Selecting And Caring For Stove Top Kettles

Selecting And Caring For Stove Top Kettles
By Ned D'Agostino

My kettle is always on the go - I drink tea all times of the day and night and my choice of stove top kettles sits waiting for me to fill it with fresh water and fire it up again.

Choosing the right stove top kettle is important. A cheap old aluminum kettle will do the job but it simply won't last very long. It depends too whether you are using gas or electric to heat it.

Kettles come in dozens of different materials, from glass to the best stainless steel. Consider if you have hard water as well, a kettle that's coated with lime scale will become less and less efficient and if you have gas and leave a kettle to burn that is coated in lime scale inside, you will probably have to throw it away as you'll never get that burned taste out of your water. If you do have hard water containing a lot of lime, it may be a good idea to look for a kettle that has a removable lid. That way you can check and see what the kettle looks like inside, and at the first signs of lime scale, you can simply remove the lid and treat it with one of the many lime scale remover products you can buy in the supermarket. Simply using a water and white vinegar solution regularly you can clean away any light coating of lime scale in any stove top kettles.

If you have gas, you are going to need a much heavier stove top kettle. Old fashioned cast iron ones look great if you have an old-fashioned country kitchen d�cor. Cast iron retains the heat, along with heavy copper bottomed stove top kettles, so if you use your kettle frequently as I do, you are not constantly wasting power, bringing the cold water back up to boiling, it will have stayed reasonably warm.

Glass and Pyrex glass kettles look great in a modern kitchen, but again, beware of lime scale and keep them clean inside; otherwise, they will quickly go from looking elegant to ugly. Glass kettles make me nervous and I just won't use one, though many people do.

High quality stainless steel is always the choice for durable and easy to clean cookware - most restaurant kitchens use stainless steel for everything, it is easily cleaned and looks smart. Check to see that the handle isn't going to melt or get hot, and if you have a gas stove, make sure your stove top kettle doesn't have a wooden handle or any kind of material that can burn or catch fire! My grandmother bought a wooden handled kettle once; it was hinged so you could remove the lid easily. Trouble is, she turned the gas on too high and the handle caught fire!

You need to keep the outside of your stove top kettle clean - they are prone to getting splashed by anything else that is cooking on the stove.Some stove top kettles are sprayed with attractive colored coatings but as soon as you use some scouring powder to remove stubborn grease splashes, the coating comes off, leaving your stove top kettle looking decidedly ugly.

As a tea drinker, one of the most essential parts of any kettle for me is a whistle. I work from home and get totally immersed in what I do, and if I didn't have a whistle on my kettle I am sure I would have gone through a dozen stove top kettles at least this year!

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