this post was submitted on 10 Dec 2024
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xkcd

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No, of course we don't microwave the mug WITH the teabag in it. We microwave the teabag separately.

https://explainxkcd.com/3022/

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 day ago (3 children)

I’m an American who drinks tea. I’d love to hear from our distant countrymen on how accurate this is.

[–] Darkard 25 points 1 day ago (3 children)

100% spot on. Microwaved tea is comparable I would say to microwaving a steak

[–] Mango 2 points 9 hours ago

Aww fuck. Now that you put it that way, I get it.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 day ago

The state of education is extremely depressing holy shit.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 day ago (1 children)

It’s foul. Cup of Tannin, more like.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 day ago (3 children)

... wait, there are some americans who put the tea BAG in the microwave with the water?!?

I've MADE tea using a microwave before and it was ALWAYS "heating the water in the microwave, then adding the teabag to the hot water", it never even crossed my MIND to have the tea bag inside the microwave, and frankly that sounds AWFUL.

[–] maxwellfire 1 points 1 day ago

I often do this. With loose leaf tea too. The quality of the result highly depends on the tea and whether you get the timing right. I know my microwave pretty well and can hit boiling or just before boiling by changing the time for a black vs a green tea.

When boiled appropriately, I can't really tell the difference for most bagged teas, so maybe I'm just tea uncultured?

The earl grey loose leaf I have I actually like better when it's kept boiling for longer (about 15 seconds of boiling), and the microwave allows me to easily do this.

The loose green tea I have changes its flavor a lot when heated for different amounts and to different temperatures. The microwave also let's me easily control this in a way that I would struggle to with a kettle. I suppose I could add the tea afterwards and just get the water a bit hotter to compensate, but I'm lazy and I always forget about my tea in the microwave so it's easier if it already has the leaves in it so I don't have to re-steep

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Maybe, who knows? Reheating tea though is absolutely foul. Worse than reheating coffee, somehow, and reheating coffee is pretty bad.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Why would you reheat tea in the first place? Just pour more boiling water in it.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 day ago

Preaching meet choir.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Close enough to zero to be a rounding error, I'd bet.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago

I'm often on here telling stories if how evil my mother was, and now I know I can skip all the tedious rehashing of her many evil acts and just tell people she made tea by putting the tea bag in a mug of water and microwaving the whole thing.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 day ago (3 children)

For a start, you don't make tea in a kettle, you boil the water in that, then either pour into a mug or a teapot

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 day ago

I refuse to believe that Randall doesn't know how tea is actually made, so it has to be a meta-joke / troll.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 day ago

That’s how I do it. Electric kettle. Glass.

[–] Passerby6497 1 points 1 day ago

Jokes on you, my kettle comes with a built in steeper, so I make my tea in the kettle!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Not British, but in my experience... accurate.

I mean, I'm also not British and am roughly aligned with this spectrum myself.

Look, if you can tolerate the absolute nonsense you hear from Americans about how to make coffee you can deal with me having a spice rack specifically to make tea.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

What nonsense do you hear about making coffee?

Everyone has their own way, but there's no wrong way.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I make coffee by drinking hot water, then chewing whole coffee beans and swallowing them. I then wash it down with milk.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Eh, chocolate-covered coffee beans aren't bad, if they're reasonably fresh. That's not too different.

Really the only way you can do coffee wrong is if you boil it.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 day ago

I got a free bag of those from the shop where I buy my coffee once. They're really nice. I absentmindedly worked my way through the bag that afternoon, wondered why I was feeling so ill, and then realised I had consumed about two pots of coffee in pure bean form