I have an electric kettle, AND I season my food, lol
wait people make tea in the microwave? gross lol
wait people don’t understand how microwaves work? dumb lol
Hot water is hot water.
But if you microwave fresh water in a clean cup you’re missing the flavor from the scale and other build-up in an infrequently cleaned kettle.
Microwaves are good for some tasks and bad for others. They’re generally fine for reheating food if you know how to use one, for example. Absolutely no difference between hot water that comes out of a microwave and any other method.
@johannesvanderwhales yeah for reheating food its fine.
No we don’t. We don’t drink tea at all
“Tea is for the sea not for me”
Why of course we do. But we drink Yankee tea, which is a super concentrate of all tea leaves ever created. It’s illegal in 36 countries and if you drink it you either meet god or you have a stroke. One of the two.
You kid, but I really do find this stereotype of Americans fascinating in it’s persistence. Every supermarket I’ve been to in America during the last decade has a tea section that is double the size of the coffee section next to it. These stores wouldn’t be stocking like that if Americans weren’t buying a ton of tea, but yet the idea of America being a tea desert continues.
The difference in coffee varieties is a lot more nuanced than tea flavors so it makes more sense for tea to have more space even if it isn’t drunken as much. It depends a lot on what part of the country you’re in too.
People who drink a lot of tea just have kettles though… I don’t know where myth that US kettles are slow came from.
American kettles are slow because you use 120V mains.
it’s not that they don’t drink tea, it’s that they drink it wrong
I don’t ever drink tea
I bet it drives you nuts that we folks in the southern US like to drink our tea sweet as hell and ice cold.
I do lie awake most nights thinking about it
That’s kind of ok actually, at least you’re not pretending it’s real tea.
(also it’s delicious, so you’ve got that going for you)
I either buy my tea at a convenience store in a can, or i put it in a large jug of water, leave it out in the sun for a few hours and then drink it with ice and a bit of sugar.
Most people I know use a kettle as well as I. Hailing from Michigan!!
Truly the superior hot water
I like my electric kettle because it has temperature settings for specific tea leaves/types and it has a large volume. But if I just want to boil one cup, the microwave is a no-brainer.
Microwave is slow
I’ve timed it with my kettle and it’s literally the same time to boil one cup.
I’m British and was shocked to learn that other countries don’t even have 3000W electric kettles.
Just put the kettle on top of your Intel laptop…
Our typical US 120V household outlets can’t pull that much power. Most electric kettles here draw about 1.5 kW.
Could run a 240V circuit (or tap into the oven/range 240V circuit I suppose) and use an imported UK kettle. I’ve heard of people here actually doing this, but I can live with the slower boil times 😄
Just make a kettle with two plugs.
The limitation is usually the circuit tho. You couldn’t use the same powerpoint block.
Microwave : boils water
Stovetop : boils water
Open flame : boils water \British people : *pretending they have any sense of taste* "microwave water taste different.
Yeah I will never at all understand this weird superiority complex in the way in which people boil fucking water of all things. The result is the same.
The reason why a kettle is nice is because it boils a large quantity of water quickly. If you only want a single cup, then a microwave is a great option if you don’t have or want a kettle.
In our defence (spelt correctly) all of the above are acceptable, except the microwave. Reasons being that a) the microwave doesn’t boil it evenly, and you get pockets of mega heated water that bubble up and splash up in the microwave, then drip off the manky ceiling of the microwave and into your cup. B) microwaves stink. I don’t know anyone that uses one for anything other than popcorn or melting butter. But if you’re using it to cook as well… 🤢
Yeeeeah, that’s not how microwaved water works. If there IS any temperature differential, the movement of the water quickly evens it out. By the time you’re dropping your tea in, it’s even.
As far as microwaves being stinky, that’s a you thing, bud. My microwave smells fine.
- Clean out your fuckin microwaves.
- Convection currents stir the water automatically, heating it unevenly doesn’t matter. A stovetop also heats water unevenly.
- Stop microwaving fucking fish you dirty bastards. I will punt any mf who microwaves fish into the fuckin Gehenna.
Convection currents don’t stir water in a microwave because the heat source isn’t on the bottom. That’s the difference. You get temperature stratified water where the surface is hotter than the bottom of the cup and they don’t naturally mix.
Of course, here in America, we have this incredible technology called a spoon. Pull that bad boy out, give a little stir, problem solved.
Convection currents don’t need the heat source to be directly at the bottom to stir the liquid.
Microwaves don’t really heat top to bottom either, it’s shooting waves through the body of the water and even the cup, directly exciting a bunch of individual H2O atoms in hot spots where the microwave peak at, heating the liquid very unevenly. The wave could very much be heating a fraction of the top, middle, and bottom at different points in 3d space. it just depends on the peak of the microwave.I mean, it’s not really a matter of debate TBH. There are a number of peer reviewed journal articles documenting the temperature stratification. Here is one source, where the authors attempt to create a special cup to heat the water more evenly.
I’m well aware of temperature stratification. It doesn’t happen in a microwave in the same way.
Micro waves don’t heat purely the top surface, they penetrate the entire waters body creating super-heated localized hotpots that shift the water around from Convection currents because the hotter more excited water atoms are less dense than the colder less excited water atoms above them spreading temperature out from those hotspots.
Temperature stratification only comes into play if there’s no nucleation point, in which you get this.
Also, your link is dead.I’m well aware of temperature stratification. It doesn’t happen in a microwave.
It empirically does. We can argue about the theory all day but the research says microwaves produce stratified temperature gradients when heating liquids. However, I’d point out that, in atmosphere, when we have localized hot spots the warm air can effectively travel in bubbles without significant mixing for quite some distance. There seems to be a similar phenomena at work when microwaving liquids.
See the screenshot below.
I pulled this from “Multiphysics analysis for unusual heat convection in microwave heating liquid” published in 2020 in AIP Advances.
Relevant excerpts:
“ Usually, the fluidity of liquids is considered to make the temperature field uniform, when it is heated, because of the heat convection, but there is something different when microwave heating. The temperature of the top is always the highest in the liquid when heated by microwaves.”
“ The experimental results show that when the modified glass cup with 7 cm metal coating is used to heat water in a microwave oven, the temperature difference between the upper and lower parts of the water is reduced from 7.8 °C to 0.5 °C.”
“According to the feedback from Midea (microwave appliance makers), when users use the microwave oven to heat liquids such as milk or water, the temperature at the top of the liquid will be significantly higher than the temperature at the bottom.”
You gotta clean the microwave regularly like anything else. There are reasons why I would probably use my stove top over my microwave to boil water (though I do use a microwave to make tea when I just want a single serving), but your points about water splashing up everywhere and dripping down off of disgusting interior surfaces of the microwave sound a lot like operator error.
If you’re microwaving water for more than 2-4 minutes you’re doing something very very wrong.
1m 30s to 2mins is already enough for 1 coffee cup worth of water to reach boiling temp in the majority of microwaves.I’m just imagining @Mr_Blott@lemmy.world microwaving a cup of water for way too long to absolutely volcanic results and then throwing up his hands in disgust before walking away from the swampy microwave without bothering to clean the mess up like a scene out of some infomercial for a device that solves microwave issues that don’t exist lol
Like I ever microwaved a cup of water 😂 I’m not a fucking barbarian lmao
Really the only danger in using a microwave to boil water is superheating if there are no nucleation sites in the mug.
Which is why it’s important to put the teabag in the water before microwaving it.
Which is why it’s important to put the teabag in the water before microwaving it.
I know you are trying to bait me and I’m not going to fall for it
Or just like gently stir the water when it comes out of the microwave. You’d really have to overcook the fuck out of the water to create a risk of superheated water explosions. Tea should be slightly below boiling anyway.
I thought tap water had enough particulate in it by itself?
Usually it does, but then again there are places where people don’t drink the tap water.
Just go the whole hog: put the teabag in the bottle of water and microwave that.
Brits will scoff at microwaved water then straight up eat mushy peas at dinner.
Americans always shit on British food then come over and remark at how great it is.
Americans try to substitute good food with size, sugar and oil.
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You ever watch Bri’ish “people” eat Mexican food?
“Oh my lord it’s too spicy 🥵🔥, wha’ is all this flavor? 🤮 it’s to strong🤢. chili pepper??😵💫 never heard of it😵. I don’’ like this mild chili cheese burrito, send i’ back 😫.”You speak like someone that has never met a British person never mind not having been to the UK.
The national dish of the UK is curry. There is curry everywhere.
I went to an Indian restaurant in America the women actually lived in the UK and we was chatting. I ordered a hot curry and it was fine.
But the Mexican woman behind me ordered a vindaloo which is a pretty standard dish in the UK. The Indian said “you had this before? Its very hot”
But “no but it’s fine I’m Mexican. I can handle my heat”
“I’m just warning you it’svery hot. You sure you want it? Maybe you want x, y, z instead if you ve never had it”
“I’m good with heat. My family always makes things spicy”
Anyway it came and she ate less than 10% of it before getting it boxed up.
You’re speaking to a person who will literally eat raw Carolina reaper peppers as a snack. 😋
I’ve been eating hot Mexican salsa since I’ve been 3 months old (older sis gave it to me and I loved it) and dranking hot sauce out of the bottle pretty much my entire childhood. I will literally go far beyond my crying point and still keep going because it just tastes that good. Even when my tongue has become numb from pain, I still keep getting at it.
Meanwhile, You bri’ish fucks are why “Mayo spicy” is a stereotype.Cool story bro.
Obviously don’t know about British people though.
Vindaloo is 175,000 to 500,000 scoville.
That’s on my not hot list.
Try 1.2 million scoville phaal curry, it’s one of my favorite warm up foods, now that shit is GOOD. 😋😍
Keep going, we’ll make you a copypasta
comeback when you try phaal, weak shits.
Eh, there are different kinds of “spicy”. Depending on how dead your receptors are after eating that “spicy” food before.
So if you don’t notice some kind of spices anymore, and are going to try the same amount of something you’ve not tried before, it may be painful until your receptors are dead to that too.
Personally I think it’s simply bad taste and bad cuisine to put large amounts of spices and salt into food. You should feel the actual flavor of what you are eating behind spices and herbs and salt and sugar and what not.
No
The objective part I’ve checked experimentally many times, so fsck right off.
The subjective part doesn’t require your approval. Think that moment in the “Green Book” movie about “salty” and people unable to cook.
I’m pretty sure Americans have a panic attack when what they’re eating isn’t at least 50% high fructose corn syrup.
Haha I was just in England/UK/Britain and the food was whack, in England especially. The reason England is famous for its fish and chips is because it’s the only thing that is good.
Curry is bomb though, but idk (honestly) if that counts. Colonizing India is the best thing that ever happened to England, sadly you cannot say the same going the other direction lol
Haggis fucking rules though!
proceeds to tell everyone how bad the food is in the uk
2 seconds later: proceeds to tell everyone how much they like food from the uk
Isn’t haggis from Scotland or some shit?
Yeah, but it’s in the UK. Only mentioned because the rest of the food in the UK was pretty bland.
It is.
I mean we can pick at things. Americans put marshmallows in their potatoes and eat cereal that are the same shade as crayons. Asians put cheese slices in their instant noodles. Italians eat Prosciutto and Melon, The French eat Escargot and Frog. At least most of these are consider guilty pleasures rather than cuisine.
You’ve missed the way that British people actually boil water though, thus missing the true reason that we’re superior.
We get it, you boil water with your anus.
By the grace of God and our monarch we boil water however the fuck we please 🇬🇧💂🇬🇧💂🇬🇧
Ah, so with the Queen’s anus, got it.
King’s anus, at least keep the insults relevant and up to date please.
They still have a Queen. It’s just not Queen Elizabeth II, it’s Camilla.
You mean the King’s Consort? You really are a pleb.
Is this some kind of beans on toast thing I’m too colonies to understand?
Ok, Brits. Educate me. What’s the benefit of a tea kettle over heating water in the mug you’ll drink it out of in the microwave? (Assuming you’re making one cup of tea.)
well you see, when you heat it slowly over a flame, the bad stuff evaporates and leaves behind a purer flavor…
when you microwave, it doesn’tp.s. im an american and have no problem microwaving water… but i do swear there’s a slight difference… maybe it’s from the cup being nuked?
i also microwave cold coffee…The “slight difference” is you need to clean out your fucking microwave. 🗣️
I’ve made tea on the stove(gas & electric), over an open flame, and in a microwave.
There’s 0 difference.“Why does my water taste gross? Must be the radiation’s fault?”
Meanwhile, 3 years of food grease, splashes, and debris coat the lining of the entire microwave.
The kettle is much faster.
I only make tea with water from Boston Harbor.
Americans who drink tea generally use a stovetop kettle. Sometimes they use an electric one. But what does it matter how the water gets hot, if the water’s hot? Microwave radiation doesn’t leave a taste in water or something
Boiling it with some kind of kettle can make minerals drop out of solution, but I really doubt it would make a significant taste difference unless the kettle is attached to copper piping leading to a catch basin (aka a still).
What if it turns out that Bri’ish people just use pure lead kettles.
Britties think they’re better, even though the concept of science seems to escape them.
I’ve alwaus been fascinated how Limeys are so adamant about how American 110v homes are inferior, but they all have an insane fear of electricity.
240V is actually the US standard, the actual output from the outlets however is different.
220V
Like I already said, US households are wired to the 240V 60Hz standard, it just depends on what device the outlet is intended for. The outlet can be anywhere from 110V for low volt appliances all the way up to 240V for high volt appliances.
Yes, I know that many US homes have 220V outlets for electric ranges or water heaters but most outlets are not and the ones that are are not typically accessible for general use. It’s silly to say “240V 60Hz is actually the US standard” in this context since most US residents aren’t going to have one accessible as a special outlet just for a kettle. Or if they do, they better tell their guests before they accidentally plug in a blender.
I have one I can easily access right behind my stove top. It’s not like it’s a special connection, it’s literally just the usual 2/3 prong. If you know about it in the first place, it’s not hard to access. It’s not like the stove is bolted into the fuckin wall in 99% of US houses.
Nice. I wish I had one… Oh well, back to the microwave.
Why is 110v better than 220v?
And here i am drinking water cold.
Just recently I learned about different temperatures for different teas and coffee. Now I know why my coffee was coming out burnt tasting, and why my green tea didn’t taste right.
Often burnt coffee taste is from people leaving the coffee on the hot plate for way too long.
Have an electric kettle. It’s slower than kettles in the UK and Ireland as it maxes out at a lower wattage.
Just plug it into an outlet that outputs higher voltage. The US standard is actually higher than the UK at 240V 60Hz, the output of the outlet is just dependent on what devices it’s intended for. General outlets output 120V 60Hz, outlets intended for say an electric stovetop output 240V.
A couple of issues:
Watts = Volts * Amps. So, if the circuit that the outlet is on is not rated for enough current, it will either trip the breaker or potentially start an electrical fire.
A 240V outlet requires appropriately-rated wiring and breaker, not to mention the outlet itself. Generally these are only installed for ranges and dryers. Getting an extra installed for the counter isn’t in the budget for most people.
And for the 240V extension cord…really?.. Is that thing rated for consistent usage at >3kW and potential water exposure? If it’s not, that’s just asking for a house fire.
The extension cords I linked are perfectly safe and manufactured to deal with 24/7 use & potential water exposure. In fact there probably overkill. They’re capable of 3.60kW(240 × 15 amp = 3600watts).
Just look at the company making them 😆 https://milehydro.com/
Just don’t use them outside and you’ll be fine.You’ve got it! Good catch on that extension. 20% over is probably safe, if the manufacturer rated it with enough headroom.
The outlets are installed per-code by licensed professionals, there’s nothing to worry about. You can’t install them yourself without breaking the law, unless you happen to be a licensed professional.
Yup. With good reason. I DO actually want to get a 240V installed specifically for this purpose myself. Just too pricy to justify/afford at the moment between permit and electrician costs. I’d wager that the cost is well outside of the realm of affordable for a good portion of people, especially those who are not licensed electricians or able to buy a home.
Yeah getting new ones installed is costly, but most homes & apartments should have at least one and these 25ft extension cords are likely more than enough as a substitute unless you get really unlucky where the only one is in the basement which would really suck.
Before an American lights their house on fire, do not plug a 120V appliance into an 240V circuit using one of these adapters. If you live in North America, a 240V appliance will not use an ordinary plug, and the 120V ones that do will probably light on fire if you plug it into one of these. You need to import a 240V appliance from a different country, and then it will use the plug from that country and not an North American plug.
Also for the non-Americans, 240V circuits in NA need 4 wires (2 hots, 1 neutral, 1 ground) instead of 3, so usually only 1-2 circuits in the entire house will be 240 and the rest are 120. If you want to install another 240V outlet, you probably need to install a completely new circuit at the breaker and run new copper wires from there to the new outlet, which is very expensive.
Also, wires heat up according to their current. Normally the breaker at the panel can open the circuit if the current is too high, but 240V circuits are often rated for much higher currents (e.g. 50A instead of 20A), and the appliance itself will draw a lot more current than it expects if the voltage is double, which can internally overload it even if it doesn’t trip the breaker. E.g. if you plug a 120V 15A kettle into a 240V 40A circuit, it will draw 30A according to Ohms Law, which will probably cause wires within to overheat and eventually light the kettle on fire without tripping the breaker.
using one of these these adapters
There actually not adapters. If you look, there NEMA 6-15P & 6-50P on both ends which is US standard 240V outlets.
…a 240V appliance will not use an ordinary plug… You need to import a 240V appliance from a different country…
There actually are 240V appliances with a US NEMA 6-15P & 6-50P plug. You’re just not going to find them at wallmart, there usually used by businesses like mom & pop shops. For example, this expensive mf. For imported appliances all you need is an adapter from NEMA 6-15P/6-50P to whatever that particular 240v rated appliance is using.
