Electric kettles are a must if you love hot beverages. I would say ours gets turned on about a dozen times a day. Every Brit, Scot and Irish has one in their kitchen because they love tea as much as they love a pint. I don’t know why it hasn’t caught on here (except in hotels).

This dealie heats up water in seconds and frees up your stove’s burners. The best thing? It’s for the forgetful. You turn it on, leave to do some other shit and it turns out automatically after it comes to a roaring boil.

Alton Brown uses his to make hard boiled eggs in. We use it for our coffee (recently switching from drip to French press).

Now you are probably going to say, “Chewy, you are smart, funny, talented and beautiful and I’d hate to argue with you, but aren’t those things going to become obsolete when everyone has a Tasso-type machine?” No! Those on cup pod machine things are amazingly fast, but they won’t make you a proper cup. Water for coffee should be heated to about 190 degrees F and water for green tea should be heated to about 165 degrees F.

$10 from Amazon.com* (as pictured). They have $60+ Braun ones, but that’s a jack. Why pay six times more for something that just heats water? I guess if you are a sucker for designer names and chrome, but you shouldn’t be reading this blog if you are like that, anyway.

*Right now, they have a promotion at Amazon.com where if you buy four selected kitchen gadgets, you get one of them for free. And this electric kettle is in the deal. I’ve already taken advantage of it twice.