Microwaving tea - is it weird?
Obviously i get delight in seeing all the memes about Brits being exaggeratedly disgusted at Americans using microwaves to boil water.
And i thought, maybe, people wanna know why. The Brits who have the instinct, and the Americans who feel #attacked I’ve lived in both countries and yall need to know there’s complex subcultures around teamaking that is different enough in each country to make it so it’s both weird and not simultaneously.
Reasons why Brits think microwaving water for tea/tea is weird:
1. They have had kettles their entire lives. Okay, this water jug on a boiling plate perfectly designed for heating water to a specific temperature has been in their lives forever. You try and make them even think of not having that simple ability, they get uncomfortable. Imagine 20+ years all you’ve had to do is flip a switch to get cooked pasta, and now you actually have to put it in a pan? You’d be horrified that these people don’t have the invention, too.
2. Brits make a lot of tea. No, really. Americans probably haven’t had kettles and don’t mind the inconvenience of waiting for a microwave or using the hob/stovetop because they make, like, a cup a day or something. Brits make a lot of tea. And A kettle will keep your water the right temperature for, like, 30 minutes - so you can make 4 cups with less than a minute’s effort.
3. How Brits make tea is a thing of controversy: they debate between them whether the milk goes in before water or not (it goes in last, you animals). But they all know that the water does not go in first. By using a microwave to heat water, you’re dismantling how Brits make tea: you’d either have to fill a cup with water and then heat it, and then make tea with it OR make a cold cup of tea, then heat it, which does not make a good cup of tea. You’re breaking them. They may not be aware that this is a reason why it makes them uncomfortable, but it damn well is. That’s not how you make tea.
4. A microwave in the UK will give you lukewarm water. So that disgusts them, too, because a Brit can’t make tea without water at exactly 100 celsius (coffee and hot chocoalte are fine cooler)
5. possibly some tea ownership claiming that America will be wrong no matter what
Reasons why Americans MUST DEFEND their choice to microwave tea/water for tea
1. They didn’t have kettles growing up. Simple, they’re not familiar with it, so it’s a little weird to them. BUT THEY HAVE COFFEE MACHINES and think Brits are weird for using kettles to make coffee, so they know the feeling. (Brits don’t commonly have coffee machines)
2. They don’t drink (hot) tea a lot, and it’s culturally something that is seen as a sophisticated thing, so putting in a bit more time for that one cup they’ve had all month is, like, a good thing
3. An electric kettle, a British one, would probably blow up the fuses because America has weak-ass mains electricity. So it’d need to have less power, which might not work. So maybe they can’t have kettles; they probably don’t know this one, no, but perhaps they’re subconsciously annoyed at a CONVENIENT invention for FOOD not being accessible to them. Seems american
4. Magic microwaves that are typically at a different wattage and smaller, to allow for contents to be heated without the container/plate burning the poor person microwaving
5. They want to piss off the Brits about tea.
