Tea Time! Let's Look at an Electric Kettle!

I have recently acquired an electric kettle, and here I will debut my first non food review! Ok, in all fairness, this isn't much of a review, this is the only electric kettle I have ever owned, and I just wanna say how awesome it is owning one. 

On to my "review"!

It lights up when it on!

I know what you're thinking, what on earth could be the point of owning an electric kettle? It's just another kitchen gadget to take up precious space for an item that literally does nothing but boil water. Why not just use a stove top kettle? Or even just a pot? Or a pyrex measure cup in the microwave? Well, I'm about to answer all those questions and more!

First of all, as mentioned before, the purpose of a kettle is to boil water. Pretty simple, right? It's worth noting this difference to differentiate a kettle from a teapot, as a teapot is what you pour the boiling water into with something inside holding the tea. So you don't make tea in the kettle and you don't boil water in the teapot. Got it? Great!

Electric kettles are awesome to have if you got access to a power outlet but not to a stove top or microwave. Electric kettles have the advantage over the stove anyway in multiple ways. First, they heat faster than using the stove. Second, if you're using a pot instead of any kind of kettle, most pots don't have a pour spout and so you could end up spilling boiling water and potentially burning yourself or others. Third, electric kettles shut off automatically once boiling. Finally, I absolutely hate the sound of a whistling tea kettle.

And to compare boiling water in an electric kettle to the microwave - no competition really. Microwave used to be my preferred way to boil, since it was pretty quick and the microwave beeps at me when ready. But I could only really heat up one cup of water at a time, and I'm pretty sure it's not very energy efficient either. Also, with a microwave it's apparently possible to heat up water faster than it can boil (not sure if I'm explaining this correctly) and it will result in the water suddenly "exploding" - something I have had happen a few times. I guess it can help clean the microwave having scalding hot water splashed all over inside of it?

So I now own an electric kettle, and it all honesty I wish I had bought one sooner! Since buying it my tea consumption has sky rocketed. Which is great since tea is super healthy.

My particular kettle is pretty basic, It's available from Best Buy for $20 and it comes in a couple other color options, like black & pink and white & black. Looking at reviews on other electric kettles to compare, this Insignia one is a bit slow to boil compared to fancier (more expensive) models, taking almost 6 minutes when filled to max with cold tap water. I also wish it made some kinda noise to let me know when it's ready, at best if I'm not listening to anything I can hear it click off.

While I'm still happy that I bought this kettle (I had no idea how much I would end up using it), I think once this one has run its course, I look into replacing it with something fancier, like this Cuisinart on Amazon.