This is a bit of a diversion from the usual food posts, but one that is just as important to those who love their tea / hot water with lemon / boiling water for cooking (delete as appropriate).
If you live in a hard water area, you’ll understand how yucky having a kettle filled with limescale is. If we don’t want it in our dishwashers and washing machines, we definitely don’t want to be drinking it. I’m lucky, as for most of my life I’ve lived in a soft water area where we get little to no limescale buildup, but having stayed in apartments in hard water areas this year and been amazed disgusted by the quick buildup of chalky deposits, I needed a quick and easy way to keep the kettle clean.
What you’ll need to descale a kettle:
A jar of vinegar (any vinegar will do, although white vinegar is probably best – I have used white wine vinegar in some cases and it’s worked just as well, though)
A bottle of filtered or mineral water (NOT tap water)
And that’s it!
Firstly, you’ll need to empty the kettle of any liquid that’s still in there. Try not to be too freaked out by the slimy base 🙁
Then, you’ll need to fill the kettle around one third to one half full of the vinegar. Close the lid and just leave the kettle to sit with the vinegar in it for around an hour.
Empty the kettle and then fill it with the filtered water.
Plug it in and boil it.
Discard the boiled water and voila! Your kettle should look shiny and new!
It really is as simple and quick as that and you don’t need to go out and buy any expensive de-scalers.
I wouldn’t recommend doing this process too often, as you don’t want to damage any of the elements of the kettle with too much acidity. But, as a general rule of thumb, it is best to only boil your kettle with filtered water to cut down on the amount of deposits left .
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