Just moved into a house with a Rayburn, I knew I was going to have to change my cooking style and tried to do some research but all the mumsnet et al sources I found seemed to reel off a stock list of clichés… (you might sense I’m a little hostile…), great, my pasta won’t cook but I can warm my bum on a cold winters day! I think my problem might be our pans are all incompatible, we’ve got copper bottom jobs and I think they’ve warped from years of gas use so they don’t seem to sit very flush on the hot plate (also I don’t think we can use them in the oven). I’m thinking I need lots of small casserole pots for steaming veg and boiling potatoes/pasta/rice (in the bottom oven). Basically I want to know how people ‘manage’ a meal, what’s your workflow? What pans/dishes do you use? Take last nights meal, I made a steak pie filling easy enough in a casserole dish but struggled boiling the potatoes and steaming the carrots and broccoli on the hot plate.

Think we’re going to replace with a separate boiler and electric oven, would like something with smarter controls for the boiler to try and keep the oil bill down! I need to be able to feed the family in the meantime though!

Points for:
I wouldn’t be without my ####
I love warming my bum
You just have to get used to everything taking longer
Toast on the hotplate is amazing
I grew up with one, insert unhelpful nostalgia

My mum loved her Rayburns but in the last house they had one they also had an elec oven for proper, controllable heat and the Rayburn was turned off come summer. They’re lovely to come home to after a cold day out, mind you. She always reckoned you just adjusted to how you cook and she used plain alu pans and le creusets.

https://dengarden.com/appliances/Range-cookers-Aga-v-Rayburn
Quick look says similar to the Aga – had one of those

Get some oven thermometers just to know what you have.

Long and slow is the best bonus of them, being able to use to low heat oven is great.
Top oven for an aga is way hotter but you use a metal sheet to modify it into zones and do things that way

On the top good flat pans work well due to the contact being better. Leaving the lids up wastes heat fast so a bit of thinking about timing is important, extra space up top is good for keeping things warm.
Using a kettle to get water boiled fast isn’t a bad thing and saves some of the heat loss.

Get a simple basic cook book as it generally has a guide for use

You’ll need to turn it up to get more heat in the hot plate. You do know that the oven end is the cool end and the other is the hot end on the hot plate?

Lovely things to use, regular job as well is no bad thing!

We lived in a house for 3 years which had a solid fuel rayburn.

It was a flippin nightmare. Stoke the fire, put something in the oven, temperature drops, more furious stoking to try and get the temperature up, dinner delayed, dinner ready, oven (and kitchen) at the temperature of the sun – you get the picture.

Fortunately we sold the house before we got to the point where we were going to spend much cash on installing alternative cooking, and heating arrangements so it is now someone else’s problem.

Like you I did similar research into how best to use it and come across all of the rose tinted spectacle info on various forums and websites.

Couple of thinks that were good:

Get an Aga kettle to keep on the top / side so you always have boiling water on the go
Get the toaster rack for it. Produces amazing toast

We had some of those La Cruset style metal dishes which seemed to work quite well in it.

Lots of trial and error with ours and we did finally get the hang of it though. Summer time saw us using a small electric work top oven and a plug in hob.

Obviously, you’ve come to the right conclusion in terms of getting a separate hob oven. Rayburns are a lovely thing, but a nightmare to use. We used to be able to watch the oil tank gauge ticking downwards during the winter months.

My suggestion would be to get a nice new two or three level steamer – pasta in the bottom, veg above. You’ll find yourself roasting rather than boiling veg and stuff anyway a lot of the time.

If it’s going to be possibly some time before you decide and proceed with a replacement, then – if you have sufficient counter top space – I would consider getting a double ring portable induction hob, e.g. like this.

That will give you the fast heat for cooking pasta or rice with an accompanying sauce, or for frying etc. You will need to buy some new (induction compatible) pans, but you would need to buy new pans anyway for whatever permanent replacement cooker and hob you eventually decide on (and if your pans have warped, it sounds like they were not very good: for copper pans to work properly, the copper needs to be thick, e.g. 2mm or more, in which case it is very unlikely to warp).

Boil the water in an electric kettle first, before putting in a pan on the rayburn 😀

Thanks for the responses so far, have been boiling the water in the kettle first. Not got a huge amount of worktop space but perhaps a plugin ring is the way to go.

I knew the oven side was hotter and I’ve tried to keep the lids down but anything more than a pan and you need them both up. I was reluctant to go much hotter with the oven temp for the stuff I had in the oven.

Didn’t think the pans were particularly bad, was a set of these don’t seem obviously warped but they rock slightly on the hot plate, funnily our much cheaper steamer sits flush and actually achieves a boil.

Another house we looked at had a solid fuel Rayburn, sounds like we dodged some hassle there then!

Previous owner said he’d leave the instructions and cook book that came with it. I’d hoped these would be a little more informative on technique but they’re quite vague. Perhaps i should buy another book.

I knew the oven side was hotter and I’ve tried to keep the lids down but anything more than a pan and you need them both up. I was reluctant to go much hotter with the oven temp for the stuff I had in the oven.

That is what the metal plate trick is for, heat the oven hotter and use the plate to reduce the heat and top/bottom oven trick. Time to think differently

Hi. We’ve got an oil fired Rayburn, and they definitely take a while/couple of years to get used to.

Firstly, the Oven/flue side is cooler. The side over the burner is hottest. Try to keep the lids down when not in use.

You have to get them serviced annually, else they start getting really glitchy and inefficient. We generally get ours done around October/early November, so if there’s any problems they can get sorted before Christmas. Make sure you have a carbon monoxide alarm.

They have to run slightly hotter than you would think if you’re cooking daily on it. For example, if we’re going away for a week we’ll turn it down to setting 1, to save a bit of fuel. Apart from that we’ll run it on about 3, unless we’re doing a large dinner/ sunday roast, whereby we’ll turn it up a couple of hours in advance. (remember to turn it back down).

Re pans; yes, flat bottomed heavy pans are the best. We use Denby stainless pans, but le Creuset, Jamie oliver and aga pans (expensive) are all good. We have a cast iron le creuset roasting tray for roast potatoes etc, and a Aluminium le creuset flat bottomed sautè pan. Cast iron on the hob works really well, but can easily overheat if you’re not careful. Most of our pans we’ve bought 2nd hand, as there’s nothing really to go wrong with cast iron cookware.

Re oven; Get an oven thermometer, £5 well spent.
Try to keep the door shut as much as possible to reduce heat loss. DON’T SLAM THE DOORS SHUT else you’ll be buying new bakelite handles at £25 a pop.

Re kettle. Get an aga kettle; an investment definitely, but well worth it.

Cooking in general:

for high heat stuff like searing steaks you’ll need cast iron skillet/frying pan.

Stuff tends to take a little longer unless there’s only one thing in the oven, in which case it’ll do really quickly.- you’ll get used to it.

Stir fries take a little longer – slower and lower allows the flavours to build.

If I need to get a pan of water boiling quickly I’ll sometimes fill it from the hot tap, just to give it a head-start.

There’s a technique in Jamie Oliver’s most recent christmas book for doing Yorkshire puddings; it’s the only way I can get mine to rise in the Rayburn (at the end of cooking a roast when you’ve lost a lot of the heat).

All that aside, it takes a while, but I really love cooking on mine now. Have fun.

Oh yeah, word of warning: If it goes out/gets turned off and cools down . . . all the clinker that builds up on the burner hardens, and you’ll have to get it serviced to re-light it. So, don’t run out of oil or turn it off accidentally!

Didn’t think the pans were particularly bad, was a set of these don’t seem obviously warped but they rock slightly on the hot plate, funnily our much cheaper steamer sits flush and actually achieves a boil.

I have not seen or held one of those M&S pans in the flesh, but I would be sceptical about the performance of their copper base. Copper is a very good heat conductor, but there needs to be a good thickness of it, e.g. 2mm/2.5mm, to get the benefit of using it in cookware. Very often when copper is used just on the bottom of the pan, it is only a thin ‘wash’, so you do not get the benefits but you do get the disadvantages (not induction compatible, and you need to be careful about cleaning them, e.g. not in the dishwasher). Moreover, the key benefit of copper cookware is rapid response to lowering and raising the heat, so it’s likely to be of less value for saucepans as opposed to frying and saute pans. The fact that a single good quality piece of copper cookware like this costs nearly three times what the M&S set sells for, is telling. You could argue that that copper frypan is not three times as ‘good’ as the M&S set, but you could get better pans for less than the price of the M&S set, i.e. you are paying for the M&S name and the aesthetics (the look of the copper base), rather than the performance and the quality. Put brutally, the M&S pans are probably the equivalent of an overpriced BSO, as evidenced by the warping.

Assuming you will have to replace those pans because the bases are warped and/or they will not work with any induction hob that you might buy, I would suggest you look at the pans sold by Nisbets, such as the Vogue brand: if they are what restaurants and hotels are using, then they are likely to be far better value and longer lasting. If the appearance and aesthetics of the pans is as important to you as their performance, then consider something like the tri-ply range from Le Creuset, although they cost a lot more (but will probably last a lifetime).

My take from almost 2 years with an Aga…

Boiling stuff – put the lid on the pan. Otherwise it won’t boil. Generally speaking start stuff off on top and then bung it in the oven and use the stored heat to do the rest of the cooking.

Roasted stuff is brilliant. I have a salt marsh lamb leg in mine at the moment and some tatties. ‘Snips to go in soon…

Steaks. I have pretty much given up with the idea of cooking a good steak, I just can’t get the pan hot enough to make it work. Same goes for stirfry – nae chance.

I should really get mine serviced come to think of it… but steak has never worked. That is what the gas bbq outside is for (although that needs replacing sometime soon too). If and when we redo the kitchen there is going to be an LPG hob or something in there too!

Having grown up in a house with an oil-fired Aga, my advice would be to smash it into pieces with a sledgehammer and sell the bits for scrap. Ridiculous, inefficient monstrosities that should be consigned to history…

Moved into a house with an Aga in April.

Have found no issue at all cooking all our usual favourites on it and roast dinners are just brilliant. Does pizzas a treat also.

More than happy to keep it – brilliant thing.

Keeps the downstairs of the house at a nice temperature also.

Rectangular hob? Rectangular pan!

Another house we looked at had a solid fuel Rayburn, sounds like we dodged some hassle there then!

Your not in Aberdeenshire by any chance are you?

Steaks. I have pretty much given up with the idea of cooking a good steak, I just can’t get the pan hot enough to make it work. Same goes for stirfry – nae chance.

Steaks – cook em straight on the hot plate – lovely. Stir Fry – I agree, nae chance.

Twodogs – Member
Having grown up in a house with an oil-fired Aga, my advice would be to smash it into pieces with a sledgehammer and sell the bits for scrap. Ridiculous, inefficient monstrosities that should be consigned to history…

Pretty much this.

I grew up with an oil fired aga and now many years later we find ourselves with a Rayburn. You can cook nearly anything on either that you can with a normal oven and hob, of course you can. You can do wonderful roasts, meringues etc etc in them. But I would argue each of these things is as good and in most cases a bit easier with a controllable normal oven. You just have to turn the knob to the right temperature. A normal oven and hob, alongside passable central heating and ok insulation negate all of the supposed benefits of these things. And you don’t end up burning all that oil.

Installing one of these is like buying a Range Rover and leaving it outside with the engine running just in case you might want to pop to the shops.

We had the stroke of luck recently to have the current one condemned as not economically repairable. So it’s going, to be replaced by electric boxes with temperature control knobs on that are both small enough to fit in our normal sized kitchen and big enough to hold a whole roast dinner. And a combi boiler. I can’t wait.

Beamers – yes, I am! Have you been house hunting in deeside too?

I think I’m where twodogs and luket are, it just all feels so inefficient!

Edit: slowster, blame my wife!

“Steaks. I have pretty much given up with the idea of cooking a good steak, I just can’t get the pan hot enough to make it work. Same goes for stirfry – nae chance.”

Not trying hard enough. It’s a doddle; you just use a cast iron skillet with a lid to get up to heat.

And lads, next time you’re down my way I’ll cook you a stir fry that will make you regret the time you’ve spent digesting every other stir fry you’ve eaten.

If you’re lucky I might even post the recipe.

I got food poisoning from my only aga meal. Burnt on the outside. Raw on the inside.

If I ever bought a house with one I’d sell it, or scrap it because no one with any environmental responsibility should be using them. It’s not 1930 and you don’t have staff.

cbike – Member
I got food poisoning from my only aga meal. Burnt on the outside. Raw on the inside.

Carp cooks be crap cooks then. As said you need to use it properly and it’s actually quite easy.

David likes his bacon extra crispy thanks.

We had a coal fired parkray when I was a kid, the roast potatoes out of it were sublime, but how idiotic to run a massive heater in the summer to cook and have hot water??

They must cost an absolute fortune to run compared to a modern electric or gas oven.

Hi, ex solid fuel Nordpies owner here (way more niche than your Rayburn/Aga, but it worked the same, you know, logs and coal and hot water and hotplates and a temperamental oven).

Did some cooking on it. It was ok. Ish. The hotplates would just about boil a saucepan of water with the lid on, but they took ages. The oven went up and down in temperature depending on how recently you’d stoked it, the size of the thing you’d put in it, and the phase of the moon.

It produced a lovely pile of ten pound notes when we sold it.

YMMV.

But we’re right with that Range Rover analogy, except that you’d have to replace the Range Rover with something really really slow and uncomfortable that blocked the road when it was parked.

Far more useful was the combined might of an immersion heater, boiler and electric cooker.

This “We used to be able to watch the oil tank gauge ticking downwards during the winter months.”

We used the Rayburn for cooking at times and it worked OKish (great flat breads & chapatis) but like almost every house I’ve been in that had this type of range most of the cooking was done on the electric cooker.

@Mat – not house hunting but selling our house with the solid fuel Rayburn. Would have been a coincidence if you came round for a viewing. House was just outside Insch and we were selling this time last year.

I grew up with a solid fuel Rayburn for a bit. It was a pita. Someone had to get up early to clean the ash out, load it up and light it. Sometime much later it would be hot and then the rads would heat up. It would then be too hot at the wrong time. Just faff. Or more precisely, not suited to a our timings. Again, as above it eventually turned into a nice pile of £10 notes.