Does anyone have an Everhot range?

[Thistledew]

What's it like to cook with?

We are about to renovate our kitchen. At present it has an ancient oil-fired Rayburn, which I don't much use for cooking apart from doing jacket potatoes or other roast veg, and a small electric stove. The Rayburn is the only source of heat in the room.

We need to replace the Rayburn and I'm trying to decide between replacing it with a modern range cooker or with an Everhot range. The benefit of the Everhot is that it would be a heat source in the winter, as putting a radiator in the room wouldn't be ideal due to the layout. But I'm worried about cooking on it.

I tend to pan-cook, and will typically use at least three rings on the cooker at a time (eg, boiling pasta, steaming veg and making a sauce). I often use a hot oven for sausages, fish etc, which need a short cook on a relatively high heat. Or I use the oven for finishing of shepherds pie, or similar.

I don't always have the time to plan to slow cook something, so usually need to prepare dinner in about 30-45 mins.

If you have an Everhot, how do you use it for cooking? What about in the summer? Does it take a long time for the oven or hot plate to come up to temperature? Is there any way of adapting your cooking such as getting a rice cooker or counter top veg steamer?

Thanks for any views.

www.sarahwhitaker.com/faqs

Look up sarah whitaker - she used to do demos on agas but has now moved to esse i believe. There are a number of cast iron ranges out there now and they probably cook in similar ways.

I use an aga which is on all the time so cooks differently to the modern ones which can be turned on and off and ovens can be set at temperatures. Using an aga i would bring root vegetables to the boil on the hot plate, drain, put on lid and finish off in the simmering oven - so effectively steaming, green veg i would cook quickly on top for 5-7 mins in water.

Visit a local showroom as they should be able to give you good advice and they might do cooking dems as well.

I've got an Everhot. A 90i which means it has a two hot plates and an induction hob. We also had an oil fired Rayburn before getting the Everhot. I use it for all cooking. Rice cooking and steaming can be done in the bottom oven. Plus side is that each oven and the hobs are heated separately so you don't lose temperature like you do on the Rayburn. Takes about two hours to get to full temperature from start although it does have a grill so you can speed this up a bit if you need to. It doesn't chuck out anything like the heat the Rayburn did so can stay on all summer. It is not cheap to run. Definitely a lifestyle option although it is cheaper than the oil fired rayburn.. There is an excellent Everhot cookers discussion group on Facebook.. That will answer all your questions as well as many you would never have thought of. Let me know if you want to know anything else.

We have an old oil Rayburn and plan to keep it until either something unfixable happens or it is replaced with a larger old oil one.

Why do you want to replace it? Ours is cheaper to run than an ever hot, we find good to cook with, and does the hot water.

A friend with an ever hot finds it puts very little heat into the room compared to a Rayburn unless they leave the doors/job covers open (it’s very well insulated to try and make it more efficient).

Thanks for all the views and advice.

We bought the house a year ago "in need of modernisation" and are about to start renovating it, including putting in a new kitchen.

I don't much use the Rayburn for cooking, apart from a bit of slow roasting. I don't find that the oven or the hot plate get hot enough for the sort of cooking I do. We have an ancient electric cooker that I do most of the cooking on.

In some ways I'll be sorry to see the Rayburn go- it does do its job and there is not much to actually break on it, but it is about 80 years old and the enamel is all chipped, so it's past its prime. We are also hoping to move away from an oil-fired heating system, although we haven't yet settled on how we achieve that.

The problem we have in the kitchen is that the Rayburn is the only source of heat. There is a lovely quarry-tile floor that would be a shame to destroy to put in under floor heating (it would be a gamble as to whether we could get the tiles up in one piece). We could put in a radiator, but there is no obvious place to locate it without it looking intrusive. The kitchen is a big room- I'd guess at least 8x4m.

I like the functionality of having the induction hobs on top of the Everhot, but am concerned that would not be enough hob-space and also from comments above, whether it would effectively heat the room.

I would try servicing the Rayburn and potentially adjusting the flow rates. As I’m sure you know unlike an aga you have to turn it up before you start cooking.

Timers are available to turn the burner right up to get it up to temperature for your usual cooking times. Ours is a 1960s model which according to the manual needs an hour to get to the set temperature but I just tend to stick the burner on full before starting to gather ingredients etc as we tend to eat at fairly varying times.

Before it’s last service where the burner was adjusted quite a lot from its previous settings to took much longer to heat up.

I have an Everhot. I grew up cooking on an oil fired Stanley which was backed up by an electric oven and an extra hob.

Mine is a 120i, so I have a hot plate on one side, and a three ring induction on the other. In total I could easily use 6 pans on the top of the cooker if I so wished. I find the induction great to get things boiling and then I transfer across to the hotplate.

I have three ovens. The top is kept at 220, and I tend to use the top shelf in that oven for things that require 200, and the bottom shelf for things that need a bit more heat (heat comes from bottom of oven). The bottom left oven is at 180, and bottom right is at 100 and I just use that as a warming oven. It’s on constantly so once it’s on, it didn’t need to come up to temperature, you just work away.

For oven cooking, things do take slightly longer. I wouldn’t be a person that times everything to the minute anyway so that doesn’t massively bother me. When it’s done it’s done! But, frozen stuff like oven chips do take maybe 10 mins longer than you’d expect.

As regards heating the room, I’ve actually been surprised by how much heat it throws out. Based on all the comments about it not being as warm as an Aga that I’d read, we put in an extra radiator into our open plan kitchen/dining/living space (roughly 8M x 5M with an alcove off that for dining) I’ve kept that radiator off because it’s too warm with it. But we do have a second radiator in the room that I’ve kept on. I also think your insulation will affect the room temperature.

Other benefits: I no longer have an electric kettle, just a stove top one that boils in a few mins on the induction. Also, it’s great for drying clothes on/or with an airer in front, but I expect you’ll have that benefit with any range!

As PP mentioned, the Facebook group is a great place to go for info! Any other questions feel free to ask!

Thanks, that is great info.

What do you do in summer? I take it you can use the grill, but if you wanted to use the oven, how long does it take to come up to temperature? What about the hot plate? Can you turn that on independently of the oven, and does it take long to come up to simmering temp?

I'm also thinking that if I were to get a countertop veg steamer, that would reduce my need for hob space. Are there other bits of kit that you use alongside your cooker? I was given a microwave with an oven setting, which I've never used, but that might be an option for the summer months.

I only have it installed since Jan 2021, and I’m in the Rep of Ireland so our summers aren’t massively hot! We did have a heatwave this summer and I turned it off for two or three days, and used the induction. I also have an electric oven (was already in the house and we had space to keep it, I wouldn’t bother installing one if I was starting from scratch), so I used that too.

It’s designed to be left on all the time and not really switched on or off. So really it’s always ready you never have to wait for it to come to temperature. There is an Eco setting you can use over night to save energy use and when it’s Eco the temperatures of each oven/hotplate drop. There’s an inbuilt timer for this.

You can turn on all elements individually of each other but like I said it’s designed to be left on and therefor it’s ‘ever’ hot!

There’s no other cooking appliances I use…for steaming veg you could just get a stacking steamer pan set and use that on the hot plate or induction, depending which model you go for. Also I know some people steam veg in the lower ovens but it’s not something I’ve tried. There would be more info on that in the Facebook group!

Also to help understand the hob space, the dimensions are all on the Everhot website, and you could cut out a piece of newspaper to the exact size and see how your pans work on that space! Ive yet to be caught out for hob space between the hotplate/simmerplate and induction side, if you go for an i model.

I've also got an 120i (which is the induction version. The 120+ is the same size but is all hotplates so it will give out more heat).

Tbh, it doesn't throw out loads of heat so it is fine to leave on in the summer, but just takes the chill off - it's lovely to lean against! But I think if I didn't have radiators in my kitchen also it would be too cold just to rely on the 120i.

The hob size is generous because you have 3 inductions and two hot plates. But I tend to use the ovens more. If I was making a pasta sauce for e.g. I'd just put it in the oven and similarly with steaming veg. Different zones in the oven have different temps, so the bottom of the oven is speedy whereas the top is slower.

It's lovely for baking. Also I used to have a fan oven which was noisy - this is quiet, obvs!

Grill comes up to temp super quick.

I really like mine because I have a big kitchen and it's nice to have a cosy corner, plus I like the way the ovens cook things. I like that it's always on so it feels welcoming.

Also you can take them with you if you move house (obviously need someone to help you do this!) and Everhot will always buy it back from you if you don't need it anymore - their customer service is excellent actually. (You could look on their website for any reconditioned models as they are super expensive....)