Some inventions are as ridiculous as they are useless:

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First, I thought the kettle tipper belongs in the category above, but it seems more useful at a closer look.

In quite a few reviews (for example, the Breville IQ or Sunpentown kettle), I have remarked on the weight of kettles. A filled 1.7l one can weigh up to 8lbs or 3.5kg (like Cuisinart).

You have to admire the creators of this brand for coming up with a name like Comfee. It probably works better with duvets or slippers, but it also gives you the right feeling about a temperature-controlled kettle.

The difference to our previously reviewed devices is that this one comes with a tea brewing infuser (food-grade stainless steel).
You can boil the living daylights out of any decent tea leaves, or use the infuser properly and make excellent tea.

There is something attractive and soothing about glass and water, and the sleek Comfee is no different (see also the review of Tribest or the Oxo glass kettle).
The angular handle makes it look a bit old-fashioned but provides a good grip.
It also contains the controls to set the various temperatures and functions.

There are not many good reasons why you would want to use a variable temperature kettle to boil your morning egg.

One of them might be that you are not talking to your smaller pots anymore because you had a fight with them the previous night (small pots can be slightly petty).

Or, you woke up this morning, and it felt far too bourgeois to use the egg cooker. You wanted to live a little on edge and decided to use a primitive kettle to produce your beloved morning egg.
It made you feel rebellious and alive again.

Another scenario would be to find yourself in the middle of nowhere with just a temperature controlled kettle filled with water, your raw morning egg, a power socket and mismatched socks.
Nothing is better to come to terms with an odd and bizarre situation than enjoying a sliced, peeled or beheaded egg.

The idea of a heated travel mug for the car is obvious.
You are on the move, and you need to heat something or keep it warm.

It could be coffee, tea, hot chocolate, (baby) milk, soup, instant noodles or anything else you want to adjust to the right temperature.
It even cooks an egg – provided you want to wait at least 30 minutes.

The plan was to look at a travel mug for the car with temperature control. Similar to the variable temperature kettles but without the boiling capability.

The idea is that you can heat beverages in your car, so you don’t have to drink cold coffee, tea or baby milk (the baby would drink the milk, not you, unless you like baby milk).

I had selected two products from the same manufacturer:

“Come-ooon damn kettle, boil!”

Talking or shouting impatiently at your innocent water kettle is a common sight in homes and workplaces.

Responsible for the time it takes to boil the water is the power consumption, shown in Watt (W).
It is one of our buying criteria for a temperature controlled kettle (see kettle feature comparison).

A travel kettle should be small, compact but still do the required job of heating water efficiently.
Even better when the kettle allows you to cook noodles, soups, and eggs in it as well.
The ideal candidate also comes with variable temperature settings and is very affordable.

Meet the NutriChef kettle – which combines all of the above features.

The temperature is set with a dial on the front of the kettle. You cannot select the exact temperature, it just says “Min” on one end and “Max” on the other.

We rarely “decrumb” the toaster, clean the inside of the microwave or fridge.

Electric devices should work – after all, you paid good money for them.
What we forget is the fact that cleanliness is not about functionality. It is about hygiene.

It cannot be healthy when the bottom of your toaster develops a flourishing biotope and the inside of your fridge’s vegetable drawer is starting to grow legs.

Hygiene is especially crucial when water is involved. It is the source of life, but you want your kettle to produce clean water and not some primordial soup.

Buying beautiful, high-quality tea leaves and ruining them with the wrong water temperature sounds like a daft idea.

It is like buying the best steak and frying it in a rusty and buckled pan.
Therefore good tea and a variable temperature controlled kettle is a great match and one of the best reasons (if not THE best) to invest in one.

Your brewed tea contains about 98% water and only 2% tea compounds (for more info on how tea infusion works, go to this excellent article.

If you do not get the water part right, you can do very little else to save the tea.