The Most Useful Thing In My Kitchen [Product Review]

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I was making tea tonight, (My favorite mug has a frog inside, its so great!) and I just had to take a minute to come write this post. I don’t know how I was even living life, all those years, before I got my Hamilton Beach Glass Electric Kettle. It’s a simple and common case of struggling for absolutely no reason, when an easier solution was easy to find. I hope this posts helps some people!

We were using a kettle on the stove top in our old house, we had a regular metal type one, and it got super old and gross looking, so when we moved we got a red one in our new house. I absolutely LOVE the little pop of red color it gives the kitchen and something about it just gives a romantic homey feel, but regardless, it quickly became the most annoying thing on the planet. To me. I have had a lot of struggles with coffee over the years, I can have espresso in a latte and my body is fine, but making coffee at home always upsets my stomach. So I would only use the kettle for occasional evening tea. My husband, however would use it every morning for coffee. I think for a few years I just ignored it when it would start squealing and then continue to squeal, called out to him to go get it, went into the next room to turn off the burner, or always left the house before my husband even made coffee or was up- when I was working out of town or early mornings at Starbucks.

The first house we lived in was basically a hallway and it was annoying to go from the bedrooms to the kitchen which was at the back of the house, but I was working 4 day shifts at a treatment center in the woods at that point(And getting my coffee and tea there). Our second place, the bedrooms were right adjacent to the kitchen so just stepping in there real quick and cutting off the burner wasn’t as annoying, and I was working early mornings slinging coffees and drinking lattes, so again I was long gone. Now its important to say here, that my husband is slow, ( I like to call him the evil snail- if you know what that is from- you are my people) and when he multitasks, its really only single tasking. So when he got an early morning out of the house job, and we moved to a house with stairs, and he would decide to start the kettle downstairs and then go upstairs to get in the shower- that was it, I was ready to throw the kettle in the yard. Enough with the squeals already. I would have one foot in a pair of pants and the dogs would all get woke up by the squeals and be ready to frolic around and I would have to jog down and turn it off with a trail of animals skipping behind me, looking like when Abner and friends run out of the front of the boarding house on Hey Arnold. There is a lot of tardiness in our home, so he insisted on starting it early because the kettle would take a while- I mean water takes a while to boil right? Anyway enough about our dysfunctional household lets get to the point! One day the clouds lifted……………

So my mom got us the Glass Hamilton Beach Electric Kettle for Christmas and it was the best, most useful gift ever. Hear me out- Even if you don’t have an evil snail roommate, have plenty of time on your hands, have a keurig or other device that puts out a hot cup of water- YOU and EVERYBODY you know, NEEDS THIS. This thing- pulls it’s weight in the kitchen and it is MORE than worth every penny, ($25) and useful in so many scenarios- and durable!

I was super pumped the first time I used it, because a) I didn’t realize it lights up a pretty blue color when the water boils, b) it looks SO PRETTY watching the water boil with the light but also because its clear and c) IT WAS SO FAST.

I’m assuming everyone boils water often in their home for cooking, beverage making, and more. I seem to be constantly boiling water. I boil water at least twice a day it seems and some days more. These are just my guesses, but I think depending on your stove and vessel of choice, it takes around 10-15 minutes to boil a liter of water either in a pot or kettle, I am thinking a kettle or pot with a lid might be slightly faster. If you use a microwave you can boil water faster than that but I hate microwaves and try to avoid them at all costs, so ew. (Also what do you even put the water in to boil in a microwave? GlasS? I feel like me taking a scalding glass filled with boiling water out of a high up microwave would just end up with a face burn incident) I would store cookbooks or dishes in mine if my husband wasn’t obsessed with keeping his coffee the perfect amount of strongness and scaldingness. (Seriously though I prefer kids temp and how do these people not scald every organ they have? Also wouldn’t it be so nice to take it out and add a cute shelf though?)

BUT with this electric kettle, you can boil a liter of water in 4 minutes- and if you are boiling a smaller amount its even faster. 😍 WHAT A LIFE SAVER! Literally, less time of my life wasted. I mean, I am always doing 997 things at the same time in the kitchen, and our house has a very small open floor plan downstairs so I can be working in yard, kitchen, laundry etc all at the same time. But the longer I wait on water to boil the more likely I will forget about it, become hangry, or become exhausted from doing so many other things and the cooking hasn’t even begun! Here are some examples of how this lil sou chef handles business at my house:

Some reasons I use it to boil water regularly:

Rice

Beans

Pasta

Boiling water for soups and sauces!

Boiling Eggs(If you don’t keep boiled eggs on hand you seriously need to start- its the perfect snack and great for travel or lunches and GREAT for when you need SOMETHING but there is nothing around or nothing healthy. I get hunger pangs randomly that make me feel sick if I don’t eat something, and we never have snacks here, PLUS when I upped my protein lately I finally started to drop some pounds which is nice ***LAST THING put some baking soda in the water and your shells will come off much easier!

Boiling water faster for canning or melting wax for candles

Quick Hot Chocolate! or any other powdered drink mixes you might have, instant coffee, chai, whatever!

Quick oatmeal, grits, cream of wheat- like the fastest WARM breakfast ever!

If you eat ramen or cup of noodles or powdered soup mixes etc- same (when you are ready to level up start making your own with RICE RAMEN you will not REGRET IT! my favorite is with chicken,turkey or beef broth(or the bone broth and better than bouillon I mention below, frozen peas, maybe a lil sesame oil and swirl in some eggs. 🙂

I love to use “better than bouillon” in my cooking sometimes and i just add the boiled water from the kettle with the bouillon in a glass pyrex measuring cup to dissolve it quickly with a little whisking, and keep on with the cooking process.

Homemade bone broth-(If you have never done this- you need to start. Every time I get a rotisserie chicken from Earth Fare, Harris Teeter or Costco(Get as unseasoned as possible if you have pets you want to share with) I take all the chicken off that I want to use in my cooking or meal prep, then I put any chicken parts that gross me out to the side and I cut them up small and add to the dogs and cats food bowl,( I know peoples dogs eat huge chunks but Nugget choked on a small chunk of Japanese chicken when I first got him, and I have been on an anti-choke campaign ever since! As I am doing all of this I am very careful to make sure I get every single bone even the small ones so the animals don’t end up eating them, as I am dismantling the chicken, I put all of the bones in the crock pot. Then I boil water in the kettle, then add it to the crockpot.(IF you dont have one you need one!! ours is hamilton beach as well and Jake has had it since before we met, we have known each other ten years) I usually leave it over night on low or keep warm and then take a couple quarts of broth for the fridge and freezer, but honestly I have made broth for the pets for weeks on end from the same chicken bones. Or other bones if you get bones from anywhere else. (Like you can throw a turkey neck in there at thanksgiving, or save bones in a freezer bag and do it all at once) ANYWAY to wrap up my bone broth sermon- this stuff is SO GOOD. I have meat issues so I don’t eat a lot of meat but I do love to drink or eat bone broth, sometimes with rice. You can use this broth for pets, soup, cooking rice, making sauces, possibilities are endless)

Quickly and easily make hot drinks when you are sick(because when i am sick i cant stand downstairs and wait for water to boil, I would literally lay on the floor with a dog licking my hair and a cat slapping me, or give up and crawl back up the stairs to bed. PLUS when i am out of it and unwell I am most likely to leave a burner on or do something careless and dangerous) But ALL the hot home remedies- 4mins or less, which really feels like one minute because the water boils while u prep everything else. Hot salt water- for gargling- throat coat tea, honey water, lemon water, broth, theraflu packet, whatever it is you use, this can help. I usually just take it upstairs boiling and let it cool down, or if i have filtered water in the berkey or fridge i add some cold or room temp water to cool it down a bit if i need to drink it soon.

Sometimes when I mop I boil water in the kettle then add it in a jar to some murphys oil or murphys soap or whatever cleaning concoction I am currently using, and then pour out little puddles around the downstairs and mop with it- the hot water helps dissolve the oil so there is no oily residue, and with dogs who insist on taking food out of the bowl to eat it and my messy cooking, i need all the hot sanitizing action i can get( I literally have to mop daily)

Also every once in a while if I want to soak something gross in hot water(which is rare because I don’t usually use hot water in laundry because money, energy, and it sets stains) I will dissolve some oxyclean powder in a bucket of hot water and put the items in, or put them in when it cools down just using the hot water to dissolve the powder.

THIS IS A GOOD ONE SO LISTEN UP! This is probably the best one. You know how annoying it is when you cook something and then you have this disaster of a pan or pot left to clean? And dishwashers don’t work hard enough for that so its on you right? DONT STRESS! I used to add water to the pots or pans with some dish soap and turn the burners back on and then when it would boil I would put the lids on, turn the burners back off, and leave it for the night, wash it in the morning or whenever I have time the next day. EVEN that was a hassle- so here is the easier way with the Hamilton Beach Kettle – When you get done cooking, just put some water in the kettle and you push this little lever at the bottom to get it to start heating up. You finish food prep or dishes or whatever for 2 or 3 minutes depending on how much water you want/need. Add a little dish soap to the pots and pans. The kettle will light up and the water will be boiling quickly, just grab the kettle (its cordless and the handle never gets hot) pour as much water as you want into the pots and pans, put the kettle back, put the lids on and worry about it the next day. 99 percent of the time its an easy scrub situation the next day. You really shouldn’t be scraping your pots and pans that have coatings- that stuff is toxic and worse when damaged- somebody over here loves to put steel wool on everything so I threw our pots out and only kept the stainless steel and we got some ceramic coated pans last Christmas. (Also red I love them!) My point being- I can’t stand to see anything scratched up, and I also can’t stand to scrub for ten minutes, so why make it harder than it has to be? Also though- I bought this little scraper guy at an amish market, and it was also a total game changer for me! Who new a little piece of plastic could change lives?

AND OF COURSE- Tea and Coffee- I love tea and coffee gadgets and contraptions, that could be a whole nother post- but I think the most efficient ways to make coffee or tea is to use a french press(You can use these for tea too if you didnt know) or a pour over. My dad had a plastic one for a lot of my life, Actually I think they still have it and use it, but we have a nice ceramic one I got at Starbucks with my employee discount and that thing is perfection.!(There are non starbucks, more affordable ones just like it on amazon I am linking here) ANYWAY you just boil water in the kettle and then put it in the press or the pourover or your tea cup. Then pour it in your mug or togo cup and go about your morning. ☕

So I hope this hasn’t gone on too long and taken up your time, I could go on for a few more hours but I won’t (You can clean a lot of things with just boiling water,(sometimes I just rinse our dog waterers or dog and cat water bowls with boiling water when I want to quickly refill and dont have time for the whole wash dry routine) anytime you are cooking anything at all and need boiling water- this kettle will shave off so much time for you-and I even use it for weed killing- okay I will stop there) Let me summarize a few points:

its super fast.

the handle never gets hot.

its cordless, the base has a cord that wraps around it so you can keep it out of the way. Ours is on a counter where Jake makes his coffee, its like the coffee and tea prep area, and its right near our berkey water filter whos spout is over our sink(also recommend!

( ” POWERFUL PURIFICATION- Berkey systems equipped with Black Berkey Purification Elements purify water—not just filter it—by removing greater than 99.999% of viruses and greater than 99.9999% of pathogenic bacteria, while also removing or dramatically reducing protozoa (such as giardia and cryptosporidium), trihalomethanes, inorganic minerals, heavy metals (including arsenic, lead, mercury, chromium), pharmaceutical drugs (including caffeine, Acetaminophen, Ibuprofen, Progesterone, Triclosan)” TAP WATER GIVES ME THE CREEPS SO I had to put my spiel here, )

so we just get water from the berkey filter to boil in the kettle.

ALSO LIKE, I get that its GLASS, but I am somehow extremely coordinated and extremely clumsy all at once. It’s bizarre. But This thing has never come close to breaking and I am honestly surprised. We have granite counter tops and I just figured at some point I would break it but it’s been a couple years now with no issues at all. One time I thought it stopped working, but like about 8 other times, it was the breakers in our home and not the kettle.

So I wouldn’t even hesitate to travel with this thing. As amazing as it is, and as USEFUL as it is, if it got broke somehow I would definitely buy it again. Totally thinking of dorms and hotels right now. I have been in both dorms and hotels where the coffee maker was NOT sanitary and or moldy. Plus, if you want to make ramen noodles or tea or something you don’t always want to use the water from a coffee maker, especially one that’s shared or not yours or a lil suspect. With this kettle you could sanitize lots of things on the go (have you ever dropped your toothbrush on a hotel floor?????) and if the water where you are is a lil weird you could at least boil it. I know most dorm and hotel tap water has been funky tasting where I have been.

And if I am being totally honest, I have rarely cleaned the thing. I have put in some vinegar or cheap vodka for a quick sanitize but not that often and the water has never had a weird taste. Super efficient and low maintenance. It always LOOKS perfectly clean too. I feel it would look good in every kitchen.

QUIET- we already went over the loud squealing debacle- all you will hear is quiet bubbling, you will see the blue light and the little thing you push down to boil pops back up and you hear that.

Which brings me to my final point SAFETY! unlike a stovetop kettle it shuts off AUTOMATICALLY when it is done boiling and I think it also shuts off if you for some reason tried to dry boil, I feel like I read that somewhere. I dont want to use any burners in the morning when I am leaving the house. I have 4 animals that live in the house and cant have them trapped in a dangerous situation because of my carelessness. They also all have special needs and anxieties so I need a lot of efficiency in my life- no hassles, no chaos no stress. or at least less. 🙂

A note- they have a 1 liter and a 1.5, we have the one liter and this one I am linking has a little mesh piece where you pour the water. For some reason ours doesnt have that but we have had ours for a few years so unless i havent noticed it its probably an upgrade. I also for some reason kept spilling the water when we first got it, so I always fully open the lid when pouring. Its just easier somehow so I am in the habit of using it that way and I never spill it like that.

Im not a big plastic person, the water in this is really only touching the stainless steel base and the glass- I have drank out of plastic kettles before and I felt like you could taste it. I have never had any weird tastes with this kettle.

I’m honestly completely shocked that there are any negative reviews because i havent had a single complaint and its been years. I think it saves me time, frustration, money, electricity and reduces my carbon footprint. I went on forever but If I can help somebody have a better, easier, more functioning and efficient life, I want to. -so we can all enjoy the little things like eating a good meal or having that perfect cup of tea, and get back to focusing on the important things in life like family, health, our life purposes and goals, our spiritual life. Life can be exhausting and downright brutal. This kettle is beautifully and efficiently designed and easily the most useful thing in my kitchen. Makes a great gift! (clearly!) Thanks so much for reading and I hope you have a beautiful and blessed weekend.

💙, S

PS- how old and nerdy am I that this video of water boiling in the kettle is just SO SATISFYINGGG??!

PPS- if you haven’t tried PRIME YET you really should- especially if you are going to be doing holiday shopping or want to make less trips out of the house and receive things quickly.