Here I am, not even having a microwave.
I do have an electric kettle though which I need multiple times a day.
No, I’m not British.
I just write “IRANIAN NUCLEAR SCIENTIST HERE” on the cup, publish the pictures and location everywhere, don’t move it for years, and then Israel will heat it up instantly for free.
I’m British the entire conversation is deeply offensive to my people. Microwaving??? Putting mugs on a stove??? I am appalled!
On that note, as someone from a commonwealth nation, I was deeply appalled during the height of the pandemic when kettles couldn’t be purchased here as they weren’t considered ‘essential items’.
That’s a travesty, they’re the backbone of the country
One reason that some Americans microwave water rather than use a kettle is that our electricity is half the power of UK electricity. It takes a lot longer for an electric kettle to boil here. That said, I do use a kettle when boiling water for tea.
When I went, if I ever saw one it was the equivalent of those cheap travel kettles. I think the average person there just doesn’t use it enough to justify getting a good one.
We have a Zojirushi. 120V does limit it somewhat, but it’s fine.
The water in our area of country is also hard as shit. We have undersink RO now, but before then, mineral buildup in the kettle was bad. Crusted like concrete if we didn’t stay on top of it.
…softeners are essential in aquifer country; our zojirushi served us well for a decade but after our whole-house filter blew out a couple of years ago i’m starting to see iron deposits despite the softener…
I don’t even understand how that could work, surely a standard mug would break one way or another if you just stick it on the stove?
Porcelain has very good temperature shock resistance, stoneware quite good, earthenware bad. Your standard mug should be stoneware and take it just fine. There’s even stoneware pots.
The issue is rather that you shouldn’t use standard electric stoves with too small pots, on gas I guess that’s half-sensible but you’d be left with a charred mug that’s way too hot.
OK so the mug acts like a small pot, but isn’t the handle also crazy hot then?
Just thinking about it makes me want to go and lovingly stroke my kettle
Our electricity is 120v here in the US, so kettles take forever
US outlet is 120V@20A = 2.4kW UK outlet is 230V@13A = 3.0kW
It’s a 15% difference based on possible power draw.
Anecdotally the stove will still take many times longer. Even compared to induction my kettle is faster.
My guess is that in the UK/EU it’s not common to have powerful microwaves?
Most residential outlets in the US are going to be a 15A limit. You also have to reduce that by 20% for a continuous draw.
UK might be able to get away with the full usage because their plugs are designed to have a fuse built in. Not entirely sure on that, though.
That said, kettles are still a better option most of the time. Technology Connections has real world tests of this.
Do microwaves have some magic efficiency trick that lets them produce heat faster from the same exact energy? Like, how do they manage to be more than 100% efficient?
Microwave magnetron efficiency is around 65%. Since a kettle turns electricity directly into heat, it’s basically 100% efficient.
A caveat is that microwaves will heat water directly and won’t lose as much to its surroundings. This is similar to why induction stoves are more efficient; they’re less efficient on paper than direct electric heating or burning gas, but they heat the thing you want in a more direct way.
Even so, a microwave isn’t great for this task. If you’re short on space and don’t want even a small travel kettle, I can see why you’d take this option. Otherwise, no.
Microwaves are designed to heat water molecules. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microwave_oven
…i don’t think you should drink that; it looks bad for you…
They don’t, kettles just aren’t that much more efficient at 120v. Like a kettle will still be faster, just not by enough for people to care.
Am I the only one that drinks cold brew tea? Organic decaf loose leaf green tea in a tea bag. Put in a pitcher of water and put it in the fridge for 3 hours. Remove tea bag. Pitcher of tea.
My mom would sun brew tea. I grew up in Florida. She’d take one of those Mt. Olive giant pickle jars and set it out in the sun for a few hours on the porch.
I like Turkish apple tea hot, but I don’t really drink other tea hot generally. I use the tea to slow my system down (as I’m doing now.) I have a J pouch and when I get pouchitis (inflammation of the pouch that acts as my colon) I can’t keep food or liquids in my system. For some reason, the tea helps calm it down a bit, stop bleeding and reduce diarrhea. It did the same when I had my colon and was fighting UC. I almost exclusively drink water or tea.
Cold brewed tea is great! It has noticeably less tannin tasting, if I know I want tea in the future I generally cold brew c: especially nice if you like making different kinds of syrups!
Isn’t knowing you want tea in the future just always though?
But can you ever really know you want something in the future? I think it’s more of a prediction. I predict tomorrow me will want tea
Following the pattern, by kettle they probably meant the turkish combustion tea kettle.
WTF is happening in the second image? I need my tea making to be that dramatic.
It’s a variant on a samovar. Fire goes in the bottom ring, the cauldron keeps the water hot for refilling the teapot, and the teapot sits on top to keep warm while it brews.
And the metre-long column of fire is just for funzies?
Sometimes people fill the chimney with burning coals to make it heat up faster, you get a good breeze across the bottom, and you get funzies.
These are called “soba” in turkish and can also be used to heat a room!
electric kettles are the way and the light
Nope instant boiling water taps are the way or even a standalone hot water dispenser is better then a kettle. Also modern induction cooktops will cook water faster than a kettle, 10kW beats 3kW. Kettles are relics of the past.
This is how everyone does it right? Right?! The only people that I know who don’t use an electric kettle are in their 80s. Or is this some cultural thing where people in the US/UK/whatever don’t use electric kettles?
As a grown man in the US, I’m not sure that I’ve ever seen an electric kettle in real life (only on British TV).
Idk anyone else who has one but im also in the US and have had an electric kettle for at least 10 years. Its pretty handy sometimes
The US just keeps surprising me
UK here. Everyone has an electric kettle, even those aged 80+. They’re seen as a household essential.
We have a whistle kettle. It’s just as fast and prettier. Although definitely less efficient.
If you use on an induction stove, it’s probably more efficient
why are you expecting the UK to not use kettles?
Yeah in hindsight that was foolish haha
US still has residential power from the last century
The power is not why Americans don’t own electric kettles (well some do but most don’t). It’s still faster to boil water from an electric kettle than on the stove. Americans don’t own electric kettles because they don’t drink much tea.
US has 110 voltage that can’t run a kettle for shit
Even with underpowered 110v an electric kettle still boils water faster than a stovetop IME. Still only a few minutes difference but it’s a difference.
Technology Connections tested that
Yeah I saw that comment elsewhere. I have to assume kettle/stove material/design/etc have some impact as well. Honestly, I trust TC so I’ll defer to them, I need to watch the video.
edit: yeah his testing is in-line with my experience, electric kettles are just faster.
It’s not even really about speed. My induction stovetop boils water much much faster than my kettle, but I use the kettle because it can be used unattended, go to a specific temperature, and hold a temperature.
My cheapo countertop induction stove can be programed and has power/temp settings. I spent some time testing the temp feature and it was pretty accurate
Nah, a high power gas stove beats it in the “heat a cup of water as fast as possible with no regard to energy usage” competition, and is many areas will still cheaper because electricity is so expensive.
Gas Stoves are unhealthy and make you dumb
I really don’t know where this myth comes from. Electric kettles run fine over here.
Comparative for you maybe, but not for those of us who’ve seen them run on higher current
They run fine, but basically the same as a microwave, British kettles are just magic
Microwave is gonna be at least 25% slower.
This is true, but for how often Americans boil water, it’s just not worth having a dedicated device for most of them
The crazy thing is we have 240V service to the home, but we only use it for large appliances that also use high current. My stove is induction and is one of the things plugs into 240V, and I bet it can boil a cup of water (though in a pot/pan) faster than most kettles.
There are plenty of cases where having the higher voltage in our outlets would be nice. For me it’s probably corded power tools more than kettles. But the vast majority of devices are fine either way.
I tried to get an electric kettle last year, but I guess they don’t make the kind that keep the water hot all day anymore. So I had to get a whole hot water dispenser that keeps it hot for days now.
Everyone in the country I live in just uses a thermos lol
This is absolutely insane to me. Just boil enough for what you need. You don’t need boiling water on demand.
I don’t need to drink tea at all. But if I have to sit and wait for water to boil, I just don’t drink as much. Maybe it’s my ADHD, but I’ll just put it off and then suddenly it’s the end of the day.
they don’t make the kind that keep the water hot all day anymore.
Zojirushi does.
I got their hot water dispenser but didn’t see any kettles except ones that timed out after like an hour.
They’re fast and efficient, by putting the heating element right up against the water, and also safe thanks to shutting off automatically. Great shit!
We have one for every bedroom, for teamergencies
Yep , I never realized how fast they are. 2 cups boils in under 2 minutes.
Electric kettles are actually a scam. Look up any BIFL forum, they’ll all say that stove top kettle is the way to go.
Zojirushi. They last. Since it’s BIFL, I don’t see the extra cost as a big problem. That’s what you deal with when you BIFL.
Nobody wants to use a stovetop kettle when they can just push a button and forget about it.
Also an electric kettle costs 10-20€ and lasts ~10 years, it’s also much more energy efficient.
No need to “buy it for life”
Ur body is already made of like 70% water and also its already warm. Just eat the tea bag, thats what i do.
British Cuisine in a nutshell
mmmmmmm…plastic
You gotta take the wrapper off first obviously
Takes 1 minute 30 seconds for my induction top to boil water
induction top
So enchanted. Got it.
Doesn’t it depend on the amount of water?
No. If that thing ever ends up running in the ocean, we will all die
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I went through a coffee snob phase and got really into French Press coffee. And for that I bought an electric kettle. And its fantastic. Coffee, Tea, instant noodles. The thing is very useful. I love it.
Europeans when they discover that no, most Americans really do not own a kettle rule.
Hmmm. Most of the Americans I know have electric kettles now. It’s probably my most used kitchen gadget. Great for making tea or coffee, or boiling water for oatmeal. I just used it tonight to get some warm water to soak my lizard (not a euphemism) and to thaw out a frozen mouse for a snake. Honestly it gets used probably 5 or 6 times a day most days.
to thaw out a frozen mouse for a snake
Was… Was that an euphemism?
Is that weird? I would assume snakes wouldn’t want to eat a frozen mouse.
It was not.
Not the poster you’re responding to by my spouse has snakes and uses our kettle to boil water to thaw out their mice
let alone an electric kettle
I can’t imagine life without an electric kettle…
I don’t know what happened. We used to be really into tea. Blame the Townshend Acts I guess?
We dumped that tea into the Boston Harbor because we didn’t want that crap.
No we did, it was good tea. That’s what made the message clear, the value being sacrificed. The popular American predilection for tea up until after the Townshend Acts was well documented by de Tocqueville. It was only after that drinking tea was considered “unpatriotic”. Before then we would even eat boiled tea leaves with butter as a side dish. We were mad about the stuff, but as a colony we were only allowed to buy British tea. It was a whole thing.
Anyway I’ve had an electric kettle for ages. It’s more common in Asian-American households perhaps. We didn’t fit in that well in the states, so we went back to the UK. Now I only buy British tea again. Full circle.
ngl there’s a tea from Cornwall that is my absolute favorite black tea now
They do things right out in Cornwall. We were vacationing at lands end when storm Henk made landfall, it was memorable to say the least.
we asian muricans use those kettles for instant ramen lol
Tea, instant ramen, oatmeal, eggs, electric kettles are awesome and really convenient.
Cultural taste can change over time for various reasons. Tea has been inherently traditional to many countries, not as much to others.
we are shifting to boiling taps too now
Wait, do Americans not own kettles?
That’s like one of the first things I bought when I moved out.
their shitty electrical grid means kettles take like double the time to boil.
That’s not true and also it’s not the reason. We just don’t drink a lot of tea. There’s not a huge reason to own an electric kettle unless you’re drinking a lot of tea. It’s still much faster than a stovetop kettle.
Great video on this from technology connections. tl;dr it takes more time, but not, like, that much more. We mostly just don’t have a huge tea-drinking culture here.
My family (American) did drink a lot of tea. Surprise surprise, we had a kettle. I did not die of old age from the cumulative weight of all that waiting.
…you don’t brew your coffee hot?
Not sure what you mean. Americans do brew hot coffee, but they generally don’t use a kettle to brew it. Hand-brewing methods like pour over are a very recent trend here. In my experience growing up, the vast majority of households used an electric drip coffee machine, or a stovetop percolator before they had electricity. Even now, when pour over and the aeropress are starting to get popular, I’d wager that a vast majority of households are still using a machine - either a drip machine or one of those pod machines - rather than a brewing method that requires a kettle.
Edit: found some stats on American home coffee brewing. Among Americans who brew coffee at home, 48% tend to use a drip machine, and 29% use a pod machine, neither of which requires a kettle. If we assume the entire pour over (5%) and French press (5%) market owns a kettle, and that the entire “other” category (6%) owns a kettle (which seems very generous), that’s still only 16% of home coffee drinkers using a kettle. (Another 7% use an espresso machine or percolator, and I think the last 1% was lost to rounding.)
I did not die of old age from the cumulative weight of all that waiting.
Not yet. Just you wait.
chronic exposure to time dramatically increases your chances of getting terminally old.
So why does Japan at 100V have electric kettles everywhere? It’s a cultural reason not the electrical grid.
good point! i don’t know much about their grid, only that it’s 50Hz in the west and 60Hz in the east.
I’ve never heard of anywhere in US using 50Hz and I’ve lived on the West Coast my whole life.
I love that you’ve come into a discussion about Japan’s electrical grid and still assumed that the conversation is about America.
I mean, the conversation started about America’s electric grid. It was ambiguous from context.
that may be because we were talking about japan!
Not that East and West, the East and West.
I’ve actually timed my kettle. 15 ounces of water(I have larger mugs than ‘normal’) takes 2 minutes and 34 seconds to be a full rolling boil. I’m really not that concerned.
Pretty much every person I know in Canada has an electric kettle and every single office I’ve worked in has one, my kitchen has 15a outlets which is still 1800W. I have a simple gooseneck kettle that I usw mainly for coffee, it’s only 1kW and holds around 750ml, it’s not blisteringly fast but it’s boiled before I’ve ground my coffee.
The whole “120v is holding us back from having kettles” is way overblown (technology connections has a video on electric kettles).
my kitchen has 15a outlets which is still 1800W
1800W are not out of the ordinary for water cookers in Europe but that’s definitely on the weak side. 3000 to 3200 is usually the maximum, probably because pulling the full 3600W would drastically increase the chances of tripping a fuse. My food processor is 600W and I might want to make a coffee while kneading dough.
Have to drop the US number by 20% for continuous loads like a kettle would be.
That said, US homes built in the last 40 years or so tend to have a lot of separate circuits in the kitchen. My house has one for the fridge, one for the disposal, one for the dishwasher, one for the lights that’s shared with lights in adjacent areas, stove has its own 240V outlet, and then one for all the other plugs. If I ran the microwave and a kettle and a mixer all at once, I’d probably still trip it, but that’s a lot of multitasking going on.
Our grid uses the same voltages as Europe. Our houses even generally receive 240V from the line. It’s just that we went with 120V for most appliances and electronics for some reason.
I’d also argue a lot of Americans technically do have electric kettles, and they just don’t realize it because they’re advertised as coffee makers. It’s not ideal, but you can definitely use a drip coffee machine to boil water, and it’ll still be faster than a stove.
Unfortunately for every tea drinker in an American hotel, most coffee makers (at least the drip kind) will make any water boiled inside taste like coffee, unless they’ve been used exclusively for plain boiled water. Maybe a combo tea/coffee drinker wouldn’t mind, but I’ve always found it intolerable.
But it’s a good point about the grid - we have plenty of appliances for coffee that are principally glorified water boilers, and there’s no evidence that our appliance voltage has hampered their popularity at all.
As a combo tea/coffee drink, it tastes horrible. Nobody wants tea flavored coffee or coffee flavored tea. Although you usually don’t get tea flavored coffee in those hotel drip makers, but only because the grounds they use are shit tier quality and taste too burnt to even get tea flavors.
it really doesn’t. european houses generally receive 400V from the line, split into 3 220V phases. you guys get two 120V phases that are fully phase-shifted, rather than 120° offset, and you bridge two phases to get 240 for heavy appliances.
It’s mostly for commercial installations, but you can get 3-phase 480V here if you want it.
I don’t think this has much to do with the grid, though. It’s more that we started with 120V appliances, so that’s what we built our homes to support.
You get 3-phase in the US if you live in a large apartment complex. Especially if it has an elevator. Since this combines to get 208V, the math works out to making your 240V stove only 75% of what it should be.
For residential use, split phase is fine. We just run the two legs to get 240V on the specific things that need it. That’s generally electric stoves, water heaters, AC unit, electric dryer, and more recently, EV chargers. 3-phase is great when you’re driving something that spins with a high draw, and of those, only the AC unit does that (electric dryers spend most of their electricity heating, not spinning).
Edison distributed ±110V DC against neutral, three wires, your AC system was designed to use those exact wires, then you expanded that compromise to the whole continent.
Europe in the beginning also had those small insular installations with odd systems but once it came to actually hooking up whole countries everyone opted for three-phase because it’s the most sensible option. Whether or not the distribution network itself uses three conductors (just the phases) or four (plus neutral, or combined earth+neutral) differs quite wildly. Train electricity is still a clusterfuck.
It’s still just a few minutes. Don’t heat up more water than you are going to use.
not true, that’s a myth
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In my country (and most of northern Europe I presume), induction stoves are becoming very common. I tossed my electric kettle 7 years ago when I got induction.
It’s faster than a kettle in most of my pots.
Tea isn’t that popular here although I’d argue in recent years it has been gaining on what it once was. I think where other countries kettles are the norm, here “coffee makers” are the norm.
The majority of the more “popular” form of tea we’d have here is probably considered an abomination onto nuggin elsewhere: sweet tea. (Iced tea with about 628648lbs of sugar in it.)
I think this is the largest reason right here. People are naturally going to reserve their limited counter space for the stuff they use daily. For Americans, that’s more likely to be some kind of coffee maker than an electric kettle.
Growing up where I did, I knew a lot of families that regularly made iced tea. But they usually made a gallon at a time, once or twice a week, and still drank coffee every day - so they had counter top coffee makers, and stovetop kettles that could be stored away the rest of the week.
I had a dedicated saucepan to make iced tea to ensure my tea only tasted like tea.
I guess I’m surprised, I’m in Canada so expected we’d be very similar.
But you also have garbage disposals and I’ve never seen one here.
I own one because I’m a coffee snob and enjoy pourovers. Before I went down that whole road, no. And neither did anyone I knew well enough to dig through their kitchen
So, I’m Greek and I also have never used a kettle. In fact, you won’t find one in most households. But all of us have a briki. It’s like a mini pot!
We use it to boil water/make cofee/tea/boil 1-2 eggs etc
I don’t get it either, I’ve always made tea with a small pot. It is just something to heat up water. It has a lid. The only time I started seeing a lot of kettles around was when pour over / V60 / Chemex became fashionable and every place started selling gooseneck kettles.
They’re getting more common. I personally used a stovetop kettle as recently as six years ago. But electric kettles are a world of difference.
Minor problem for me is currently living in a very old house that we don’t own and using a proper electric kettle will pop a breaker. I recently bought a travel kettle that uses like 1/5 the wattage instead
Are we talking about electric kettles or kettles in general?
An electric kettle is a counter appliance and therefore degeneracy. A stovetop kettle is functional decoration though.
a stovetop kettle is literally bigger takes up a hob takes more time to boil and costs more money
I don’t need the burner space most of the time, compared to the counter space. Plus, like I said, it looks better, so the aesthetics justify the cost. I agree the boil time is a problem, but it’s a small price to pay for clear counters. It’s starts with a kettle. Then you have a toaster, and an air fryer and a coffee grinder and a coffee machine and before you know it your house is 37% counter appliances by mass. The only option is to be an extremist.
How much are you making? For one single cup it’s quicker in the microwave. Just over 2 minutes. No point in heating a water kettle’s worth. Doesn’t save much time. If you’re making 2 or more cups, then the kettle’s fine.
You do not need to fill up a kettle. The less you put in it the less time it takes too.
The best method (arguably not very energy efficient) is a Zojirushi water boiler that keeps the water hot (175F, 190F, 200F) and boils when a temperature change is detected.
It’s so nice to have if you drink a lot of tea, or as some Asian households prefer, hot vs room temp water.
The Quooker tap seems like a good option. The electricity used for stand by is easily saved by not cooking more than necessary.
A kettle has a minimum amount like half a liter, which is completely wasted when you only need a cup.
It is so wrong to talk about temperatures that are near boiling using fahrenheit.
Haha. It boils to 212F and cools down to ideal tea steeping temperatures, which is very convenient.
How many British Thermal Units does it require to heat one gill of water to 212F from a room temperature of 72F if you have a 1/2 horsepower electric kettle?
¯_(ツ)_/¯
lol no shit many Americans don’t own a kettle, they apparently rank 36th in tea consumption per capita. Breaking news lads, they aren’t as enamored with it as the next higher usage countries.
List of countries by tea consumption per capita
The UK is 3rd, behind Ireland and Turkey. Get your shit together, UK.
Fun fact, due to the power difference in the US, kettles are much slower here than some other places. You can run a 3kW kettle on the grid in the UK, and boil a single cup’s worth of tea water in about 45 seconds. In the US, most outlets won’t allow more than 1800W, or 1.8kW, so the best kettles will take almost twice as long.
That’s almost a minute and thirty one seconds! Daft.
I just start the kettle first, by the time I’ve got my mug and tea all gathered up the water is ready.
Facts.
BUT as an American southerner, our iced tea consumption is through the roof and it fuels our economies, sweet tea and fried chicken
Southern US is the best place for developing new methods to kill yourself in delightful ways.
Growing up, we’d make sun tea, and I feel like that’d send a lot of tea drinkers running. In the morning, you’d take a gallon jar of water, a dozen teabags, bunch of sugar, and let it sit in the sun during the day, and drink it that evening.
I loved sun tea growing up, sit your jug out there early when the day is really warming up and by the afternoon you could have a nice icy glass of sweet tea.
Supposedly it’s a bit dangerous because the water doesn’t get hot enough to kill any bacteria that would be on the bags or something. “Refrigerator Tea” is apparently a thing now but I haven’t given it a shot, maybe I will soon, Cold brew coffee is ok, maybe coldbrew tea is great also.
I usually use my kettle to make coffee (handfiltered/pour-over).
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This one extended a little with a great literate addition 😂
wow, actual iambic pentameter, impressive.
the scenography is ass though.Long live King Pidoop.
🤣🤣🤣 holy shit my sides
That was something.
