Can You Boil Milk in Electric Kettles?

Electric kettle makes your life convenient with a ready to use warm water. You can not only prepare your favorite tea or coffee easily, but you can make use of warm water for instant soups, preparing bottles for children, or even for boiling eggs. One might feel carried away with this convenient and time-saving method of heating water and think if they could utilize this useful appliance for another purpose like boiling milk.

The idea may seem tempting, but electric kettles are not made for this purpose. In this article we will look at how using the kettle for boiling milk can affect your kettle, what can be the possible dangers, and still if you want to boil milk how can you save your kettle from possible damages.

Are Kettles Designed for Boiling Milk?

The simple and straight answer is no. Electric kettles are not designed for boiling milk. They are specifically made for heating water. These are the reasons why boiling milk is not a good idea in electric kettles.

Milk may spill over instead of evaporating

Both water and milk have very different properties. Unlike water, milk does not evaporate when boiled and it may spill causing a lot of mess. Milk is a complex mixture of water, fats, and protein. The fat and protein separate of water when it is heated forming a layer above water preventing evaporation. This is the reason why milk boils over. This overflow of liquid may cause the short circuit in the electric base of the kettle which may ruin your kettle.

Kettle won’t shut-off burning the milk

 

Kettles are automatically shut-off when the steam reaches the top of the kettle, rushing down a tube expanding a bimetallic plate that expands and trips the switch. As there isn’t much steam coming out of milk due to the layer of fat and protein, so kettle does not shut off and keep boiling the milk which may boil over until the water is evaporated and rest of fat and protein are burnt inside.

Milk leaves residues behind

As milk contain fat and protein, it will stick inside kettle when heated. If your kettle is not designed to easily allow you to scrub every surface, then these sticky traces will be quite difficult to remove. It will stick inside the nook and crannies of your kettle ultimately affecting the functionality of kettle. These deposits of milk on heat sensors can inhibit its functioning.

A Foul Smell

Not only milk will leave traces behind making the cleaning difficult, but the burnt milk inside can also leave a bad smell like burnt cheese in your kettle ruining the taste and flavor of your other drinks.

So normally a kettle is not ideal for boiling the milk due to many reasons above. But still, there are some models of kettles in the market that are safe for boiling milk. You can buy those if you like to warm milk along with water in the kettle a lot.

Boiling Milk in Kettle

Still, if you need to boil milk in a kettle, there are certain ways of doing that.

First, don’t put the lid on. The lid on will create pressure and as we all know milk expands and may boil over. Without a lid, you can turn off the kettle as soon as milk start rising preventing a great mess.

Another method is of indirect heat. Put a small amount of water in a kettle and take the milk in a glass, preferably a steel one, and place it in water inside the kettle. The heating water will warm the milk without burning or leaving any residues behind.

So boiling milk in an electric kettle is not advised unless you are using a kettle that is specifically designed to boil milk. As milk does not evaporate like water, it may boil over causing a short circuit hazard if it gets in the electric base of the kettle. The fat and protein in milk sticks to the base and walls inside the kettle and may burn them.

These burnt residues can be difficult to clean, and also they make you kettle smell like sour milk. You can warm the milk if with an open lid while milk while staying along for preventing a spillover.

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