Well that's a whole other kettle of fish
this post was submitted on 09 Aug 2026
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At work, I wondered why the coffee tasted funny first thing in the morning. Turns out somebody didn't want to buy a teapot, so he was brewing green tea through the coffee maker in the evenings. Found little florettes in the filter basket. Bought my own Aeropress after that discovery.
Watt-Hours are quite possibly the stupidest measurement of energy. βOh letβs take a unit of joules per second and multiply it by a bunch of seconds. What do you think we get?β Apparently not fucking joules.
And then applying SI prefixes to them? Absolutely perverse.
Why use Joule, just use kg*mΒ²/sΒ².
Square meter kilograms per second per second is even more intuitive.
But more seriously, Wh and kWh is much more intuitive when determining energy consumption of your household. I don't want to calculate how many joules my fridge consumes per day!
It's not that bad. If an electric kettle runs on 500 watts, and you run it for one hour, then it consumed 500 watt-hours. What's the big deal?
Amp-hours are worse.
How do people dare to measure the amount of work?
Joules, as is the international Standard. 1 Wβ’h = 3.6 kJ. One of the issues with watt-hours is that theyβre so unconventional a unit that people think theyβre a rate of change (Watts over time - W/h) which would be a measure of the fluctuation in wattage or colloquially an acceleration of energy. You so often see people doing crazy broken math with them as a result.
The way the artist wrote k made it look like the Greek letter mu, and I thought it was taking impossibly small amounts of energy to boil water.
That's not what it is?? lol Also I have no idea what the fuck the last sentence is supposed to be communicating.
Last time I stayed at an Airbnb, all their pots were nonstick and scratched to shit. I made pasta a couple of times in the tea kettle. I try to avoid nonstick in general, but when being used communally, there is no fucking way I can trust that people have treated it right, and as much as my body craves Teflon as a fuel source, I will do everything in my power to avoid it, including cooking in a tea kettle.
"That's most of all efficient in our kettle!"
Sorry, is this grammatically correct? Shouldn't this be "That's the most efficient of all our kettle!"
Also I want a thermally insulated pressure cooker that can run on both 240V grid and on a 48V solar panels and that lasts 50 years. Tired of living in this fucking stone age.
It may be grammatically correct in whatever dialect of English the author speaks. As an American I would say it reads weird to me too though.
I think the punchline would be better as, "That's the most efficient way to cook it!"
It's grammatically correct in the dialect of German-guy-trying-to-translate-his-punchlines-English. I still refuse to use ai to translate my comics, so there may be an odd sentence here or there. Trying my best, as usual.
Also, I thought it'd work in the sense of a pun. Like "that's most of all a fish end in our kettle", which doesn't really work if you restructure the sentence too much.
Am I an idiot for soft boiling an egg for ramen in the same kettle as the water for the ramen?
Depends on whether you're in a country that washes eggs before sale too get rid of the cloaca residue or one that keeps it on so eggs can be kept safely at room temperature. Unwashed eggs will have faeces on their shells, and you might not want to cook noodles in faeces.
Nah I washed the egg, but it's Canada eggs are sold washed.
What about an induction hob?
I don't know why I'd buy another appliance specifically to heat water, when I have a general purpose microwave that can do it just as well.
Here are the three things I use my microwave for in order of amount of use:
Heating water for coffee
Cooking vegetables
Thawing meat
I run my microwave about 17 minutes per day total for those three tasks.
One could argue the same about why get another appliance (microwave) when they already have the general purpose stove that works just as well
Microwave is usually 900W while a Non-US kettle can do 3000W on a standard 240V 16A connection so it boils water more than 3x faster.
Very convenient for serving tea and instant coffee and also useful for cooking potatoes, veggies, rice, pasta by boiling water first before pouring it into a pot for a quick start.
Microwaves are usually 1000 or 1100 watts, in the US at least. Only the cheapo Walmart microwave I had in college was 900W. A kettle in the US is still more powerful and faster at up to 1500W or, less commonly, nearly 1800w.
Imagine if we could have a 3phase kettle with 3x32A for 22kW. It would in theory boil 1L in 15s.
Picking specific temperature on your kettle to make better tea π
I know it's usually not an issue without a really smooth container, but I'd be too afraid of superheated water to boil it in the microwave.
Back when I made coffee using water boiled the microwave I'm pretty sure this happened to me a few times, mainly when I'd boil the water, let it sit because I got distracted, and boil it again. I never really noticed in the moment, until I opened the microwave and the entire thing was drenched inside. Fortunately it exploded inside, not outside.
You can get a small electric kettle for less than $20 that boils water extremely efficiently every time. Just add water, flick a switch, then itβll click off when itβs done. Probably the easiest thing in the world and uses the least amount of energy. Plus depending on your glassware/vessel, you run a risk of the glass breaking when you microwave it. Iβm not sure how likely it is, but I know itβs a possibility.
Not trying to convince you to switch, just pointing out the reasons for using a kettle. Do whatever works for you.
also:
Superheated water might remain still, and when you remove the container from the microwave or add an item like a spoon or a tea bag, it can cause the water to boil explosively. This sudden eruption of steam can lead to burns and scalding injuries. https://sciencenotes.org/superheating-water-in-a-microwave-oven/
Interesting. I use mine almost exclusively for reheating leftovers and melting butter, using it perhaps up to four minutes a day.
If anyone made me a cup of tea in the Microwave I'd report them. "mmmm metallic"
Why? If your microwave makes stuff taste metallic I think it might be broken
Microwaved water just tastes funny
My guess is you're getting contamination from something else. All a microwave does is emits microwave radiation inside the faraday cage that is made from the microwave's frame/cover, and as the microwaves pass through, they flip di-polar molecules (molecules that have one side slightly more positively charged and the other slightly more negatively charged), which creates friction and heat. Water is one such molecule.
One reason some people don't like to use it to cook have to do with how it affects the texture. Microwaves heat food up from anywhere the waves spin water, whereas most other cooking methods involve heating it from the outside, so water is evapourating more there, plus you can get some oxidization to add a brittle crunchy layer.
It can also damage other molecules and affect their structural integrity in ways different from other forms of cooking.
It can occasionally do this thing where it heats the water past the point of boiling but without boiling the water (superheating). Not sure if that affects cooking as much, as it usually requires pretty pure water and is more a safety concern because that water will explode when it realizes that it should actually have changed into a gas already (which usually happens because you bumped it while picking up the container it's in).
And that container is the last part. You don't usually cook with plastic containers because they melt in the high heat used for cooking, but they seem fine in a microwave. But who knows what's happening at a micro level. A metallic taste is probably something other than plastic, but my guess is that it's coming from whatever container you were using, especially if you're microwaving something in a metal container of some sort. That would form current eddies that can arc, but if the surface is smooth enough it won't necessarily spark visibly, but could be breaking particles off into your water that you then taste.
In America that's pretty dang common. I have a kettle because I'm a nerd and watch Technology Connections, but it's kinda uncommon.
i did that once. it did not work as well as i had hoped. i'm still not sure why.
I've never seen a "K" written like this. A "V" with an extra line. It's difficult to read. Even though I knew it was supposed to be "kettle", I kept seeing "vettle" or "wettle" or "mettle."
Ah, yes, my old nemesis... my own handwriting. I'm doing my best.
Maybe it's a german thing to write the 'k' like that? I am writing it the same way
Is a kettle really more efficient than a microwave? I would have thought a microwave would be best since it directly heats the water
A magnetron is usually only a bit above 50% efficiency when converting electricity to microwaves (according to Wikipedia, that is), so I had actually assumed the difference to be even bigger.
There are at least three Technology Connections videos about kettles. Including one where he connects a 120V US kettle to his car charger to speed it up.
Electric elements are actually pretty efficient. Usually the heat generated by an electric current is the inefficiency (as well as sound, radiation, and vibrations), but for a heating element you're using that heat waste. It still can generate sound, radiation, and vibrations, so it's not 100% efficient, but you can do well just sticking an element in the middle of the thing you want to heat, especially if it's a fluid. If you don't stick it in the middle, then you lose heat in all the directions away from the thing you're trying to heat.
Heat pipes are more efficient because the heat isn't being generated but just moved. Natural gas (or fossil fuels) seems more efficient but is actually just cheaper, as it used energy that was stored a long time ago.
Even induction burners still lose heat from the bottom of the pot into the induction burner itself, hence why they usually have cooling fans. And the reason why they are more efficient than radiative heat or those spiral elements is because they create the heat closer to the food using an electric current in the bottom of the pot/pan itself, though even the induction part has additional losses.
There was a fish IN the percolator!