Electric Kettle

Soap and warm water, carefully rinsed, on the outside. Hot water on the inside. If you're developing scale on the inside, boil some vinegar (or a weak vinegar solution) and then rinse thoroughly with hot water.

dmh

This is why I use a regular saucepan for heating or boiling water, washed when needed in the dishwasher. Toci

I normally don't bother, but when the scale builds up a lot on the heating plate, I clean it with citric acid (which you can generally get pretty cheap), since it doesn't impart a hard-to-remove odor to the plastic like vinegar can.

N.

vinegar if it's all metal inside.

I have a kettle that came with this hint: Never leave water in the kettle to set. I only use enough water to make the tea I plan to consume that sitting, or just dump out whats left when I have exhausted the leaf. (Seems to be working)

Doug

Do you know the reason?

Several, depending on what the pot's made of (wouldn't matter for glass). One is metal ions in the water and plastic migration for plastic and electric heating element pots. For enameled iron, if there's a pin-hole in the enamel, leaving the pot wet hastens rusting out. (Most of them do, in my experience with canning kettles, tea kettles, and other forms of light steel enamelware). Exposure to bare iron or steel also would increase the iron ions in the water, which may be okay or may be more iron than you need (depending on other iron sources).

The heating elements tend to be other metals -- and even stainless has alloy metals that tend to leach out if you leave water in over time.

Glass would probably be okay to leave water in, but if you boil one of those out, you get a broken kettle eventually. In my experience, whatever you do, you get a broken glass kettle eventually, but they're generally cheap enough.

Thanks. I've heard of it and empty the kettle after the water's cooled, but didn't know why I was doing it.

snipped-for-privacy@individual.net/18/05 14: snipped-for-privacy@is.invalid

It's most likely in some strange and foreign country, such as England, where water can be so hard as to produce golf ball sized lime rocks if you're not careful. I'll bet that's it.

Michael

Are Doug & Claire English? ;)

All kidding aside, you may have a point because, through the years, none of my kettles had that caution and I only got rid of the old ones because of exterior damage, not interior.

what kind do you have? I need a decent electric kettle

if you like green and white teas, try adagio tea's (I think the website is adagio.com) electric pot for green tea. You can adjust the temp. Very nice. They've started selling through amazon so you can look there.

JE

p.s. not associated with adagio or amazon in any way, just like the teapot. BTW also like some of adagio's greens and whites.

Spend the money and get a Russell Hobbs from Upton's. It's expensive, but it will last you the rest of your lifetime.

--scott

Since Salton purchased Russell Hobbs (2001?), the kettles are no longer made in the UK, rather in China. Anyone know if the quality of Russell Hobbs is as good under Salton's ownership?

JE

It's not. The new ones are very flimsy. That's why I recommend getting one of the older ones from Upton's while they still have them in stock.

--scott

I got a Kitchen Gourmet hot pot with adjustale heat for $9.99. I got the same pot under the Revil name at a trift store for 99 cents. Both work fine no troubles. I got the kitchen Gourmet at Wallgeens. I looked at the "good" kind, but this works fine, I just can't justify a fancy one.

tom

I believe the model I use is Philips Electric Kettle HD4651

(10-cup capacity / 2.4 L)

it is used on a daily basis, for tea of course but also to get water ready for pasta, soup, and what have you

Russell Hobbs 1.5 Liter Copper Kettle - RHCK1

$49.99 at target.com -- not so expensive but I doubt the "last the rest of your lifetime" claim for a product sold at this price and at target!

Tom -- you should check to see if your Kitchen Gourmet hot pot is part of this recall (the bottoms have been coming off):