Seth Stevenson in Slate reviews tea kettles, arguing pasionately and even a touch vehemently for electric kettles over traditional kettles. In Israel everyone has an electric kettle, and I was so confused when I moved here about why I’d never seen one before that I wasn’t even certain its purpose was to boil water. A kettle is called kumkum in Hebrew and I even thought that was only the word for an electric kettle, but that traditional kettles were called something else. So, why do all Israelis use electric kettles while these devices are still mostly unknown to Americans? I don’t think the voltage difference alone can explain it. Perhaps gas ranges are rarer in Israel than in America; perhaps Israelis are more dependent on coffee and tea and therefore more high-tech; perhaps electric kettles were once distributed by the Labor party as tokens of appreciation for voting correctly. Perhaps all of my ideas stink.
For what it’s worth, though there is an electric kettle belonging to my landlord that resides in my apartment, I’m scared to use it, and I still boil water the really old-fashioned way, in a pot.
Even though I’m still in the US, we use the electric kettle (Target carries them). Benefits: faster (by far). Stop being scared to use the kumkum and enjoy it!
once u use the kumkum u can’t go back.
Greg, since you were born in the USSR and aren’t exactly the most culturally American person I know, aren’t you the exception that proves the rule?
Space, using an electric kumkum to heat water is like using a microwave to bake a fish: where do I even begin?
Hey, I’m an American (albeit a naturalized one). But, seriously, we used to boil our water using natural gas until half a year ago and now we are happily using the kumkum. Maybe it’s our ability to be flexible as immigrants. Or maybe it’s the ability to see that kumkum is really faster and that the boiling water from kumkum is no different from the boiling water from the kettle put on the gas/electric stove.