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Is it really so surprising that we don't (as a rule) have electric kettles? I think the reasons are pretty clear. First, Americans are mostly coffee drinkers,
by ubermonkey 3y ago
Is it really so surprising that we don't (as a rule) have electric kettles? I think the reasons are pretty clear.
First, Americans are mostly coffee drinkers, not tea drinkers. The coffeedrinkers are mostly using coffee machines that heat the water for you, so you don't need a kettle to do it. This is true from the low-end $30 drip machine to multi-thousand-dollar espresso machines.
Second, America is on 110, not 220. Kettles in the UK do boil CRAZY FAST, but the electric kettles I've used in the US aren't really any faster than using a stovetop kettle. American tea-drinkers often have those.
- throwaheyy 3y agoI’m Australian, it is mildly surprising. America is the land of convenience, and I’ve found an electric kettle even at 120v is still faster than boiling water on an electric stove, and much faster than boiling on a gas stove.
- dmonitor 3y agoElectric kettles are starting to catch on in the US, I think. I just got my mom one to use with an aeropress, and now she uses it to boil water for things like spaghetti (adding the kettle water to the stove pot)
- throwaheyy 3y agoI do the same, a small amount of water starts heating on the gas stove but I completely fill the kettle. Way faster, and in areas with hydro, better for the environment.
- JohnFen 3y agoPersonally, I rarely boil water outside of cooking something, where my stove does the job perfectly well. I don't want or need to sacrifice counter space for a kettle.
- staringback 3y ago> much faster than boiling on a gas stove. There is no way an electric stove is quicker than a gas stove. I did a quick google search and a standard gas stove on high is 12,000-18,000 BTU, which is 3.5-5.4kw.
- throwaheyy 3y agoYou are probably right. I have almost no experience boiling water on a gas stove (except for tiny camp stoves) because I use a kettle for that!
- ajkjk 3y agoA lot of the heat is lost on a gas stove, though. Or is that the number after accounting for that?
- trowawee 3y agoIt's quite fast if you've got 240v outlets in your kitchen. Otherwise it's a little slower, altho I do like being able to hit a button and wander away to do something else, which I never feel comfortable doing when something's on the flame.
- jerlam 3y agoTechnology Connections on YouTube actually tested this and found electric to be slightly faster: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUywI8YGy0Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUywI8YGy0Y It's a one-hour-plus video of someone literally boiling water, so there may be issues with the testing setup that I skipped over.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- kbelder 3y agoI would accept your reasoning, except for the personal experience showing that it's very wrong. Don't know where the heat is being lost, but an electric kettle is significantly faster despite its lower energy.
- ajkjk 3y agoThe difference is that Americans don't drink very many boiled-water drinks and so don't really need them. And the ones they do are easily handled and better handled by the specialized <100$ gadget that is a coffee machine.
- throwaheyy 3y agoI don’t drink much tea at home but I still use it all the time for pasta, eggs, instant noodles etc. literally any cooking that needs boiled water.
- ajkjk 3y agoI have a kettle and it has never occurred to me to use it for cooking food.
- stephen_g 3y agoJust to be clear, don’t put food in the kettle! It’s just a lot faster to get water boiling than starting from cold on the stove.
- Macha 3y agoEspecially if you have an induction stove, where the stove itself is hot instantly so you can pretty much just pour the water from the kettle into the pot and start cooking (unlike a resistive stove, where the water often cools quite a bit before the stove catches up so you end up waiting a couple of minutes after boiling the water in the kettle for it to be boiling on the stove again - still faster than going from room temp on the stove though).
- yamtaddle 3y agoVery much not the case for me, with a (fairly good) US electric kettle and a natural gas range. They're comparable, speed-wise, for smaller quantities, and if I need to boil more than a liter or so, the stovetop is a lot faster. Elsewhere in the thread voltage difference are brought up—that's probably what does it, typical US wall service is far lower-voltage than in Europe. That, and I've definitely had electric ranges in the US that were incredibly slow to boil water, so that might be a factor. Gas, though? At least as fast, depending on the quantity. (I hear induction electric is even faster, but have only used those a very little bit at a couple AirBnBs, so don't really know, first-hand)
- yamtaddle 3y agoThey're a waste of space if you don't make tea much, or one of the fancier and more-manual coffee-making methods. Most people in the US don't make tea much, and just use an automatic drip machine or a keurig for coffee, so of course they don't have a kettle. We have one, but it's because we drink more tea than most Americans, and since we have it for that, it's space-saving for me to also use it for pourover coffee (rather than having a drip machine).
- AlecSchueler 3y agoIt's the "don't drink tea much" that is surprising!
- throwaheyy 3y agoThey might not drink tea much for having dumped all their kettles into the Boston Harbor back in 1773 or something.
- yamtaddle 3y agoWhat's funny is the people who were mad about it were tea importers, not tea drinkers. British policy on tea in the US [EDIT, er, the American colonies, that is] lowered prices, a lot, which ruined the profit margins of importers/smugglers.
- yamtaddle 3y agoWe drink tons and tons of iced tea, but that's about as easy to make in a large pot on the stove as it is to make with a kettle, and most folks already have a large pot. Plus you can buy large containers of it already made at the grocery store.
- Aeolun 3y agoIt’s absurd that as a country you drink so little tea that you wouldn’t need electric kettles. At least, I can totally see how it would seem as such to anyone from the UK (and most of the world).
- MisterBastahrd 3y agoYet here I am, in America, with a cheap water dispenser that has hot and cold taps.
- ubermonkey 3y agoI don't know how many hot water dispensers produce water hot enough for a satisfying cup of tea or coffee.
- MisterBastahrd 3y agoFortunately for me, I dislike virtually all tea equally so my hot dispenser gets used for noodles and rice.
- urtie 3y agoOver the past decade, decade-and-a-half, it seems to have become quite common in at least the Netherlands to install taps that provide cold, hot and boiling water in new kitchens. These days, the higher end taps also do chilled and carbonated water. The origin story for the boiling water tap is powdered instant soup, which isn't quite instant without instant boiling water... :)
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- throw0101b 3y ago> Second, America is on 110 Kind of: 240V is fed into homes (along with a neutral), and gets split in half. Most receptacles are 120V for most appliances, because it gets the job done. There aren't many appliances that need more than that. The two main ones that do have 220V plugs are clothes dryers and kitchen ranges (hobs/ovens). If you want a kettle that boils faster change your NEMA 5 socket (and breaker) that does 120V (at 15A or 20A) for a NEMA 6, and get an UK/EU kettle and change the plug. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NEMA_connector#Nomenclature https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NEMA_connector#Nomenclature (Not sure how up to code any of the above would be.)
- el_benhameen 3y agoFor what it’s worth, I make drip coffee with a 120V kettle, and it boils plenty fast for my needs. A several hundred to thousand dollar electrical project seems overkill to save what I assume would be a few seconds to a minute per cup of coffee.
- yamtaddle 3y agoMy regarded-as-moderately-high-end US electric kettle isn't really any faster to boil water than my stovetop is—but, it can hold a temperature, and has several settable stop-and-hold-points at sub-boiling temps, which is great for various teas and coffees. What's not relatable to me is European (I assume?) reports of boiling water in an electric kettle, then transferring to the stovetop. My kettle's not meaningfully faster than the stovetop, and is a lot slower for quantities past a liter or so—it's only worth having for the other features. I assume that's the voltage difference making itself known.
- throw0101b 3y agoYes: I generally only fill up a kettle in the 500-750 mL range if I'm only making one cup, and it generally boils fast enough for my tea.
- ubermonkey 3y agoPeak HN right here. Absolute PEAK.