Warning – this is a post about a kettle.
When a normal kettle is a only a couple of quid, the expense of a Kelly Kettle seems hard to justify until you take the cost of fuel into account. Boiling water daily in a normal kettle will use up loads of gas, and considering we might not be able to get refills in some countries, this could be a bit of an issue.
The Kelly Kettle uses naturally occurring solid fuels, so after the initial investment, you never have to pay for fuel again. It takes about 7 minutes to boil a full kettle (about 1.5 litres) and you don’t need much wood for this. At night it’s easy to get carried away and use all the sticks you can find because flames shoot up the chimney and it looks like a jet engine. We got the stainless steel version, and unless I do something stupid like reverse over it, we’ll probably have it forever. We bought the cooking set as well, but unfortunately this is quite flimsy and had I known this when we got the kettle I wouldn’t have bothered with the pots.
The chimney part will get covered in soot and is a bugger to clean, but keeping it black will help it absorb the heat better making it more efficient (or at least that’s what I’ve told Jules because dishes are generally my job).