Electric or stove top?

I am looking for a new kettle. My question is do you prefer a stove top or electric tea kettle? I can't decide.

I'm a purist in that I heat my water in a cast iron pot over a open, raging fire.

But if you're not willing put in the effort for the old timey way of making tea, then I would suggest you buy an electric kettle. One, they're convenient; you can make tea anywhere where there exists an electrical outlet. Two, electric kettles usually boil the water much faster stove top kettles.

EDIT: Haha. I just clicked on your profile and noticed you belong to the Old Timey Correspondence group. My use of "old timey" was purely coincidental. So don't get the wrong impression. ;)

I use an electric tea kettle. I don't have the patience to boil water with a stove top kettle.

I like the convenience of an electric kettle, and also that, since it's not sitting on the stove, it doesn't get spattered on the outside by other cooking food, which much reduces the amount of cleaning that it requires.

Codyed, funny! I have cast iron, but no open flame. So, I am not so old timey in that way.

I am still looking for a kettle, no decision yet.

That is a wonderful tea pot, where can I buy one of those? *grin* How is the water heated? Hot natrual sping, I hope?

I prefer a stove top kettle when I'm making a full pot. However, it's usually just me and one cup, so I use my Hot Shot for that.

I'm not allowed to boil water in anything that doesn't have an automatic shut off. This has been the rule in our home since the day (20 years ago, now) that I almost set the house on fire boiling water on the gas stove-top. You see, I tend to get distracted during the 'dead time' waiting for the water to boil, and then get involved in something else until I smell the pot burning dry. This one time, though, I was not feeling well and had a lie down on the sofa to wait and then dozed off. When my better half (the one who does the cooking) came home, I was still asleep, the pot had boiled dry, the plastic handles were melting and dripping into the gas flame, which was flaring up and threatening to set the kitchen cabinets on fire.

It is now generally believed in my family that I can burn water, which, I have to admit, is not far from the truth. A few weeks later, I received a nice auto-shut-off electric kettle for Christmas from my parents. It just wore out a few months ago, and I am now on my second.

So, I guess I'm not the best person to venture an opinion, what with my lack of any experience boiling water on a stove for over 20 years now.

Os.

I have both. At home I use the stovetop kettle, but at my office I go for the electric. Electric kettles do boil awfully quickly.

Electric.

The only possible downside to electric is that you don't get the whistle of a stovetop merrily signalling that the water is ready.

Stove top. I'm not sure it's tea without the whistle.

Surely to make tea, you should bring the water to the boil, but not through it.

Electric kettle. I used a stove top kettle for years but the convenience of the electric won out. That and I don't have to worry about one of my cats jumping on top of the stove while the kettle's on.

I use a whistling stove top kettle. Was called old fashioned and laughed at in Britain for using it! At least it's a beautiful object and not more tat clogging up counter space!

Is there a difference in the quality of the water between stove top and electric?

I prefer stove top with a really LOUD whistle (I don't have anybody to back me up like Osbaldistone and I have burned up a couple), but I've used electric kettles for work. I haven't noticed a difference in the quality of the water coming out, per se. That pretty much depends on the quality of the water you put in. What I have noticed is that when I've been in an area with hard water, the electric kettle picks up lots of little blebs of calcium and so forth right over the heating element. A problem I've never had with a stainless kettle for the stove top. I don't believe the blebs effect the flavor, but they do look weird and are a pain to get out.

Electric kettle is best, more ecologic and you can now choose the temperature (at least on my T***l kettle it does) - you cannot expect to have the same water temperature for green or white tea than for black tea, and you save energy by selecting the temperature each time.

>peachfarm

This is a really lovely picture! :-)

I have a copper whistling kettle for stovetop, but I generally just boil water in a saucepan with the cover off.

electric here...like that it stays cleaner, shuts itself off and most importantly when when you NEED that tea, it is very fast.

i use a kettle on the stove

Whistling kettle on the stove at home... the (sigh) microwave at work. We aren't supposed to use electric kettles (or heaters, or fans) in our offices as they might drag on the power and upset the computers.

As an aside, we are currently having a serious snowstorm, and have just been told that we may leave at noon today. (Denver, local time now 10:24 a.m.) I assume they want us to wait until it gets harder to get home before making the attempt.

I can go home and make tea and scones and watch it snow. :-)

I bought the electric kettle after a housemate burned the stovetop kettle--he was probably high and lost track of time/space/reality. So the automatic shutoff was a big advantage. But I also like that it heats water so quickly.

Drive safe, Rowntree!

Thank you, staffordcastle. :-)

(I get to take the light-rail for most of the way; my car is parked at the station about a mile from my house, so hopefully this should not be too bad.)

Rowntree
Snow...you are so lucky...I would like to see snow again. I am in Florida, no snow....snow white sand... yes. I am no closer to a kettle decision. I looked at 50 or so. I am leaning toward an electric. BUT it must have a whistle.

Right there with you Rowntree. Except I waited until almost 2 to head out - figured I'd let everyone else get off the road before I tried it ;-) And a pot of lapsang and some Girl Scout Treffoils when I got home. Yum.

Sounds nice - I just finished a cup of green tea and an English muffin with honey on it :-)

Stove top whistling kettle.
Ours is huge, it's Italian and looks like it belongs in one of those interior design magazines.

What I really hate are plastic electric kettles.

I think plastic kettles are unfairly disliked. I'm sure a properly controlled double-blind test would demonstrate this.

Plastic has a much smaller thermal inertia (the heat that goes into heating the kettle, not the water) than metal. Switching on a heated area of stove top wastes heat all over the place, not least in the (much heavier) kettle needed. OK, whistles are nice, in the way some people like big cars, but you need to consider your role as a participant in the ecosystem.

It's far more important to boil water freshly drawn from a tap, which is usually naturally aerated, than to re-boil once-boiled water, than to worry about plastic. Of course, if the plastic smells 'chemical', this will be residual plasticizers or mould-release agents, which can be driven off by a few 'practice boilings'. And yes, they almost certainly put 'chemicals' on the surfaces of metal kettles too, to prevent loss of appearance before sale.

If your cooking is done using a big stove which contibutes to the heating of the home - in UK they are known as AGAs - then it's possible that a heavy (whistling or not) kettle kept permanently warm thereon actually increases overall efficiency. But the overall energy budget of such devices is not without questions.

Nobody's mentioned the potential of the microwave oven for water boiling. You can even boil water in the teapot this way, if that suits your taste. Warms the pot simultaneously! Microwaves are very efficient at heating water.

My great-aunt used to have a coal-fired 'range', which heated the house (no C.H.!) and did the cooking, dried clothes on a rainy day, providing water for everything, including the Friday night galvanised bath. House occupants went in in age-order, youngest first, with hot water being added incrementally as skin sensitivities were deemed reduced. The kettle sat on a swivelling cast-iron platform, and at the word 'tea' it would be swung over, and close to, the red-hot coals. Tea would be brewing within the minute.

But the world - well, the Western world - changed.
.

omgosh microwave is horrible!
I am forced to use one at work to heat water for a cuppa. It boils the water so hard that it turns the tea into ... I dunno, rot-gut? This is water from a filter mind, not hard water. I personally hate it but a bad cuppa is better than no cuppa.

At home I use an electric kettle for heating; unless we lose power and then I ignite the gas burner. But I like the little plastic electric heater for its shutoff and for the perfect boil on that water.

I just started using my new electric kettle, it is nice and simple IDK, I like it but my stove top one is fine two.

I agree, tea made in the microwave is bad. I only do that as a last resort, like at work! I've never had an electric pot. Now you've made me curious...

the other day I saw an electric tea kettle that actually had different settings by type of tea... one for green tea, a couple of different black teas, yet another for herbal teas...am I the only one who thinks this is a bit "twee"?

>36 chapeauchin:
The idea is that water for green and white teas should be poured at about 180F, while black teas and herbals should be right at boiling. Anything more than that is probably more of a gimmik to make it look like it has offers more control.

Unless this device also controls the steeping time, in which case more settings make sense, as herbals, for example, are usually good to steep 5-7 minutes, while most black teas are best at 3-5 minutes.

Os.

#33 - boiled water is boiled water. The device you use to raise the temperature of the water to boiling is irrelevant. It won't be the microwave making your tea nasty - but you want to add the teabag to the water not boil the water with the teabag already in it: Be Careful! microwaves don't always provide nucleation sites within a mug so when you add the teabag all the air can errupt at once, through scolding water everywhere.

Boiling removes air from the water. Reboiling water doens't remove any more, and doesn't make a difference.

Maybe someone can set me straight on this. I use a regular stovetop kettle at home but my in-laws have an electric. When we visit, I use it for tea. However, while I appreciate the speediness of the electric, I notice that the tea I make with it does not taste quite right. My impression, and I know this sounds silly, is that it's just too hot. Is this possible? (Tea is suppossed to be hot, right?) I think their electric kettle goes way past 212 degress F. I burn my self, curse, then wait for it to cool off, which seems to take forever, but often the taste is still "off" afterwards.

Maybe it's me - the psychological stress of trying to enjoy tea while at my in-laws or something - but I don't think it's the tea (I've used a few different types at their house) or the water (this happens at their regular house as well as their beach house which also has an electric kettle but different water obviously). I see some people here have mentioned electric kettles with various tea settings, the ones I've encountered are just ON or OFF. Maybe that's the problem. If I could find an electric that worked for me it would save a few minutes in the morning.

What's up - do these things over boil?

>39 jgreerw:
The temperature at which water boils is a constant for a certain elevation above sea level. So, if you live at a significantly higher altitude than your in-laws, theoretically it could be different.

Once the water begins to boil, the water temp cannot increase any significant amount, because the added energy is consumed converting liquid to steam. Once the pot/kettle boils dry, it's temp will then increase rapidly, since the energy is now totally available for melting the pot.

However, other things can affect the taste - especially the mineral content of the water. I can't make a decent pot of tea at my in-law's unless I buy bottled water for it because the tap water is too hard. (She also keeps her tea in cardboard boxes for years, so I have to search for the newest tea in airtight packets, if possible)

Os.

#39 "or the water (this happens at their regular house as well as their beach house which also has an electric kettle but different water obviously)"

I suspect the water at both their home and beach house will be notably different than yours (and maybe notably different from each other) and hence why the tea tastes differently. Another possability would be the use of different cleaning agents, which can sometimes leave a residual flavour.

>seaside tap water is notoriously high in minerals, unless 'softened' by the water utility first. That's why my in-law's tap water is so poor for making tea. If you draw a glass and let it sit, you can see the calcium settling out in the bottom. Healthy to drink; lousy for tea (and tea kettles).

Os.

I use Brita filtered water for my tea and heat it in the electric kettle, which I love. It's quick, it's easy, it has an automatic shutoff. No downside that I can think of.

>39 jgreerw:

Apart from the psychological effects mentioned, several factors affect the temperature of what you drink:

1) Whether the teapot has been warmed before pouring the boiling water on the tea inside it.
2) The thermal capacity of the teapot, unless it has been warmed all the way to 100C/212F, which is unlikely.
3) How much boiling water is put into the 'less than 100C' teapot, relative to the thermal capacity.
4) How long the teapot, containing the brewing tea, is allowed to stand before pouring the tea, and the temperature and thermal capacity of its surroundings.
5) The same factors as 2-4) above, but relating to the cup or mug used to transfer tea to lips. A fine china cup may cool the tea less than a rough pottery mug of the same capacity. But a small cup will probably cool more quickly than a large mug.

In all of this, I'm assuming no addition of milk or sugar. When sugar dissolves it absorbs 'heat of solution', cooling the liquid. And of course a spoon has its own thermal capacity as well.

To summarise, you may be right in believing 'in-law tea' to be hotter than 'home tea'. look for explanations in cup size & material, pot size & material, presence of absence of a stirring device, time taken at each stage of preparation, and ambient temperature.

And to think you once believed you were just 'having a cuppa'! LoL!

#44 - of course to control matters properly you should follow the British Standard method BS6008 in each location. There is a similar document from the Royal Society of Chemistry.

Wow. Just, Wow.

Who knew? :-)

Thanks for posting that, reading_fox!

I use an electric kettle, but not one that has the coils inside.

>48 edwinbcn:
I've had the best luck when the water cannot contact the coils. Much easier to clean and remove scale. Far less likely to fail due to corrosion.

Os.

Electric. Convenient, safe, efficient. I can't taste any difference between water made in my stainless steel electric kettle or a pot, and the auto-shut-off is a Good Thing.

>50 tardis:
Yup. My family claims I can burn water. I almost burned down the house when I fell asleep (turns out I had the flu) while the kettle was on the gas stove. When my spouse came home, she saw flames shooting up from the gas burner from the plastic kettle handle that was melting into the fire. And me asleep and unaware on the sofa.

I got an electric kettle for Christmas with an auto-shutoff, and I'm not allowed to boil water in anything else.

Never was good in the kitchen; tend to get distracted waiting for things to boil, simmer, or bake.

Os.

#32 - I think plastic kettles are unfairly disliked.

As far as I can remember, my plastic electric kettle is over twenty years old. I've recently realised that the surface around the pouring spout is very slightly worn away. Wondering where those tiny particles of plastic have ended up makes me a little uneasy. I'm now psyching myself up to buying a very expensive, stainless steel-lined job with varying temperature settings for whites, greens and oolongs.

I've been using (dedicated) coffee-makers at work and at the cabin to heat tea water for several years. We have a kitchen at work, but no stovetop. Since I drink tea by the bucket-ful, it was a better option than microwave. But it really did brew an inferior drink. Recently I'm trying to eliminate plastics from my food chain, as plastics are not chemically stable. I looked for an all metal coffee-maker, possibly available if you want to spend lots of money. I was very pleased to find a new generation of electric kettles now being made. Lowe's was clearancing them recently, so I bought 2 Hamilton Beach models. ($23 each) I know - they've got the plastic water level gauge. Nothing's ever perfect. I love that I can actually boil my water again. And at the cabin, I can heat enough to wash my face mornings and do the dishes.

I've also seen an electronic model at a second hand shop - didn't check on the make, and a no-brand in a discount store for $10.
I like the simplicity of the Hamilton Beach. I'm back in the lap of luxury.

At home I have a stainless steel stove-top kettle, which has a nice, loud whistle. I use it on my gas stove, and it boils the water very quickly. At work we have a glass electric kettle, which is very nice and easy to clean, but not as fast as my kettle at home. I bought the glass kettle after two of the plastic and/or stainless steel ones were burnt out within a few weeks by people starting them with not enough water in them. Turns out the auto-shutoff doesn't work if the kettle is almost empty. No fires started, but the kettles were ruined.

>54 NorthernStar: I'll keep that in mind, though I think this model has a safety feature that would protect from this happening. Everybody else uses an expensive Keurig for both coffee and tea. I find that sort of tool environmentally unsound.

I hadn't encountered a glass electric kettle. Oh! They are pretty!

>55 2wonderY: The glass kettle is pretty, and I like that the hot water does not have contact with plastic.