Sharon Ryden loves to entertain. Inevitably, one of her guests will ask for the recipe.
And, without fail, she’ll receive a call later from that guest wanting to know why their dish didn’t taste quite as good as hers.
Did she neglect to include an ingredient? Is there a secret she didn’t impart?
And then Ryden will have to break the bad news: It’s the Aga.
An Aga is a quintessentially British cast-iron cooker. An Aga has no knobs, no switches, no dials. It stays hot all the time, serving double-duty as a gentle heating source. Indeed, in traditional English manor houses the Aga was used to cook, bake, dry clothes, heat the domestic hot water and warm the house. Depending on the model, it can take up three times the space of a standard range and weigh more than half a ton. And, boy, can it cook.
Food just seems to taste better when it’s cooked in the Aga, Ryden said. Roasts hold their juices, the toast is perfection and the homemade bread was so fabulous she had to stop baking it. She and her husband were eating too much.
Ryden’s cobalt blue enamel-coated Aga looks like a sleek classic sports car parked in her Snohomish kitchen. It contains separate ovens set at varying temperatures so she can roast a chicken in one and raise dough in another. Heat is transferred into the cast-iron ovens and released steadily and simultaneously inside. The gentle heat preserves moisture, flavor and texture in foods the way standard ranges with elements and gas flames can’t. Boiling and simmering plates are on top of the range under hinged covers.
An Aga isn’t just a range; it’s — as the company likes to boast — a lifestyle, one that a small portion of Snohomish County residents including Ryden has adopted. She thinks she may have one of the oldest on the West Coast. She has owned hers 24 years, purchasing it from Sutter Home &Hearth in Woodinville not long after they started carrying Aga cookers.
Sutter Home &Hearth now sells a few dozen a year, said Chip Hite, a salesman at the business. An estimated 750,000 people own them worldwide, but most live in Europe. Few Americans recognize the iconic cooker unless they’ve traveled abroad or have family in Britain, he said.
When they see it in the back of the store, the response is usually “What’s this?” sometimes followed shortly by “Oh, my god, is that on?”
That opens the door for Hite to give his sales pitch on the many qualities of the Aga: It bakes, it roasts, it simmers, it warms. It’s versatile, with ovens that range from 250 to 700 degrees. It’s self-cleaning. It boils water faster than a microwave. It bakes brownies and roasts garlic at the same time without mixing flavors or smells. It warms the house.
“It’s usually a 50-50 split,” he said. “Half look at you like you’re on way too much medication and the others will think it’s really cool.”
Purchases are often initiated by the woman of the household, but men with culinary experience also appreciate them, Hite said. The store employees use the model to keep their coffee warm and heat up leftovers for lunch.
Carol Burroughs-Gleim of Edmonds bought her cream and black three-oven Aga on eBay. The antiques dealer, who lives in a renovated 1920s farmhouse, loved the look of the Aga.
Her Maine coon cat enjoys lolling in the warmth in front of the Aga. Burroughs-Gleim said even though the range is on constantly, even in summer, the temperature remains pleasant. She regulates the heat in the summer by opening a window, and she can crank down the overall heat in all the ovens.
“It’s never been unbearable,” she said. “And around here, it’s not that blazing hot, anyway.”
She probably doesn’t use the Aga to its full cooking potential, mainly because her family likes to cook a lot of stir-fries on the hotplates.
Traditionally, about 80 percent of the cooking should take place in the Aga’s ovens, and the other 20 percent on top, she said. Instead of frying onions on the boiling plate, an Aga cook might start them there and put them in the simmering oven to become tender, then bring them back to brown.
Someone gave Burroughs-Gleim an Aga cookbook by English food writer Mary Berry, but her family doesn’t use many of the recipes, which include too much “disgusting English food,” she said, like “old-fashioned pressed tongue” and “wood pigeon in cider.”
Burroughs-Gleim agreed that food cooked in her Aga does seem to taste better, especially roasts. She can slide one in the roasting oven in the morning, leave it all day and return to a juicy, flavorful meal in late afternoon.
“It just falls apart,” she said. “It’s so flavorful.
“I’m not a fabulous cook, but the oven does it all. It seals in an intense flavor.”
While the iconic range is often associated with the British, it was invented by Swedish Nobel Prize winner and physicist Dr. Gustav Dalen in 1922.
Dalen, who was blind, was appalled that his wife and their maid had to constantly tend their old-fashioned range. He wanted to create a range that would look after itself, according to the Aga Range company.
The modern Aga hasn’t changed much since its invention. The company offers several modern versions that run on electric, gas or both. One version Sutter Home &Hearth sells, called the “six-four,” looks like a traditional Aga but operates more like a standard range.
An Aga is longer and deeper than a traditional range, so cabinets must be specially made for it, Hite said. It also can’t be installed in an island; it needs to be positioned next to an exterior wall. Agas vent through a pipe, rather than using a hood vent.
At Sutter Home &Hearth, Agas cost $15,000 to $18,000, depending on the model and the color. Signature colors, such as pistachio, aubergine and British racing green, cost more than standard colors including blue and cream. Installation costs $2,500 more and must be done by a trained technician, Hite said. The company ships the ranges in dozens of pieces that are assembled on site.
Any stainless steal or cast-iron cookware will work on an Aga. The cookware must have a heavy-gauge bottom and be relatively flat, Hite said.
Ryden and her husband are building a new home in Walla Walla and plan to move there in the coming months. She wonders if whoever buys her home will want her Aga. The cost of shipping and hiring a crew to disassemble and reassemble it would be substantial.
“To the average person, an Aga is overwhelming. Personally, I hope they don’t want to take it,” Ryden said. “I’ll let it go, if someone wants it. But I’m definitely going to have another Aga.”
Reporter Debra Smith: 425-339-3197 or dsmith@heraldnet.com
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