[vel0city]

Americans largely don't use electric kettles because Americans largely don't drink tea at home and thus don't use kettles as often as the rest of the world.

Most households I know don't even own a kettle. Not a stovetop one, not an electric one.

If you were to ask most Americans why they don't have an electric kettle at home they won't say "because I only have 120V outlets in the kitchen." They'll say it is because they don't need a kettle.

[bmitc]

Once introduced, it's hard to downplay the usefulness of an electric kettle.

[killjoywashere]

I'm American and learned about electric kettles during trips to Asia. They are definitely handy, even at 110V. We make our daily coffee in a French press, so the electric kettle is a no-brainer.

[rad_gruchalski]

> We make our daily coffee in a French press

Moka pots are much better. Your French press will start letting the coffee powder through at some point. I use these: https://www.rommelsbacher.de/en/coffee-tea-co/espresso-maker....

[kenneth]

You can't compare a moka pot with a french press, they are fundamentally different things that make different styles of coffee. Espresso and coffee are not identical.

Personally I find french press too grainy, so at home I use aeropress, but when out prefer a properly done pour over filtered coffee. Black of course.

[vineyardmike]

I don’t like to force things on people, but I usually buy people Moka pots. Moka pots ARE better but they make a different coffee. Moka pots are an espresso machine substitute more than a French press substitute.

I do recommend it though. Lots more options for coffee drinks.

[christophilus]

Agreed. Someone gave us ours as a wedding gift. I thought, “Great. More clutter I don’t need.”

I use it daily for tea and coffee (Aeropress). And now, thanks to this thread, I may use it to speed up my pasta water boiling.

[vel0city]

I have a pretty nice electric kettle. You can set it to a number of common tea temperatures and it'll hold that temp for up to a half hour. I got it as a wedding gift. I use it about weekly.

If it broke tonight I don't know that I'd bother replacing it tomorrow. I'd probably go a while before I got another kettle. It might even take someone gifting me one before I bother getting one.

Sure, it's marginally faster boiling water than my stove. It's about as fast as my microwave (which is insane at 1650W). It's definitely more efficient, but the break even on that is measured in years probably for even a cheap kettle and decades for this fancy one I have.

I just don't really drink many hot drinks and my microwave does just about as good of a job for getting things hot.

https://www.cuisinart.com/shopping/appliances/tea_kettles/cp...

[wintermutestwin]

While traveling through Europe, most AirBnBs had electric kettles and they all had gross scale deposits in them so I ended up boiling water in a pot.

[ErikCorry]

It's calcium. It won't hurt you, and you can't taste it.

[eru]

You can definitely taste it.

If you care about energy efficiency, you should descale your kettles every so often.

[kergonath]

> You can definitely taste it.

If it gets deposited, it means that it’s not in the water any longer, or at least the concentration in the water has lowered. What you can taste is already in the water before you boil it and does not come from the kettle (well, in kettles that have been used normally with normal water).

If it bothers you, just boiling a bit of slightly diluted vinegar will get rid of it.

> If you care about energy efficiency, you should descale your kettles every so often.

Yes, these are terrible at conducting heat.

[nephanth]

It's not even hard, just boil a solution of 1/2 white vinegar + 1/2 water, and the CaCO3 (+ 2H(+) from the vinegar) changes back to Ca(2+) + CO2 + H2O You can even see the bubbles from the CO2

[Adverblessly]

I'd recommend using citric acid instead, they sell it here as "lemon salt" so it comes in an easy to use salt shaker. I usually put it in the minimum amount of water required to safely boil it and a small amount depending on how heavy the deposits are (usually up to a spoon is enough for me), though you could also just pour it in and wait.

It works really well and doesn't leave the same smell. When I'd previously used vinegar I'd had to boil another round of water and throw it away just to clean the kettle from the vinegar itself, but with citric acid there's no need (just don't drink the citric acid, it tastes like acid :)).

[Moru]

It's pretty inconvenient when you are in an unknown location on a hotel. But yes, some areas of Europe has very hard water.

[stavros]

Will it also make my bones stronger? Where does it come from? Was it in the water to begin with?

[bobbylarrybobby]

Don’t know about your bones but all tap water has some minerals in it.

[stephen_g]

Good thing too, because if you drink demineralised water it pulls electrolytes out of your cells (I think by osmosis) and eventually you also end up with decreasing bone density.

[drdrey]

Yes it was in the water to begin with, that’s what hard water is.

[stavros]

Ahh right, hard water, thanks.

[eru]

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_water

[Avicebron]

Adding a little vinegar and water and boiling it will often remove most of the scale. Maybe hard when you're travelling, but at home it works fine.

[eru]

Citric acid is commonly used in Germany.

[nijave]

With the added bonus it (imo) smells better. In the US, you can usually find it with pickling supplies or in the cleaning section as coffee pot cleaner

[AdmiralAsshat]

I'd gladly take an electric kettle over what I had to use the last time I was in an American hotel room to heat water, which was the bedside drip coffee maker. Water heated through that still tasted like bad coffee.

[arrosenberg]

You clean that by boiling vinegar and water, takes 3 minutes.

[dopidopHN]

Throw some white vinegar. Boil. Rince. Clean.

[dopidopHN]

It’s part of my bug out bag. You can cook with that thing and one bowl.

[sltkr]

I know it's heresy to the British, but you can heat water for tea in the microwave just fine. And at least in my European imagination, every American has a microwave in their home.

[Fezzik]

Anecdote of one: I am an American that does not own a microwave and does own an electric kettle. We are legion.

[wintermutestwin]

>every American has a microwave in their home

Of course we do! Europeans don't all have microwave ovens? How do you warm up leftovers?

And yes, I drink tea daily with microwaved water.

[asveikau]

I'm American, and I often heat up leftovers with a toaster oven or on the stove. For some foods it gets better results.

[eru]

There's also steamers. They are especially popular in Asia.

[a2tech]

I don't heat up leftovers, I just eat them cold. But we do have a microwave (we bought it at the beginning of the pandemic so we could heat up frozen meals--we didn't have one before). I had cold leftover pasta for lunch today. My wife turns up her nose at cold leftovers but I'm not picky.

[drdrey]

Isn’t it problematic to heat water in a microwave?

[dragonwriter]

Its possible to superheat water in a microwave so that it will explosively boil when disturbed, but it is fairly easy to safeguard against, as well.

[mprovost]

My microwave has a picture of a cup with a spoon in it, this stops superheating.

[benj111]

How?

[EricE]

Only if you overheat it. Drives all the gas out and makes the water off/flat.

[chillwaves]

You can end up superheating the water that way and scalding yourself. I also prefer to control the temperature of my water which you cannot do in a microwave.

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/boil-on-troubled-waters/

[sltkr]

It's something to be aware of, but in practice it's very difficult to superheat water at home.

For superheating to occur, you need very pure water in a smooth container with no imperfections. Tap water in most places cannot be superheated because it contains too many minerals, and most ceramic cups aren't smooth enough to prevent boiling.

If you're making tea, an easy way to prevent superheating is to drop the bag in the water before you heat it. Another way is to put a wooden stirrer in the cup.

There's a mythbuster video here where they show water being superheated: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_OXM4mr_i0, but note that they use distilled water (which nobody drinks) in a Pyrex container (which nobody uses). And they actually use a mug of tap water as a control.

[rootw0rm]

that's not really true. i've superheated tap water at least a dozen times. never had a negative consequence from it, besides having to clean up some water, so it's also not something that really bothers me. from my experience the superheated state can be surprisingly stable, a couple times only explosively boiling over while being poured, instead of the moment I grab the container.

edit: as far as 'nobody' using Pyrex, my preferred container for heating water is a big Pyrex measuring cup.

[valarauko]

> It's something to be aware of, but in practice it's very difficult to superheat water at home.

Eh, I've had it happen many times at home. A coffee mug of water comes out of the microwave with just a hint of bubbles. Add sugar/tea/instant coffee and the whole thing instantly bubbles up and spills.

[mprovost]

My microwave has a picture of a cup with a spoon in it to warn you to only boil water with something in it. Despite being warned for years not to put anything metal in a microwave it's actually fine to leave a metal spoon in water to stop it from superheating.

[benj111]

You can burn yourself with an oven or a hob. In fact a kitchen is full of ways to maim yourself. So why single out the microwave? A microwave is a tool, tools can be unsafe if used improperly.

[aidenn0]

It's really easy to control the temperature of the water; boil it, ten wait for it to cool to the correct temperature.

For a fixed amount of water, you can learn the time and not have to pull out your instant-read thermometer.

[rsynnott]

But that's partially because 1100W kettles are less _useful_.

I'm mostly a coffee drinker, and use a bean to cup machine for that. But I still use my kettle a good bit, because it's quicker to boil the kettle and then pour into the pan and bring back to the boil than bringing cold water to the boil in the pan. I've got a 3kW kettle, though, if I had a 1100W one I wouldn't do that because it _wouldn't_ be quicker.

[gomox]

Unless you have some sort of thunder-wok burner the 110V kettle is still way faster than the stove.

Source: have a 110V kettle and a gas cooktop with very large burners, still use the aforementioned trick.

[jounker]

Hi end gas ranges will beat a good electric kettle in the USA. (kettle 7min, range <6 min). My wife picked up a used thermidor this last summer and it beats any kettle we’ve had in the USA so far by at least a minute. That said, the kettle is more convenient overall (auto shutoff, auto start, pour from same container), so we end up using it.

In the other hand the US kettle beat the crap out of our old gas range, and even the good range is not nearly as fast as a crappy electric kettle in germany, which clocks in at 4 min.

[jefftk]

I timed mine (1kW kettle vs glass topped electric stove, not induction) and the kettle was only a bit faster: https://www.jefftk.com/p/electric-kettle-vs-stove

[Iwan-Zotow]

did you try french press?

[wnolens]

Strange.. every household and even hotel room I've ever been in North America had a kettle.

I only went to an Airbnb once that didn't have a kettle, so I Amazon'd one and just left it there.

[vel0city]

If you did it must not have been in the United States, or you got lucky.

I've been in over a hundred different hotels in the United States. East coast, West coast, Midwest, Rockies, deep South, South Atlantic coast, pretty much every region. I've probably only had a kettle a handful of times. Nearly universally a drip coffee maker, but practically never a kettle.

Note I'm not talking about the machine with the glass carafe on a small burner with a basket above it. That's a coffee maker in US terms, not an electric kettle.

[wnolens]

Oh yea ok I think you're right about the hotels.

It's a pretty universal item in any Canadian home and possibly even dorm room.

[mbreese]

In the hotels, that’s not a kettle. It’s a coffee maker. If you choose to not put coffee in it, that’s up to you.

(Us Americans tend to optimize for coffee over tea. If something also works for tea, that’s a happy coincidence, but not intentional.)

[rando14775]

You sure? Germany is a (shit) coffee country and everybody has had electric kettles since the 90s.

[vel0city]

Lots of Americans drink kind of shit coffee as well, they just largely drink it from drip coffee makers. Alternative brewing methods like french press, aero press, pour over, etc. is starting to become more popular but is definitely still not a predominant way of doing it. And even then, the really bougie people will just have an instant boiler tap in their kitchen instead of taking up counter space with something that takes longer to get hot water.

[p1necone]

In my experience drip coffee in a halfway decent machine from halfway decent beans is miles better than most/all instant. Just because drip coffee is convenient doesn't necessarily mean it's bad.

The beans you use are more important than the brewing method - if you use a giant tub of stale Folgers it probably won't be great. But grind you own decent beans and a drip machine can be fantastic.

[nuclearnice3]

Recommend any particular beans?

[p1necone]

I doubt we live in the same place so I won't recommend anything specific. But I would find local roasters and try to buy beans that were roasted in the last couple of days. Freshness makes a pretty big difference. Finding specific ones you really like will take a bit of trial and error. Single origin if you want interesting/specific flavours, blends if you want something a bit more consistent.

[piva00]

Drip coffee is pretty good, good taste and caffeine content while being pretty simple to brew, a decent machine is cheap as well. It's just a method, the beans you use are what actually count.

[vel0city]

I don't drink the bean juice personally, so I've got no skin in the game. To me it definitely seems like a drip coffee maker could make a cup of Joe just about as good as most other methods. I do think it's a combination of the burner burning the coffee after and also a coolness factor (that's how my parents did it, gross!) that drives a lot of the hipness of alternative brewing methods in the US.

But as mentioned I don't really have a horse in this race to begin with. Drink what makes you happy however you brew it. :)

[nephanth]

I'm not going to judge which one is better (though I personally prefer espresso, it's a matter of preference), but coffee brewed with different methods definitely tastes differently. Coffee brewed at higher pressure (3~4 bar for moka pot, >9bar for espresso) tend to taste way stronger and more flavorful (which is why they're drank in lower quantities)

[vineyardmike]

Hard Disagree.

Espresso and similar pressure based brewing (Moka Pot) is far superior with equal beans. Tastes way better, more flexibility in creating different drinks, very fast to brew, etc . If it’s too concentrated or hard to drink an espresso shot then you dilute it (for all you black-coffee drinkers, it’s ok to use milk, it’s still coffee).

[piva00]

Different methods of brewing give you different results. If you like (or just want) a stronger flavour, use a pressurised method (espresso, moka pot, etc.), more flavour but the caffeine content is going to be lower than a longer brewing method.

I drink coffee in different ways in different days. If I want a large amount in the morning I go for a drip coffee or french press, the taste is smoother and caffeine content higher. If I want to taste the fullness of the beans I use a moka at home.

I don't see other methods of brewing as objectively better or worse, it depends on the result you expect or want, some days I want an espresso in the morning, some days I want a lot more caffeine, etc.

Also, I just drink coffee, I don't make drinks or turned coffee into a hobby.

[bradleyjg]

The worst part of a standard American drip coffee machine is cleaning it. Too many different nooks and crannies to get gross.

I find pour over to be one of the easiest methods in amortized time. It takes three minutes to make a cup but the clean up time is only another 30 seconds—-throw away the paper filter and rinse the dripper.

[piva00]

Those suck, I use a Moccamaster that's been beating around for at least some 30 years. Bought it second hand and never had an issue in the past 15 years, reliable, easy to clean. It's a delight of design based in functionality for me.

[philwelch]

And pour-over is just you manually doing what the drip coffee machine does for you.

[nuclearnice3]

Recommend any particular beans?

[bradleyjg]

The time since roast matters a lot. Find a local roaster, you can get fresh roasted and it’s unlikely someone that went through the effort of setting up a local roaster is going to buy crap beans. Also, I’d recommend light roast.

[int_19h]

> an instant boiler tap in their kitchen instead of taking up counter space with something that takes longer to get hot water.

These things usually serve "near-boiling" water, somewhere around 95 C. This is fine for some cases - e.g. making ramen - but not appropriate for many kinds of tea.

I have such a tap, and I also have an electric kettle. The tap is mostly used to prefill pots with near-boiling water for cooking, so as to not wait for so long for the stove to do it. The kettle is used for tea and coffee.

[doublesocket]

It was weird how before that they only ever had wall mounted Wasserkocher (water boiler) and then en-masse discovered kettles.

[fuckstick]

What do they use the kettles for? For most non tea drinking households in the US there is no essential use for a kettle.

They do sell them here, people buy them, they are usually tea drinkers.

[heffer]

German in Canada here. I used mine to cook water for pasta as it's usually faster and more efficient than my electric cooktop. Bought one in Canada and it's close to useless for that purpose. My German kettle would bring 1.7L of tap water to a rolling boil in about 4 minutes. My Canadian one needs about 10 minutes to achieve the same.

[BurningFrog]

To perhaps state the obvious, I use mine mainly for coffee. And the occasional tea cup.

[vel0city]

Honestly it seems more likely for an American household to have a Keurig machine (or hell, even multiple Keurigs) than to have any kind of kettle.

[fein]

You're on target here. I have become the dumping ground for misbehaving keurigs from family and have managed to make most of them work or frankenstein parts between them. I hate the machines and wish this never happened. I was happy with a french press. Curse my urge to not waste things.

[yunwal]

Last sentence is ironic because keurigs waste so much plastic if you use them daily.

[piva00]

> I was happy with a french press. Curse my urge to not waste things.

I don't understand this sentence, I would much rather waste some ground coffee beans and water than plastic.

[joezydeco]

A Keurig machine is just an electric kettle with an electric pump inside of it.

[vel0city]

I strongly disagree. With a kettle, the whole volume of water is being heated at once and is a uniform temperature. A Keurig or drip coffee maker is only heating a small volume of water at a time. By the time you process a whole liter of water the first bit will have already cooled off a lot. It's a very different process and potentially a very different outcome.

[fuckstick]

Can it be used like a kettle - ie can it rapidly heat up a quart of water without a coffee residue taste? No, it cannot.

Just because they both heat water doesn’t make them similar.

[fuckstick]

Ok exactly - in addition to keurigs /nespressos etc mentioned (which I will refuse to buy) - for years the predominant coffee making apparatus in the US has been the automatic drip coffee maker.

French press, pour over, chemx are all niche.

[dragonwriter]

Tea.

French press coffee.

Instant coffee, hot cider, hot chocolate, etc.

Heating water for instant soups, etc.

[Iwan-Zotow]

> there is no essential use for a kettle

electric kettle

french press for coffee

tea kettle for tea

[benj111]

European here that doesn't drink tea yet still has a kettle.

> they won't say "because I only have 120V outlets in the kitchen." They'll say it is because they don't need a kettle.

Well no they wouldn't say that, unless they have experience of 240v perhaps.

They might reasonably say that it's too slow. Or maybe they're aware that kettles are 'just slow' and so arrange their lives so that they don't need a kettle, in which case they would say "I don't need a kettle".

[ridgeguy]

My wife drinks tea, I drink coffee. Both of us grudge the time needed to heat water in our 120V American electric kettle compared to European 240V kettles. I^2 makes a big difference.

[scruple]

We use a hot water pot at home, a Zojirushi. Never have to bother with hot water, it's always available and the thing uses a negligible amount of electricity (we're almost entirely on solar anyway, so it's a moot point for our family) comparable to all of our other appliances.

[beezle]

I own a stove top kettle. Only used for hot chocolate or aeropress coffee (but I usually use drip maker)