• Kraiden@kbin.earth
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    3 months ago

    Electric kettles (or hot water jugs depending on where you are) are just not a thing there. Apparently it has something to do with your 110v AC system. They don’t boil as fast, and so never really took off. Just a little factoid that blew my mind, considering how commonplace they are everywhere else.

    • shalafi@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      LOL, we has 2 and have never used them. One is at camp, where we have a gennie, and we sold the other at the flea market.

      The only hot drinks we make are coffe and we have 3 machines for that. If we need hot water to cook, we heat it on the stove top. I just can’t see why we would want one. Am I missing out?

      • Kraiden@kbin.earth
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        3 months ago

        They’re faster than the stovetop by a lot over here, so if you’re boiling a lot of water multiple times a day (for tea, coffee, ramen, and whatever else) they’re super convenient.

        If you’re not making many hot drinks (or have better machines for that) I’m not sure how much use they are.

        As for cooking, I know for myself, when I make something like rice, I boil the water in kettle first, and it definitely saves me a couple minutes. A few minutes doesn’t sound like much, but it all adds up. Another commenter says that they’re actually not that much slower over there, so it might be worth timing one compared to stove top?

        • Stovetop@lemmy.world
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          3 months ago

          A lot of things are faster than me.

          In my defense, my left leg hasn’t been as good since I took a tumble off my bike into a gutter outside of Fuzhou a few years back.

        • villainy@lemmy.world
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          3 months ago

          They’re significantly faster than boiling water on the stove here in the US too.

          I have an electric kettle because I’m a tea drinker. Not gonna lie though, it did take a while before I realized I could just generally boil water in the thing. One day, looking directly at the kettle while I filled a pot with water, the dusty light bulb in my head finally lit up. 😅

    • Death_Equity@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      We aren’t big tea drinkers, so we only need hot water for food preparation.

      The coffee machines make their hot water for coffee. If you don’t use a coffee machine to make coffee, you might use an electric kettle or the microwave if you are derrainged.

    • AngryishHumanoid@reddthat.com
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      3 months ago

      I mean, they sell them at Costco, I’d hardly call that unknown. They’re less common because most people just don’t need them.

    • BedbugCutlefish@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      It’s not that much slower. Our 20a outlets give 2,400w, while yours gove 3000w. And, it’s still faster than a stovetop kettle. Its more that we don’t make hot tea very regularly, while drip coffee was the dominant hot drink for so long.

    • Vaggumon@lemm.ee
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      3 months ago

      They do exist here, just not very common. But in my family at least, every person has one in their kitchen. We are big tea drinkers though. I use mine a lot to heat broth for Ramen.

    • klemptor@startrek.website
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      3 months ago

      Yeah, I have an electric kettle but I don’t personally know any other American who owns one. People are weirdly interested in it when they visit me.