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A better way to save energy is to use an electric kettle to get the water up to boiling. This is about three times as energy-efficient as a gas hob. Combined w

A better way to save energy is to use an electric kettle to get the water up to boiling. This is about three times as energy-efficient as a gas hob. Combined with passive cooking it could save real money… Technology Connections on YouTube has a good video about how electric kettles are the superior way to boil water: https://youtu.be/_yMMTVVJI4c https://youtu.be/_yMMTVVJI4c

jp0d 4y ago
This is not just efficient but also saves a lot of time. I do this with rice/pasta or anything that requires boiling. Also, using a pressure cooker can save a lot of time/energy with foods like legumes/meats etc.
- grvdrm 4y ago
  +1 for pressure cooker. I use mine twice a week or so. For just about anything since there are so many recipes online. And less clean up!
AaronFriel 4y ago
Alec, of the Technology Connections YouTube channel, shows it's not just energy saving, but faster and cleaner. Even with US outlet power limits a kettle will boil a volume of water much more quickly than a gas stovetop, and my indoor CO2 sensor won't spike by hundreds to a thousand PPM of CO2. While the time savings is modest, if you have an electric kettle it's a no brainer to prefer that over gas. Though induction stovetops can be faster yet, and just as clean.
- amluto 4y ago
  Your gas stove will likely dramatically outperform an 1800W electric heater if you use a proper pot: https://turbopot.com/ https://turbopot.com/ I would still rather use a nice induction range, but it is possible to get decent efficiency out of gas.
  - jeffbee 4y ago
    Buying cookware that works better on gas but is specifically incompatible with induction cooking seems a bit like rigging your Ram to roll coal, at this point in time.
    - marssaxman 4y ago
      How's that? Most people who have serviceable gas ranges are not going to rip them out and replace them with induction any time soon. Someone who wants to go electric badly enough to spend thousands of dollars installing a high-current power outlet is not likely to balk at the cost of new pans.
  - crooked-v 4y ago
    There's still a huge amount of energy that gets dumped out into the kitchen by any non-induction cooktop, no matter what pot you use.
    - nerdponx 4y ago
      I always wanted some kind of "collar" that I could put around a burner to try to direct that excess heat back into the pan/pot.
      - socialismisok 4y ago
        The problem is you need airflow or you generate carbon monoxide instead of carbon dioxide. So simple solutions can get more heat but also kill you.
        ClumsyPilot 4y ago
        minor side effect
        BuyMyBitcoins 4y ago
        Death only increases the amount of carbon emissions this method saves.
- ReptileMan 4y ago
  >Though induction stovetops can be faster yet, and just as clean. You have the mother of all hotspots on the pan (less relevant for boiling) where the induction ring itself is and getting simmer right is harder. Induction as implemented right now is on/off with full blast for the duration and just increased downtime. It is not the same as low constant output.
  - kergonath 4y ago
    > You have the mother of all hotspots on the pan (less relevant for boiling) where the induction ring itself is and getting simmer right is harder. Not at all. There is no significant hot spot as heat is actually produced by the bottom of the pan and not the coils themselves. > Induction as implemented right now is on/off with full blast for the duration and just increased downtime. It is not the same as low constant output. Again, not at all. All the devices I have used were perfectly fine generating a low, constant heat. what you describe may be the case for bargain basement ones, and it was the case for most resistive cooktops, but is definitely not the case for inductions ones.
    - masklinn 4y ago
      I guess you could have a hot spot on the pan if the coils are ill-designed or you’re putting a large pan on a small burner? The pan will only heat up near the coil, so if the coil covers only the center third of the pan, only that will heat up (though some pans have a heat-spreading layer to mitigate this, and sometimes to add some more inertia depending on the pan’s purpose).
      - kergonath 4y ago
        > I guess you could have a hot spot on the pan if the coils are ill-designed or you’re putting a large pan on a small burner? Yes, but then it’s hardly a problem with the technology if you put a large pan on a small burner. As for the rest, in all cookers I have seen, the coils cover the whole surface, except for a small spot in the centre. Besides, induced current does not happen only where the cookware is closest to the coil. The magnetic field is more spread out than that and the heating surface is larger than just the surface of “contact” (there is no real contact, but anyway). I assume there could be an exceptionally badly designed induction cooktop with hot spots (it’d have to have a very weird geometry, though), but that would take some effort.
- thaumasiotes 4y ago
  > While the time savings is modest, if you have an electric kettle it's a no brainer to prefer that over gas. Not quite. Water is heavy and boiling water is dangerous; if you're boiling your water in a teakettle you then have to transfer it to a pot on the stove without scalding yourself. (This isn't the exact problem I'd experience if I adopted your advice. I have an electric teakettle, but it is low volume and is also sharply limited in the rate at which you can pour out water from it. That's fine if you want to prepare individual servings of tea. It's unworkable if you want to prepare a bunch of boiling water to boil stuff in. But fixing that problem will immediately cause the "boiling water is dangerous" problem.)
  - SECProto 4y ago
    Presumably you mean you have a gooseneck kettle, which I agree is not well suited to this task (though if it takes 30s to pour out the kettle, it's not really a big deal). Regardless, pouring boiling water out of a kettle is far less dangerous than pouring the cooked pasta + boiling water out of the pot and into a strainer. If I'm looking to boil say 2 litres of water, I'll put 1.5 l in the electric kettle, 0.5l in the pot on the gas stove with a lid on. Generally the kettle boils first.
    - thaumasiotes 4y ago
      > Regardless, pouring boiling water out of a kettle is far less dangerous than pouring the cooked pasta + boiling water out of the pot and into a strainer. I don't think this is true. The mechanics are essentially the same. But the colander receiving the pasta + boiling water is situated inside the sink, which will catch the water that is in that case intended to spill out. The pot is situated on the stove, which is a raised platform that can't catch water at all. Any spill there will splash all over.
      - SECProto 4y ago
        Well, with my sample size of one, I've splashed boiling water on the floor when trying to drain pasta or potatoes, but never while pouring out a kettle. Perhaps related, a kettle has a cold base in addition to a cold handle oriented more appropriately for pouring.
thefounder 4y ago
For some reasons I thought most of the people switched to electric induction cooktops.
- Mikeb85 4y ago
- milkey_mouse 4y ago
  There are a lot of resistive electric ranges, and around 40% of Americans still use gas stoves.
- askvictor 4y ago
  After installing an induction stove, I did a side-by-side test on boiling water on it vs kettle. The kettle won, both on power consumption and time. This is for a ~2000W kettle.
askvictor 4y ago
Americans don't really do electric kettles, largely on account of using 110V mains, which limits power to around 1100W, making it a lot slower than ~2000W electric kettles in the 200+V world.
- AaronFriel 4y ago
  I'd be very surprised to see a standard US gas range capable of boiling water faster than an electric kettle.
  - vel0city 4y ago
    Yeah, even for a 1200W kettle heating a liter of water can be faster in the kettle than an average gas stove and pot.
  - jeffbee 4y ago
    Yeah it's just not. I have one of those ridiculous bazillion-BTU gas burners and I still prefer to boil water using a combination of a 120V tea kettle (1L) and an 120V portable induction cooker. An installed 240V range is even faster, but I don't have one of those.
- vel0city 4y ago
  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.
  - sltkr 4y ago
    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.
mrfumier 4y ago
No it's not. The most efficient (and fastest) way is an induction hob with copper disc pan. Something that Technology Connections didn't include in his video. See some test here: https://youtu.be/EBlyuahlplI https://youtu.be/EBlyuahlplI
- the-smug-one 4y ago
  Where's the energy loss from the kettle that's not present in your proposed method? Legit asking, I don't see it. Just heat radiating from the body of the kettle for longer cuz of longer time to make it boil?
  - puffoflogic 4y ago
    The claim seems dubious in Europe, but in North America the stove has access to twice the voltage potential as the kettle, so can heat faster. Then with equal losses the stove wins.
    - im-a-baby 4y ago
      Europeans use 220V for everything.
      - eru 4y ago
        Well, Germans like to use three-phase power for their electric ovens. (Still nominally at 230 Volt, but it's not quite the same as two-phase power.)
      - puffoflogic 4y ago
        So in Europe the phenomenon of a stove heating faster than a kettle would not be observed. Isn't that what I said?
        serpix 4y ago
        230V/3kW induction stove boils a cup of water faster than you can get the cup from the cupboard.
sltkr 4y ago
> This is about three times as energy-efficient as a gas hob. I sincerely doubt this figure in cases where electricity is generated from fossil fuels in the first place. For example, I lived in the Netherlands where 80% of electricity is still produced by fossil fuels, mostly in gas-fired power plants. As I understand it, generating electricity from gas has an efficiency of only about 50%. That means you lose a lot of energy before it even arrives in your home. An electric kettle has an efficiency of about 80%, with gas stove around 40%. Assuming the cost of transportation is approximately equal for gas and electricity, that means using the gas stove is about as efficient as using the electric kettle, if you assume (most of) the electricity comes from a gas-fired plant. In the winter, the gas stove will be more efficient since all the heat that doesn't go into your food, heats up the room (heating is typically also based on gas in the Netherlands, so this is basically free energy). > Combined with passive cooking it could save real money Again, I don't think this is true. Currently the energy market is fucked up because of the Ukraine war, but up to recently a cubic meter of gas cost around 1 euro, which produces roughly 10 kWh of energy, versus a kWh of electricity cost around 40 cents. That means that on a per-kWh basis, gas costs only a quarter of electricity. So even if the electric kettle is twice as efficient as the gas stove, it is still twice as expensive. In countries where most electricity is generated by burning coal (like Poland, for example) there is also an environmental cost, since coal-fired plants emit more CO2 per joule than gas-fired plants. YMMV based on local energy prices obviously, but I don't think it's straightforwardly true that electric kettles are always more efficient or more environmentally friendly than gas stoves, if you look at it holistically.
- habnds 4y ago
  https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2020/5/7/21247602/gas-stove-cooking-indoor-air-pollution-health-risks https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2020/5/7/21247602...
- p1necone 4y ago
  I imagine part of the efficiency of electric kettles is due to the heating element actually being submerged in the water, or at least directly adjacent to it. Compare to a stovetop where there's a big heavy pot between the element and the water, and it's not in complete contact with it. Also often the heating element is underneath a piece of glass.
dragonwriter 4y ago
> A better way to save energy is to use an electric kettle to get the water up to boiling. An even better way (and one that also saves cleanup) is to use an electric pressure cooker like an InstantPot to cook the pasta
EricE 4y ago
or an induction stove. I had an induction cooktop, moved and ended up with a gas cooktop again - I was astonished at how much slower and overall worse it was than induction. I quickly replaced the gas with induction and am now enjoying it once again. The only downside for induction is you have to have induction ready cookware - but really it's not that hard these days. Cookware and more has all-clad seconds and if you sign up for their email newsletter they run a sale - buy one, get a second 50% off - it's how I built my collection. Made In is a medium quality alternative - made in Italy. For affordability, Tramontina is surprisingly good. You can find it at Walmart, Costco and other places. It's not quite as dense as Made In or All Clad but any clad cookware is way better than anything with a damn disk in it.
Schroedingersat 4y ago
Unless the electricity came from gas or coal. Then it's a wash. Induction hobs are about as good as a kettle (and you lose less energy because you're not heating up the glass/plastic/metal of the kettle).
manojlds 4y ago
Isn't this a thing? This is how I have been cooking for a long time - bring water to boil in kettle and use it to cook.
jve 4y ago
Speaking about electrical kettle: why aren't there insulated kettles that would help me save energy when I re-boil water after 20 minutes? EDIT: Ah, there are some: https://www.amazon.com/DASH-Insulated-Electric-Kettle-Cordless/dp/B08DDGP3N6 https://www.amazon.com/DASH-Insulated-Electric-Kettle-Cordle...
- benj111 4y ago
  If you're reboiling water aren't you already doing it wrong. Ideally you should only be boiling the water you need.
  - jve 4y ago
    I don't have reverse-osmoze filters, so I get pretty much residue (lime) which I rather leave in the kettle. Moreover I sometimes want to add extra hot water to my 0,5L cup of tea. When boiling water, I already add the extra water I'll need so I get it just-in-time (except it has already lost much heat thus why I'll try to get insulated kettle). My wife may or may not want to drink tea, but I get ready water anyways (yeah, this could be organized better)
- flipbrad 4y ago
  I just have a thermos flask next to the kettle. The excess ALWAYS gets put to good use: extra cups of tea (without reboiling), cooking, dishes in the sink, or even the kids' bath.
- MrFantastic 4y ago
  Throw a kitchen towel over the kettle after you pour off your first drink.
- justsomehnguy 4y ago
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tea_cosy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tea_cosy
benj111 4y ago
Unless it's winter where you're heating your house anyway, in which case the gas hob is more efficient. But gas is a lot cheaper than electric anyway so I wouldn't expect a kettle to be much cheaper.
nanomonkey 4y ago
My housemate makes pasta nearly every night, so we decided to optimize the process. We found that bringing the water to boil in a borosilicate flask in the microwave, adding the pasta and then returning it to the microwave with a pyrex bowl of the sauce and meatballs was the fastest and most economical method. I think from start to finish it takes 9 minutes total, 7 to bring the water to a boil and another 2 to reheat the sauce and cook the pasta. Something like 150 watts of power usage in a 1kW microwave.
jgalt212 4y ago
Doesn't this seem crazy counter-intuitive. Turn gas into heat, water to steam energy to electricity, then transmit the electricity, then turn the electricity back into heat. Versus turn gas into heat, water to steam?

jp0d 4y ago

This is not just efficient but also saves a lot of time. I do this with rice/pasta or anything that requires boiling. Also, using a pressure cooker can save a lot of time/energy with foods like legumes/meats etc.

grvdrm 4y ago
+1 for pressure cooker. I use mine twice a week or so. For just about anything since there are so many recipes online. And less clean up!

AaronFriel 4y ago

Alec, of the Technology Connections YouTube channel, shows it's not just energy saving, but faster and cleaner. Even with US outlet power limits a kettle will boil a volume of water much more quickly than a gas stovetop, and my indoor CO2 sensor won't spike by hundreds to a thousand PPM of CO2. While the time savings is modest, if you have an electric kettle it's a no brainer to prefer that over gas. Though induction stovetops can be faster yet, and just as clean.

amluto 4y ago
Your gas stove will likely dramatically outperform an 1800W electric heater if you use a proper pot: https://turbopot.com/ https://turbopot.com/ I would still rather use a nice induction range, but it is possible to get decent efficiency out of gas.
- jeffbee 4y ago
  Buying cookware that works better on gas but is specifically incompatible with induction cooking seems a bit like rigging your Ram to roll coal, at this point in time.
  - marssaxman 4y ago
    How's that? Most people who have serviceable gas ranges are not going to rip them out and replace them with induction any time soon. Someone who wants to go electric badly enough to spend thousands of dollars installing a high-current power outlet is not likely to balk at the cost of new pans.
- crooked-v 4y ago
  There's still a huge amount of energy that gets dumped out into the kitchen by any non-induction cooktop, no matter what pot you use.
  - nerdponx 4y ago
    I always wanted some kind of "collar" that I could put around a burner to try to direct that excess heat back into the pan/pot.
    - socialismisok 4y ago
      The problem is you need airflow or you generate carbon monoxide instead of carbon dioxide. So simple solutions can get more heat but also kill you.
      - ClumsyPilot 4y ago
        minor side effect
        BuyMyBitcoins 4y ago
        Death only increases the amount of carbon emissions this method saves.
ReptileMan 4y ago
>Though induction stovetops can be faster yet, and just as clean. You have the mother of all hotspots on the pan (less relevant for boiling) where the induction ring itself is and getting simmer right is harder. Induction as implemented right now is on/off with full blast for the duration and just increased downtime. It is not the same as low constant output.
- kergonath 4y ago
  > You have the mother of all hotspots on the pan (less relevant for boiling) where the induction ring itself is and getting simmer right is harder. Not at all. There is no significant hot spot as heat is actually produced by the bottom of the pan and not the coils themselves. > Induction as implemented right now is on/off with full blast for the duration and just increased downtime. It is not the same as low constant output. Again, not at all. All the devices I have used were perfectly fine generating a low, constant heat. what you describe may be the case for bargain basement ones, and it was the case for most resistive cooktops, but is definitely not the case for inductions ones.
  - masklinn 4y ago
    I guess you could have a hot spot on the pan if the coils are ill-designed or you’re putting a large pan on a small burner? The pan will only heat up near the coil, so if the coil covers only the center third of the pan, only that will heat up (though some pans have a heat-spreading layer to mitigate this, and sometimes to add some more inertia depending on the pan’s purpose).
    - kergonath 4y ago
      > I guess you could have a hot spot on the pan if the coils are ill-designed or you’re putting a large pan on a small burner? Yes, but then it’s hardly a problem with the technology if you put a large pan on a small burner. As for the rest, in all cookers I have seen, the coils cover the whole surface, except for a small spot in the centre. Besides, induced current does not happen only where the cookware is closest to the coil. The magnetic field is more spread out than that and the heating surface is larger than just the surface of “contact” (there is no real contact, but anyway). I assume there could be an exceptionally badly designed induction cooktop with hot spots (it’d have to have a very weird geometry, though), but that would take some effort.
thaumasiotes 4y ago
> While the time savings is modest, if you have an electric kettle it's a no brainer to prefer that over gas. Not quite. Water is heavy and boiling water is dangerous; if you're boiling your water in a teakettle you then have to transfer it to a pot on the stove without scalding yourself. (This isn't the exact problem I'd experience if I adopted your advice. I have an electric teakettle, but it is low volume and is also sharply limited in the rate at which you can pour out water from it. That's fine if you want to prepare individual servings of tea. It's unworkable if you want to prepare a bunch of boiling water to boil stuff in. But fixing that problem will immediately cause the "boiling water is dangerous" problem.)
- SECProto 4y ago
  Presumably you mean you have a gooseneck kettle, which I agree is not well suited to this task (though if it takes 30s to pour out the kettle, it's not really a big deal). Regardless, pouring boiling water out of a kettle is far less dangerous than pouring the cooked pasta + boiling water out of the pot and into a strainer. If I'm looking to boil say 2 litres of water, I'll put 1.5 l in the electric kettle, 0.5l in the pot on the gas stove with a lid on. Generally the kettle boils first.
  - thaumasiotes 4y ago
    > Regardless, pouring boiling water out of a kettle is far less dangerous than pouring the cooked pasta + boiling water out of the pot and into a strainer. I don't think this is true. The mechanics are essentially the same. But the colander receiving the pasta + boiling water is situated inside the sink, which will catch the water that is in that case intended to spill out. The pot is situated on the stove, which is a raised platform that can't catch water at all. Any spill there will splash all over.
    - SECProto 4y ago
      Well, with my sample size of one, I've splashed boiling water on the floor when trying to drain pasta or potatoes, but never while pouring out a kettle. Perhaps related, a kettle has a cold base in addition to a cold handle oriented more appropriately for pouring.

thefounder 4y ago

For some reasons I thought most of the people switched to electric induction cooktops.

Mikeb85 4y ago
milkey_mouse 4y ago
There are a lot of resistive electric ranges, and around 40% of Americans still use gas stoves.
askvictor 4y ago
After installing an induction stove, I did a side-by-side test on boiling water on it vs kettle. The kettle won, both on power consumption and time. This is for a ~2000W kettle.

askvictor 4y ago

Americans don't really do electric kettles, largely on account of using 110V mains, which limits power to around 1100W, making it a lot slower than ~2000W electric kettles in the 200+V world.

AaronFriel 4y ago
I'd be very surprised to see a standard US gas range capable of boiling water faster than an electric kettle.
- vel0city 4y ago
  Yeah, even for a 1200W kettle heating a liter of water can be faster in the kettle than an average gas stove and pot.
- jeffbee 4y ago
  Yeah it's just not. I have one of those ridiculous bazillion-BTU gas burners and I still prefer to boil water using a combination of a 120V tea kettle (1L) and an 120V portable induction cooker. An installed 240V range is even faster, but I don't have one of those.
vel0city 4y ago
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.
- sltkr 4y ago
  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.

mrfumier 4y ago

No it's not. The most efficient (and fastest) way is an induction hob with copper disc pan. Something that Technology Connections didn't include in his video. See some test here: https://youtu.be/EBlyuahlplI https://youtu.be/EBlyuahlplI

the-smug-one 4y ago
Where's the energy loss from the kettle that's not present in your proposed method? Legit asking, I don't see it. Just heat radiating from the body of the kettle for longer cuz of longer time to make it boil?
- puffoflogic 4y ago
  The claim seems dubious in Europe, but in North America the stove has access to twice the voltage potential as the kettle, so can heat faster. Then with equal losses the stove wins.
  - im-a-baby 4y ago
    Europeans use 220V for everything.
    - eru 4y ago
      Well, Germans like to use three-phase power for their electric ovens. (Still nominally at 230 Volt, but it's not quite the same as two-phase power.)
    - puffoflogic 4y ago
      So in Europe the phenomenon of a stove heating faster than a kettle would not be observed. Isn't that what I said?
      - serpix 4y ago
        230V/3kW induction stove boils a cup of water faster than you can get the cup from the cupboard.

sltkr 4y ago

> This is about three times as energy-efficient as a gas hob. I sincerely doubt this figure in cases where electricity is generated from fossil fuels in the first place. For example, I lived in the Netherlands where 80% of electricity is still produced by fossil fuels, mostly in gas-fired power plants. As I understand it, generating electricity from gas has an efficiency of only about 50%. That means you lose a lot of energy before it even arrives in your home. An electric kettle has an efficiency of about 80%, with gas stove around 40%. Assuming the cost of transportation is approximately equal for gas and electricity, that means using the gas stove is about as efficient as using the electric kettle, if you assume (most of) the electricity comes from a gas-fired plant. In the winter, the gas stove will be more efficient since all the heat that doesn't go into your food, heats up the room (heating is typically also based on gas in the Netherlands, so this is basically free energy). > Combined with passive cooking it could save real money Again, I don't think this is true. Currently the energy market is fucked up because of the Ukraine war, but up to recently a cubic meter of gas cost around 1 euro, which produces roughly 10 kWh of energy, versus a kWh of electricity cost around 40 cents. That means that on a per-kWh basis, gas costs only a quarter of electricity. So even if the electric kettle is twice as efficient as the gas stove, it is still twice as expensive. In countries where most electricity is generated by burning coal (like Poland, for example) there is also an environmental cost, since coal-fired plants emit more CO2 per joule than gas-fired plants. YMMV based on local energy prices obviously, but I don't think it's straightforwardly true that electric kettles are always more efficient or more environmentally friendly than gas stoves, if you look at it holistically.

habnds 4y ago
https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2020/5/7/21247602/gas-stove-cooking-indoor-air-pollution-health-risks https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2020/5/7/21247602...
p1necone 4y ago
I imagine part of the efficiency of electric kettles is due to the heating element actually being submerged in the water, or at least directly adjacent to it. Compare to a stovetop where there's a big heavy pot between the element and the water, and it's not in complete contact with it. Also often the heating element is underneath a piece of glass.

dragonwriter 4y ago

> A better way to save energy is to use an electric kettle to get the water up to boiling. An even better way (and one that also saves cleanup) is to use an electric pressure cooker like an InstantPot to cook the pasta

EricE 4y ago

or an induction stove. I had an induction cooktop, moved and ended up with a gas cooktop again - I was astonished at how much slower and overall worse it was than induction. I quickly replaced the gas with induction and am now enjoying it once again. The only downside for induction is you have to have induction ready cookware - but really it's not that hard these days. Cookware and more has all-clad seconds and if you sign up for their email newsletter they run a sale - buy one, get a second 50% off - it's how I built my collection. Made In is a medium quality alternative - made in Italy. For affordability, Tramontina is surprisingly good. You can find it at Walmart, Costco and other places. It's not quite as dense as Made In or All Clad but any clad cookware is way better than anything with a damn disk in it.

Schroedingersat 4y ago

Unless the electricity came from gas or coal. Then it's a wash. Induction hobs are about as good as a kettle (and you lose less energy because you're not heating up the glass/plastic/metal of the kettle).

manojlds 4y ago

Isn't this a thing? This is how I have been cooking for a long time - bring water to boil in kettle and use it to cook.

jve 4y ago

Speaking about electrical kettle: why aren't there insulated kettles that would help me save energy when I re-boil water after 20 minutes? EDIT: Ah, there are some: https://www.amazon.com/DASH-Insulated-Electric-Kettle-Cordless/dp/B08DDGP3N6 https://www.amazon.com/DASH-Insulated-Electric-Kettle-Cordle...

benj111 4y ago
If you're reboiling water aren't you already doing it wrong. Ideally you should only be boiling the water you need.
- jve 4y ago
  I don't have reverse-osmoze filters, so I get pretty much residue (lime) which I rather leave in the kettle. Moreover I sometimes want to add extra hot water to my 0,5L cup of tea. When boiling water, I already add the extra water I'll need so I get it just-in-time (except it has already lost much heat thus why I'll try to get insulated kettle). My wife may or may not want to drink tea, but I get ready water anyways (yeah, this could be organized better)
flipbrad 4y ago
I just have a thermos flask next to the kettle. The excess ALWAYS gets put to good use: extra cups of tea (without reboiling), cooking, dishes in the sink, or even the kids' bath.
MrFantastic 4y ago
Throw a kitchen towel over the kettle after you pour off your first drink.
justsomehnguy 4y ago
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tea_cosy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tea_cosy

benj111 4y ago

Unless it's winter where you're heating your house anyway, in which case the gas hob is more efficient. But gas is a lot cheaper than electric anyway so I wouldn't expect a kettle to be much cheaper.

nanomonkey 4y ago

My housemate makes pasta nearly every night, so we decided to optimize the process. We found that bringing the water to boil in a borosilicate flask in the microwave, adding the pasta and then returning it to the microwave with a pyrex bowl of the sauce and meatballs was the fastest and most economical method. I think from start to finish it takes 9 minutes total, 7 to bring the water to a boil and another 2 to reheat the sauce and cook the pasta. Something like 150 watts of power usage in a 1kW microwave.

jgalt212 4y ago

Doesn't this seem crazy counter-intuitive. Turn gas into heat, water to steam energy to electricity, then transmit the electricity, then turn the electricity back into heat. Versus turn gas into heat, water to steam?