12 ms·
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 elect
by 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 agoI'd be very surprised to see a standard US gas range capable of boiling water faster than an electric kettle.
- vel0city 4y agoYeah, 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 agoYeah 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 agoAmericans 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 agoI 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.
- wintermutestwin 4y ago>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 4y agoI'm American, and I often heat up leftovers with a toaster oven or on the stove. For some foods it gets better results.
- eru 4y agoThere's also steamers. They are especially popular in Asia.
- drdrey 4y agoIsn’t it problematic to heat water in a microwave?
- EricE 4y agoOnly if you overheat it. Drives all the gas out and makes the water off/flat.
- dragonwriter 4y agoIts 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.
- beezle 4y agoI own a stove top kettle. Only used for hot chocolate or aeropress coffee (but I usually use drip maker)
- rando14775 4y agoYou sure? Germany is a (shit) coffee country and everybody has had electric kettles since the 90s.
- fuckstick 4y agoWhat 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.
- Iwan-Zotow 4y ago> there is no essential use for a kettle electric kettle french press for coffee tea kettle for tea
- BurningFrog 4y agoTo perhaps state the obvious, I use mine mainly for coffee. And the occasional tea cup.
- vel0city 4y agoHonestly 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 4y agoYou'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 4y agoLast sentence is ironic because keurigs waste so much plastic if you use them daily.
- rsynnott 4y agoBut 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 4y agoUnless 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.
- jefftk 4y agoI 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 https://www.jefftk.com/p/electric-kettle-vs-stove
- jounker 4y agoHi 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.
- Iwan-Zotow 4y agodid you try french press?
- bmitc 4y agoOnce introduced, it's hard to downplay the usefulness of an electric kettle.
- killjoywashere 4y agoI'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 4y ago> 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-makers/espresso-kocher-eko-364-e.html https://www.rommelsbacher.de/en/coffee-tea-co/espresso-maker....
- vineyardmike 4y agoI 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.
- kenneth 4y agoYou 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.
- christophilus 4y agoAgreed. 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.
- wnolens 4y agoStrange.. 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.
- mbreese 4y agoIn 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.)
- vel0city 4y agoIf 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 4y agoOh 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.
- ridgeguy 4y agoMy 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 4y agoWe 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.
- benj111 4y agoEuropean 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".
- soegaard 4y agoTechnology Experiments tried it. https://youtu.be/_yMMTVVJI4c?t=232 https://youtu.be/_yMMTVVJI4c?t=232
- fuckstick 4y agoIt’s not that slow. 1. They sell plenty of kettles in the US (touch grass and go to Target sometime or something) - a large portion of those sales are probably to Asian households. It is simply that if you have a drip coffee maker and don’t drink much tea why do you need a kettle. No idea where this dumb myth comes from - kettles are not hard to find in the US, they work fine - there is a ton of demand it is just relatively miniscule.
- sgtnoodle 4y agoThey're found in most college dorm rooms.
- jrmg 4y agoNo idea where this dumb myth comes from I think it’s a hangover from when it was true - fairly recently in a human-lifespan timescale. I moved to the SF Bay Area from the UK 20 years ago, and had to buy a weird kettle from Amazon. None of the nearby stores had a decent one. That’s definitely not true now though.
- nerdponx 4y agoI had an electric kettle growing up, but nobody else I knew/know has one. I don't know why, they're extremely practical, don't take up much space, and don't cost much money unless you get a fancy temperature-controlled one.
- ar_lan 4y agoI wonder how I’m making my Chemex every morning…
- glandium 4y agoJapan is on 100V mains, and electric kettles are everywhere.
- askvictor 4y agoGood point. What's the typical kitchen set-up in a Japanese apartment?
- sailfast 4y agoFWIW in my American experience most everyone I know has one and uses it, so your mileage may vary.
- rootusrootus 4y agoI don't have a kettle because I have a hot water tap that gives me water at more than 200F. If I need it boiling, it takes a very short period of time on the range to get it there. Those are relatively common, almost every one of my friends and family have one too.
- 300bps 4y agowhich limits power to around 1100W All those 1800+ watt hair dryers that are used very commonly in the U.S. are wondering where you got your wattage limit from. https://news.energysage.com/how-many-watts-does-a-hair-dryer-use/ https://news.energysage.com/how-many-watts-does-a-hair-dryer...
- XorNot 4y agoContinuous vs noncontinuous overcurrent rating.[1] Depending how you get your appliance approved, you can draw more. The actual requirement is 3 hours, but like all regulations you have to look at intended usage: [1] https://www.csemag.com/articles/understanding-overcurrent-protection/ https://www.csemag.com/articles/understanding-overcurrent-pr...
- 300bps 4y agoThe comment I replied to said the U.S. was limited to around 1100W which is why The U.S. doesn't use tea kettles. I reply with a very commonly used device that uses over 63% more power than 1100W showing that obviously isn't the reason the U.S. doesn't use tea kettles. And you reply with essentially, "Oh, but that's because the hair dryer isn't used continuously for 3 hours". Did you think a tea kettle is used for 3 hours continuously?
- XorNot 4y agoPlease actually read what I said: there are differences in the appliance approval process which determines how much continuous power you can draw from an electrical circuit. Why would a manufacturer bother trying to prove discontinuous draw when they can just current limit, use the same element they do everywhere else with the same resistance, and not worry about it?
- 300bps 4y agoI read what you wrote but still fail to see what it has to do with a claim that 1100W is the limit on US circuits and that is the reason Americans don’t use electric kettles. Because that is what was being discussed.
- dragonwriter 4y agoIn my experience, electric kettles are reasonably common in America.
- dragonwriter 4y ago> Americans don't really do electric kettles, largely on account of using 110V mains, which limits power to around 1100W Most sources I can find indicate the usual (but not maximum) draw of US electric kettles 1500W, and checking a few popular models confirms that 1500W is common.
- refurb 4y agoMost kettles I've had in the US are 1500W, similar to a space heater. It does take longer to boil, but it's like 2 min compared to 1 min. I survive.
- kenneth 4y agoI'm a European who finds kettles stupid. I own one because someone didn't appreciate my house's lack of kettle and got one despite my protestations. I own (1) a induction stovetop, (2) a microwave… both will perfectly boil water just as fast. Why do I want to waste counter space on a kettle. My kitchen is tiny. I have the same complaint about a ricecooker. It's perfectly easy to cook rice in a pot. Sure it's convenient to use the automated device, but it's wasteful.
- hoseja 4y agoI've never owned a rice cooker but I'm led to believe the rice they make is superior to anything you can reasonably achieve in a simple pot.
- dontlaugh 4y agoIt's far easier to achieve consistent results, for sure. We have a small one and it's the best rice we can make at home without significant effort.
- kenneth 4y agoCooking perfect rice in a pot takes technique, for sure. But it's not that hard, and if you do it right it comes out perfect just like a rice cooker. Wash your rice. Throw in cold pot with 1:1 ratio of rice to water, + a bit extra to account for evaporation[1]. Bring to a full boil. As soon as it's boiling, drop the heat to the lowest setting and cover your pot as tight as you can and let it steam itself until ready. When ready, fluff it immediately. [1]: the precise amount extra depends on your setup, tbh… how tight your lid seal is, how much surface area your saucepan exposes, etc. but usually an extra 25% will be about right
- fomine3 4y agoDedicated appliance worth to have if it used frequently. As a Japanese who uses ricecooker and kettle, it must have.