I decided to chime in on this old thread as I have now had my Aga for ten years. It was an (expensive) leap when we were planning our house and my husband was skeptical. When it was installed in our open kitchen on concrete floors he said it looked like an expensive car parked there. That was then. Now we cannot imagine our kitchen life without it. And the kitchen IS the heart of the home. Keep in mind a few things: we live in the Pacific Northwest where it is cool and rainy about 9 months of the year. In the summer though it gets very hot (90 degrees) off and on. If it is gong to stay that hot for a week or more, we turn it off. And spend the next week complaining about life without it! Once you turn it back on it takes overnight to come back to heat. Our AGA is electric, a decision we made carefully. Again, we live in the PNW where electricity is relatively cheap, but more importantly, we decided to use energy we had a hope of generating ourselves. We will never be able to generate propane. And while I have cooked on a wood stove for years, I wouldn't really recommend it if you have other choices. We've never had it serviced ( we live quite a ways out in the country), but we have had the electrical element fixed twice (in 10 years). Why do we love it? It makes great toast. We cook pancakes for the grandchildren directly on the simmer plate; the ovens are wonderful and no waiting for preheating nor turning it down when going from 450 to 350 for a recipe; we also drape ourselves over it in the morning and at night and whenever we come in from gardening in the cold and wet; dogs love to be near it; our big open kitchen/living/dining room is not adequately heated by the radiant floor heat (ground source heat pump) at least not at the levels we are willing to turn it up to, and the Aga provides gentle heat to that end of the room; I can heat my slippers in the 150 oven; we also "iron" our table napkins and anything else you want ironed by folding them while slightly damp and letting them sit on the warming plate for a while, flipping them once and:presto, flat and ironed table linens. I have a lot of experience cooking with gas, propane and induction. Induction would be my (non-Aga) choice by far, but we would not really like to contemplate our kitchen life without the red classic four door beast.

I have an old version back before the halogen addition. I like that. Mine is the big glass bowl with the heating element and fan in the cover. I prefer that to setting the bowl over a plate. I recently bought one of the updated versions but haven't tried it yet. It was only $12 or $15 so I thought WTH, Size? It's no bigger than a crockpot really, not much anyway, if any. Certainly no bigger, and not as tall as a KitchenAid mixer. Probably about the same as a 4 slice toaster - the ones that run in tandem. I put mine down on a shelf and it's probably about 9" high when the top is inverted for storage. The shelf is 12" deep so the fear of storage isn't a big thing. When I do a lot of cooking, I tend to use it quite a bit. Right now the Nesco has the spot on the shelf where the convection usually sits but I can easily put them side by side too and I often use them together, for instance I'll brown the ribs or pot roast in the convection then cook it in the Nesco. For things like snack stuff, pizza rolls for example, it's faster than a microwave and they come out crisp. Other batter dipped frozen foods and the like work well in mine. I tried a turkey breast once, but the problem was fitting it in there. I couldn't butterfly it like I wanted and I should have cut off the rib bones. I still like turkey out of the Nesco better anyway. It just hit me I'm using the glass tray from my old microwave on top of the shelf I use. It sits inside that so that might give you an idea of size. It was a good suggestion to go someplace and look at one for yourself. You'll probably be surprised that it's not the size of a chest freezer. Quality? IDK, my old one is built like a tank, haven't even opened the new one. But go to a store and see it for yourself and you be the judge. You'll likely get a better deal on it too. I sure did! How food tastes in them? That's so subjective that it's hard to say. If you're saying compared to smoked on the grill over real charcoal and hickory/apple/cherry (or your choice of) wood, of course it's not going to taste exactly the same. But what appliance will duplicate that? Not an oven, nor a slow cooker not a frypan, toaster oven, an open fire or anything else. For that matter, some will argue that a gas grill doesn't compare with charcoal, and some will even argue that briquettes don't compare to true charcoal! And I suppose electric grills wouldn't taste the same to some although many people "love" their Foreman grills too. LOL Much depends on peoples' tastebuds. Some couldn't tell the difference of something baked or fried. Compared to other cooking methods, basically it's an oven. It applies heat to food Compare it to oven roasted is about the best comparison to be made. Personally, a steak improperly prepared on a grill is not something I enjoy. The way it's actually cooked and to what degree and the like is more important to me than the apparatus used to cook. That's why I laugh so much when people get into an argument over gas vs electric stoves. A good cook can cook on most anything. The appliance seldom makes one a better cook.

So two French guys give the cooking process a name. It happened and we all know what it means. I visualize a stick-type kitchen tool submerged in a container of water. A precise water bath circulator. They could have called it anything...KitchenJaccuzi, PrecisionHotBath... They called it SousVide. It went to print, maybe a book or two, then social media. It stuck like many named objects/recipes. Coined terms. Happens every day. Some 'cancelled', others are named and are recognized globally. We all know what a 'toaster oven' is. I visualize a small counter top oven. Most do not even toast that well. Any kitchen appliance or any object in your home is called a common word that most know what it is in conversation. Kleenex wins as a brand. We don't say 'nose paper' but we do say TP. (toilet paper). Why?...well the branding worked. Word play and language translation, definitions, even pronunciations can drive one bonkers. Not nails on a chalkboard, but more like a song stuck in my head and not necessarily a bad song. Last week I heard Ina pronounce ChickenMarbella Mar-Bay-ah. Yes Marbella, Spain is 'bay-ah' but it is not a Spinach dish at all. They were inspired by a trip to Spain and Turkey. (never made it being to sweet for my crowd) I might be the last person on the planet thinking 'Bella' like I call my pup when she is a sweetheart. (Italian pronunciation) SousVide is what it is. Literal translation not at all necessary. Too late for that. If one does not like the name, too bad. Why drive yourself nuts over it. I think Anova tried a brand change to 'AnovaPrecisionCooker' but it did not stick like the now famous InstaPot.

Slevendog, your waiting stock pot sounds like my sister's in New Orleans. Her waiting stockpot has venison and wild boar and well as at least one raccoon. She makes an interesting gumbo! They have old family plantation land just across the state line in Mississippi and if offers up a lot of wild game. The local tire store sells frozen 'coons, dressed...Bubbas Tires and 'Coons. It is just a stone's throw from Angola, real southern gothic, back woods place. You can also buy both a new house trailer and a bucket of fried cracklins on the same street in this little town. It appears that the town consumes many buckets of these fried cracklins. Interesting and quite provincial it is, but not very healthy judging by the seemingly rampant obesity. She makes a mean stockpot and has a beautiful garden in her New Orleans yard. She can grow from a rock. She is amazing and so is her stockpot.