North Americans of my acquaintance, I have a question about kettles. In particular electric ones. Do you…not have them? Is that like an exclusively European or even British thing? Cos I’ve read a few fics recently were someone’s making a cup of tea (in a flat, in London) and they ‘filled the kettle and put it on the burner’. And my brain is like O_o do they have an aga???? I’ve never seen someone put a kettle on a gas hob but I guess if you had an old school kettle you could? Most people would just fill the kettle, plug it in and once its boiled pour said hot water over a teabag in a cup? (Yeah, its nicer if you make it in a pot but most people who aren’t like really into their tea wouldn’t bother unless they have guests and are making lots of tea.) I just really confused? Are kettles in the states (and canada, I presume) not plastic things, with elements, that plug into the wall?
I’m Canadian and everyone I know owns an electric kettle. I guess I might write about a stove top one for ambiance? But honestly I don’t know anyone who owns those anymore.
I’m American and I’ve only seen an electric kettle once in my life, in the possession of a person who frequents specialized tea shops.
We do have metal old-school kettles you heat on the stove but honestly it’s an aesthetic thing mostly and used for decoration.
We have both but only people who drink tea frequently or are in it for aesthetic will own either. These people are in the vast minority.
The tea drinkers I know microwave it, when they drink hot tea at home.
Coffee makers, on the other hand, are ubiquitous, and keurigs are on the rise.
AMERICANS MICROWAVE THEIR WATER FOR TEA????? i dont know what i expected from people who think that a fun party is throwing their tea in a lake…for shame
We have an electric kettle. Used to have a stovetop kettle too but I remember playing with that in the basement as a little kid so I don’t think we used it all that much. My sis’s really into tea, so’s my mum, so they drink it a lot.
Bean’s even got a special infuser thingy. It’s glass and apparently makes it better.
I have a stove kettle. It’s a couple years old, and I use it almost daily. I’ve seen lots of electric kettles but honestly prefer metal to plastic.
I’d prefer an electric kettle myself - it heats up a lot quicker! But my family has sort of agreed that we’ll continue to use our metal stovetop one until it breaks, which will be never.
I only heat up water in the microwave in times of desperation, and then it’s usually for hot choc.
I didn’t get an electric water kettle til i moved away to college, and the only reason I got it is we weren’t allowed to have microwaves in our room and I wanted to be able to have ramen in the middle of the night without getting dressed…. At home my mom always microwaves water for tea and coffee.
I’m American but live in England, we always had a stovetop kettle when I was growing up and I have one here now. Electric are faster, yes, but our first home was a one bedroom cottage next to a graveyard that had a dinky kitchen. There was no counter space for a kettle so we bought a stovetop and never went back when we moved house. Most people I know here use electric.
I’m American and the only place I’ve seen one is at a workplace because so many of us drank tea throughout the day and the microwave was weak.
When I make it at home I put a metal kettle right on the stove and heat it up, or microwave it, but I prefer the former. I don’t think I know anybody that owns one in their home. They look useful, though, might get one, mostly because I also like pourover coffee and waiting for it to boil in the morning is just two minutes TOO LONG some days. :D
I’m the only person I know that has an electric kettle. Aside from tea, I probably use it weekly just to get quick hot water.
Before that, I had a stove-top. Just say no to microwaved hot water.I’ve had electric kettles, but we don’t drink enough tea to warrant another appliance. We have a stovetop whistling kettle, or microwave it. Now, most Americans have COFFEE MAKERS! That’s what we drink. And not espresso drinks. Just plain old Juan Valdez coffee. Drip through the filter, lots of cream and sugar, and some hazelnut to top. Yum!
I’ve had an electric hot pot for years, first because of college dorm rooms and later because of convenience (and now again because I technically don’t have a proper stove in my apartment and the hot pot is the easiest way to boil water). I admit though, if I’m feeling especially lazy and still want tea, I’ll run the water through my k-cup machine which usually heats it up to a decent temperature for tea. No microwaving required.
My parents, however, they have one of those water coolers with a hot water spigot on there. So guess how mom makes her evening tea?
I drink tea rather than coffee in the morning and prefer loose-leaf to teabags. I’ve had stovetop kettles and electric. I recently bought a new electric kettle, a Hamilton Beach; it isn’t so much that it’s faster as that I feel somehow less likely to pour boiling water all over the place, or set myself on fire by catching a sleeve in the flame of the stove.
I loathe Keurig machines on principle, even if I feel like having coffee. You can make perfectly good coffee by boiling the water and pouring it over the proper grind; my ex used to use a two-cup filter and cone, being the only coffee drinker in the house. I will confess to having microwaved water for tea, but only when I was feeling so depressed that making a proper pot seemed overwhelming.
But….microwaving it completely alters the flavour. Eugh. Eugh. We have a filter-coffeepot for coffee but even when we had a gas stove growing up in the UK, we had an electric kettle.
Besides tea, how in hell do you fill hot water bottles without a kettle?Americans haven’t used hot water bottles since WWII.
WTF? Most of you don’t use rubberised hot water bottles with a variety of coverings that you put hot water in to snuggle up to? What about periods or being sick? Do you just use heat packs?
I love electric kettles! They are pretty hard to find here in the US though. Instead of hot water bottles in rural areas we fill this pillow thing with maize or buckwheat in the microwave and use it as a heating pad. It’s great because it doesn’t leak and stays hot longer. Also you can add lavender and other herbs to these grain-filled hot pillows to make them aromatherapeutic. Idk what folks who grew up in the city use though.
I’m in America, and I’ve seen more electric kettles than stovetop kettles, but few of each. Mostly, we just kinda boil the water in a pot.
I mean, I have an electric kettle, but I have a parent from a Commonwealth country, so tea is important.
Funnily enough when I don’t have an electric kettle at home, but I do have one at work and that one sees a lot of use.
Canadian. Everyone has an electric kettle. Freaked out when @dialmformara put a glass of water in the microwave. Are Americans not taught the dangers of superheating water?
American living in Canada. Electric kettle was the first thing I bought when I got here, but I’ve always found microwaving tea more convenient.
American. I used to always microwave my water in the mug and put the tea bag in after. Then I had a roommate (Mexican-American) move in that owned an electric kettle and now I only use that.
American. I’ve killed two heat-on-electric-stove-eye type kettles with much use. Finally succumbed, when the last one split a weld and started leaking water everywhere, and bought an electric kettle. It died in service, too and we’re now on our second.
Microwaving water for tea, in my experience, means my favourite mug becomes a branding iron and the water’s still too cool to make decent tea with. People do this without burning their palms off?North American electricity runs on about 120 volts.
UK electricity runs on 240 volts.
What does this mean? UK electricity is much more deadly and will kill you a lot more dead. It also means that you can boil water very, very quickly with an electric kettle. You put a cup’s worth of water in the kettle, press the button, perform the Ancient Ritual of Faffing (put a single Tetley’s bag in the cup, wander off to do something else, forget what you were doing, wander back, frown at cup) and then the water is ready.
In the USA, it’s much faster to heat a whistling kettle on a gas stove. It just is. By the time an electric kettle sucks enough juice from the power socket to warm up a little, you are already halfway through a cup of coffee. And if you have an electric stove, pitting it against a kettle would just be a race between two types of electricity trying to do the same thing. But with an electric kettle you have to buy a separate entity with only one purpose that takes up counter space and is a pig to clean. So why bother?
There. Mystery solved.
Mystery explained slightly further. Americans tend to prefer coffee - you do not make coffee with boiling water. UK residents tend to prefer tea - tea should always be made with boiling water. This is why tea in America is disgusting and UK coffee often tastes burnt/bitter.
Finally, this leads to the wonderful phenomenon of “TV Pickup” which is where all of the British Isles are simultaneously watching the same thing on television (such as Great British Bake Off, or a sport, or a particularly important soap opera) when suddenly, there is a commercial break. Across the kingdom, every single house gets up and puts the kettle on. The resulting draw down of electricity causes a huge power surge.
(American in UK. At home we have a gas stove (”hob”) and a whistling kettle, because as we see above electric kettles draw down a silly amount of electricity, and that doesn’t really work when you live off the grid. There are about 7 electric kettles at work, the reason being that limescale - a feature of this part of the world - eventually builds up into some kind of crystalline mass around the heating element and kills them. So I’m ambi-kettle-dextrous throughout the day - neither is better than the other.
Microwaving is a bit embarrassing, though.)
Wait wait wait. Most Americans don’t have electric kettles? How do you survive?
My physicist side is offended by the volts explanation so here’s a bit more:
American electricity takes twice as many amperes to deliver the same watts, and thus american plugs and sockets can’t handle high wattages without running to problems with overloading the fuses or something like that. They would need a special high-amperage socket and plug for a 2000W kettle which isn’t unheard of on this side of the pond.
Also, gas stoves are a serious delight. Regular non-induction electric ones are really slow and wimpy and clumsy, but gas is hardcore and fast and powerful.
Combine the two, and I’m not surprised that the outcome is what it is.
2 months ago · 1,967 notes · source: glindapenguin · .permalink
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pentachord reblogged this from kingedmundsroyalmurder and added:Canadian. My family has an electric kettle, but we probably only got it in the last five or six years. For most of my...
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damnisheonfire reblogged this from warfstacheandtheskelebros and added:Lol I have a keurig ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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purple–ponytail: @starryhowell look other people are having our discussion too XD
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kaceycat reblogged this from excessively-english-little-b and added:I don’t drink coffee, but my dad does, and yes, boiling water fucks up the coffee. It’s gotta be hot water, obviously,...
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excessively-english-little-b reblogged this from fizzygingr and added:Okay a few things:a) You’re not meant to make coffee with boiling water???b) You guys don’t use hot water bottles?!
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