had a cooker - the trouble with water heating ones is they can take heat from the ovens just when you need it.

Rayburns are similar as Keldin says.

Esses are very noisy (and ugly IMO)

I would have said Aga ovens are the same size as normal ovens because they are narrower but deeper.

Watch out for solid fuel to oil conversions as typically the simmering oven runs cooler than it should.

jonewer

I actually find the two-oven Esse quite pretty - certainly more attractive than some others around... do you think the noise with the Esse is only with the oil model or with the gas model also?

benood

I'm probaby an Aga traditionalist (snob?? surely not), you'll save a fortune with an Esse.

I know that the oil Esse is noisy - gas boilers are normally quieter than oil ones though so could be just what you're after - I'd call Esse direct and ask.

Best of luck

ozskin

i think the stat is that agas are 27 or 47 times less environmentally friendly than a normal cooker. all of these will not do stir fry ormerangues adequately etc etc. and this is from someone who was brought up in an aga house and we also v occasionally sell them. my reccomend for heavyweight range is the bocuse twin oven, one pyro, and half slab hotplate like aga but much more versatile

Keldin

ozskin wrote: »

i think the stat is that agas are 27 or 47 times less environmentally friendly than a normal cooker. all of these will not do stir fry ormerangues adequately etc etc

I'm not sure what would make an oven enviromentally friendly or unfriendly or what's 47 times worse than the lousy normal oven I sent to the landfill but I can say this:
No cooker will do stir fry properly unless it has a proper gas wok burner. Very few do and my Rayburn does stir fry as well as any cooker I've ever used.
Aga's can do meringues.

K

Debt_Free_Chick

Aga-Rayburn, of course, claim that their cookers are not wasteful with fuel and are "environmentally friendly". I don't understand enough to be able to agree or disagree with them, but I've been without central heating for nearly two years and my Aga has run for about 18 months on 900 litres of oil. With the CH boiler I was using four times that amount :eek: And I have no other form of cooking so my Aga is on 24/7 for 365 days of the year.

The theory is that the Aga stores heat. Although it's "always on", it's insulated and stores the heat ready for use. You can read what they say here and here although it's not terribly scientific. Putting "aga environment" into Google doesn't yield very much so it's difficult to know what the true position is

I've only used an oil-fired Aga so can't comment on how it measures up to, say, a gas-fired one.

But I do know that you cook in an entirely different way with an Aga. Firstly, you do 80% of your cooking IN the ovens. Even if you were frying bacon, sausage, steak etc .... you do this in the oven and not on top. Cooking on the hotplates is definitely inefficient use, for Aga, as you lose too much heat. If you watch the stored heat indicator on the Aga (which tells you how much heat Aga has stored up) it plummets if you use the hotplate for any length of time.

Whilst it might seem odd to put your veg in the oven to boil, it does work and it's far more efficient than boiling them on the hotplate. Although, starting them off on the hottest hotplate is useful.

Grilling is also done in the oven.

The hot oven is very hot. Mine is 500°F. You can moderate the heat using a plain cold shelf. It's a heavy-duty aluminium baking tray which you store away from the Aga. When you want to moderate the heat, you pop it in above what you're cooking - so the shelf conducts some heat away from the food. I find I need two of these if I want to moderate the heat for any length of time, and swap them over.

A two-oven Aga is big enough to feed Christmas lunch for eight people, probably 10. But ideally you need Aga designed pots so you can stack them inside the oven - this way you can get up to eight pots in the oven at one time.

If you've not cooked with an Aga before, I strongly suggest that you "take a test drive" at your local Aga dealer or better still, sign up for one of the demonstrations, which takes you through a whole menu. It really is a different way of cooking using instinct rather than precise oven temperatures. If Esse do demos, you could go to one of those for comparison.

I wouldn't have anything else - but it certainly wouldn't suit everybody.

BTW - Rayburn is made by Aga as you'll see from the website. A Rayburn can do CH and hot water in addition to cooking. An Aga will do cooking only or hot water too, depending on the model you buy.

HTH

itsnever2lateisit?

jonewer wrote: »

Hello all, we are looking at buying a house and one the things I have always wanted is a heavy cast iron range like an Aga or similar cooker.

Looking at a website by cosi it appears that Aga cookers are outrageously expensive to run because they have to be on all the time. I'm aware that buying a heavy range is an extravagance and not very MSE, but I just want one. (I want a spitfire and an aston-martin and a younger wife too, but thats all for another thread). So I have been looking at other makes like Esse and Rayburn which apparentley have heat-up times short enough to mean you dont have to run them 24/7.

I reckon that gas is a better option than oil, because oil would mean getting a tank fitted and basically be more hassle than its worth. I dont believe these things will deliver good economy for hot water or central heating so will be looking at a "dry" cooker.

Does anyone have experience with Esse and/or Rayburns? Do they perform well cooking wise? Are the two ovens big enough to cope, they seem a bit small to me? How much do they cost to run in terms of fuel and servicing? How about installation?

Basically if anyone has a view on these and how practical they really are (or are not) then please let me know!

Thanks! :beer:

Some models in the current Rayburn range are rapid heat up, but beware rapid is nearly an hour. These will cost you anything from £7,000 upwards for a new one
Mains Gas is better than Oil, but bottled gas is probably the most expensive way of firing a Rayburn. I have an old oil fire rayburn with 2 burners, one for C/H and Water the other just cooking, it is the cooker burner which for my model is on continuously and burns about 2cc per minute when at idle setting. However I turn this part off during the summer and use a conventional cooker then as I was fed up with opening the kitchen windows every morning to let the heat out that I had paid for.

The upside of cast iron ranges is the way they cook your food, and they will generally see the owner off the planet. But you're right it's not very MSE very much alifestyle choice

ormus

my heart tells me id love an AGA, but my head tells me its a non starter.
they are great for a farmhouse enviroment. heating/cooking on the one appliance. but the farmers wife needs to be cooking/baking all day.
forget the oil ones, far too expensive now. solid fuel? you must be joking!

as you say, for the rest of us its a lifestyle choice.

350 quid for a SH one? go for it. 7 grand for a new one? dont make me laugh.