An Ode to the Electric Kettle

I am a sucker for pretty things. But for seven years, I did not live in a place for longer than 9 months, and so slowly I’ve built an abstinence from impulse purchases. Let’s be honest, pretty things, at the expense of their aesthetics, are quite expensive. And for the same reason, many of them do not last long. However, there are still exceptions to the rule.

Disclaimer: All appliance review posts are not paid for advertising. These are items that I love and use regularly, and in many cases, I have backed their conception on crowdsourcing.

In today’s quest, if you are looking for a simple kettle that does just one thing: to boil wooter, then maybe you won’t find this article very useful. But as a 25-year-old millennial living in Manhattan with extremely limited horizontal space, I often search for space- and time-saving appliances, which should also perform many functions well at once (emphasis on “well”). And for my personal preference, it has to look good. I realize these criteria sound just like my criteria for a Hinge date, but are they unrealistic and perhaps impossible to find?

For a long time, I thought so too. Today, let’s start with a basic item, the kettle.

Why Kettle?

If you have ever owned a stovetop kettle, or still own one now, I really respect your patience, and perhaps your appreciation for heritage. However, I am so, so, soo, soooo tired of the whistling sound that, arguably, would be more pleasant if it sounded like “oui pa-dam, pa-dam.” To understand the whistle, a British lord from the 19th century wrote a text called “The Theory of Sound” (which already sounds very British), but he failed. With modern physics, we now understand why stovetop kettles make hissing sounds, but noise is not the only annoying design feature.

The plastic top handle of many stovetop kettles gets hot while boiling. The design of the straight spout means you cannot control the speed of the pour, and if you're not careful, hot water will splash. Some kettles would also feature a lid for the spout (maybe to prevent water from cooling down too fast). A lid might sound like a good idea, but it is not very practical in reality. The lid would either fall off or fail to open while I'm trying to pour boiling water. The aftermath is, yes, I would have to put my thumb onto the plastic lid to physically plug it open while praying to Jesus that my finger would not get sucked into hot pressure. What kind of 2020 science is that? This is, my friends, how you craft a second-degree burn.

The Me-no-understand Lid

Many people think that a kettle is designed to heat water up to a boiling temperature. The reality is: water is designed to be boiled at 100 degrees C.

In this sense, a kettle does nothing but a vessel to hold water, so why need a kettle? You can just use any pot, or simply a microwave to heat water in peace and concrete solace. Then, why did I ever get a kettle?

The Perfect Kettle for Tea Drinkers

Let's face it, the art of drinking tea might do absolutely nothing to slow my aging process, but I am still a veteran tea drinker. My collection of over 50 kinds of tea creates a problem for water: each type of tea needs its own temperature. It’s like having many children with different dietary needs. Black tea, your tough child, can take boiling temperature, but if you do the same thing to your sensitive, Instagram-obsessed daughter, yes, the matcha, essentially you will get a horrible burnt, grassy taste. The same goes with oolong, white tea, blue tea, green tea, etc....

I will be writing more about tea in subsequent posts, but, remember, wrong temperature is the first killer of a good cup of tea. So what’s the takeaway? Yes, let’s not have too many children! Also, if you want to get into the tea territory, I would recommend a kettle with variable temperature settings, like this Cuisinart PerfecTemp 1.7L Electric Kettle.

Cuisinart PerfecTemp Kettle (Image: Macy's)

This kettle looks and functions similarly to other mono-temp electric kettles, with a hot plate inserted directly in its interior that delivers a massive amount of energy (1500W) to heat up water super fast.

This cordless kettle also features six fixed temperatures for different types of tea and coffee. It also has a memory function that lets the kettle lift off its base for two minutes without shutting off. Last, it can also hold the set temperature for 30 minutes, so if you have finished your first pour and would like a second brew, you can get the same perfect temperature any time.

The Kettle for Coffee Drinkers

The Cuisinart Kettle is definitely marriage material for me. I have owned one for 5 years now, and I still rave about its sturdy feel, the tight and strong hold, or the clickable lid. It has the perfect urbane design. Not only does it make a good cup of tea, it makes a good cup of tea every single time.

And while this is a very, very good kettle, there is still something that is missing (can you guess?). Maybe it is the problem with every long relationship, you start wondering what's (possibly better) out there on the market? Also, after all these years, the stainless steel interior has started to rust a little*.

In truth, the added feature would likely suit best serious coffee drinkers and probably not tea snobs (hello, it's me!). In this series of Essential Home Coffee Station, I will unveil what I have at home to make coffee, and why I no longer use the Vietnamese filter ("phin") at home. But for today, I would like to introduce a product that I believe serve as a true marriage of fine-tuned technicality and functionality at no cost to its aesthetics: ladies, holler to the Fellow EKG Stagg Kettle (currently on sale on Fellow's official website).

As you probably could guess, the missing feature is the gooseneck (that is so beautiful but how the heck do I clean this?). The gooseneck, which you might seen in other pots like Bonavita, Balmuda, or Hario Buono (link below), is best suited for a controlled and slow pour in brewing the classic drip coffee. Though the line between tea and coffee aficionados is arguably as polarizing as American politics, I believe this product could be shared and appreciated by both parties.

To be completely transparent, I am not an expert in coffee (coffee and I began our relationship after I got a job in healthcare), so this curved neck is for my partner - a true coffee addict thanks to law school. For me, the deciding factor for the Fellow EKG is its temperature stabilization, which is the most precise on the market at the moment. If it says 90, it is 90, not 92, or 87. Nine-ty!

Asides from the gooseneck, let's appreciate other features of this kettle: the ergonomic handle that lets you place your thumb precisely at the left of the T-bone, or an Erlenmeyer shaped body that transfers heat through its elevated metal bottom, which covers a large surface of heating area compared to the traditional vertical rods. It also has an internal timer for diverse brewing processes.

Like the Cuisinart, the Fellow EKG can heat a wide range of temperatures (135-212F/57-100C) and hold it for 60 minutes. However, nothing is truly perfect, so is a kettle. While looking so aesthetic pleasing, the lid is still manual, meaning you still have to hold and pull. Would you prefer a press-open lid?

In my opinion, perhaps, in the end, the art of making coffee, or tea, is still a very manual process, and those who enjoy this process likely would enjoy the manual aspect of the gears. This might be the reason why Fellow have left something for us to do, and perhaps the same reason why many millennials like us, in this era of ultra-convenience, have turned back to appreciate some fundamentally manual activities, from making homemade pizza, planting herbs, DIY furniture, to simply crafting a good cup of coffee. Perhaps, it is the same reason why we enjoy watching videos from creators like Li Ziqi or haegreendal.

Perhaps, doing is a fundamental connection to the experience of living.

So we discovered. The rest is now subjected to the test of time and our patience. Thank you for supporting the first article of Essential Home, and hopefully you have found this narrative somewhat helpful and intriguing. See you another day, with another cup of coffee.

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*: I have recently switched from tap water to purified water (with a faucet filter), which hopefully would prevent scaling (the white, chalky calcium deposit from boiling hard water) and descaling, a process that requires an acidic agent that over time might rust your pot. To clean my kettle, I've been using this citric acid diluted in water. Others have recommended diluted vinegar as well. Maybe aging is when we start caring about the kind of water our kettle drinks.