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Electric Kettle
I love my electric kettle. Sure, lots of people have these but I always figured "whatever, I have a pan" and never bothered. Wrong! It is an incredibly versatile piece of kitchen gear and worth every inch of countertop it takes up.
Of course mostly I use it to make coffee or tea, but it's really great for other things and I keep finding additional uses for a quart of boiling water in a hurry. For instance, I just made rice to go with the homemade chili I cooked (more on that later). I'm terrible at making rice on the stovetop and I know I'm not alone in this. I've had rice Stuart cooked in an oven that came out well, essentially because the heat in an oven is very even. Stovetops are just too uneven to do it right so rice always seems burned on the bottom or dried out. However, if you have a the exact quantity of boiling water to cook your rice, and the rice, salt, pepper, garlic and bay leaves (i.e., what I put in rice, put whatever you prefer) are in the bottom of a shallow pan with a tightly fitting lid, well, it's ready to go, just pour the boiling water on top, put the burner on very low, lid up and go.
Last weekend, I had a guest over and we had pasta. I used the kettle to boil the water... no sitting there for a long time waiting for a pot of water to heat up and listening to it make bizarre creaky sounds, just two quick trips to 212 degrees and you're ready to go with 2 quarts of boiling water. Just let it heat up a little more to accommodate any salt you put in the water.
Whenever I make soup I'll add hot water rather than cold to the pot. This helps prevent everything from getting overcooked or cooked unevenly (it's definitely possible to burn soup, especially if your stockpot ain't so great!).
Other things I do (so far):
-Heat up other clear liquids that don't mind a quick trip to boiling temperatures and won't destroy the inside of the pot, such as juice or stock.
-Boiling water + OxiClean to clean my kitchen sink, utensils that get icky (e.g., can opener) or even the floor. The boiling water really speeds up the rate of reaction of the OxiClean and in the case of the floor the liquid evaporates very fast. Again, I've done this for years but the water boiler makes it so much easier to manage. Given that the kitchen sink is one of the dirtiest places in the house (dirtier than other large water fixtures!), that's a useful thing to do regularly.
Any other suggestions?
I've never tried to clean my floor with boiling water + OxyClean, thanks for the idea.
I drink a lot of tea, so my kettle is predominantly used for that; but you can use it anytime you need hot water in a hurry (pasta, potatoes, rice, soup, you name it). I've seen folk cook raman noodles in the kettle; (boil the water, turn it off, dump in the raman) but it makes a real mess and is hard to clean (stuck pasta = not good).
If you're going to use it to heat up other things, remember to clean it regularly.
To clean off water-scale, I just fill it 1/2 way with white vinegar and 1/2 with water and let it sit overnight. The scale/discoloration is completely gone in the morning.
You may need to rinse afterwards but plain boiling water is great for that. Peroxide bleach like Clorox II would probably not leave a residue, but I haven't tried that. It's fantastic for cleaning sinks, utensils, etc., as the OxiClean dissolves all of the leftover glop that accumulates. Can openers are notorious for this problem and are one of the most common sources of cross-contamination.
All chemical reactions are sped up by heat so as long as you're not damaging yourself or whatever you're cleaning or spoiling the cleaning medium, heat will help things along.
Does it have temperature settings other than "boil" or no?
I've been really wanting one of these.
No, mine does not, although I personally like that fact as it's just got an idiot switch on it and no additional controls. If I want hot but not boiling water, it's not hard to get that, either by allowing the water to boil and cool a bit, or stop at three quarter's boil. You won't get sous vide level control out of it but how often do you need that anyway?
But it's still totally worth it. I got mine for $30 (on sale) and it's worth every penny.