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Comment by Crito | Hacker News Reader

I suspect it is somewhere around 80%.

It seems inconceivable to me that a US house might not have a microwave (even unfurnished apartments I rented from slumlords in college came with microwaves), but apparently many do not: http://www.eia.gov/emeu/recs/appliances/appliances.html

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No. Microwaves are a general cooking thing, and relatively new. Not considered necessary. Tea, in the UK, is so ingrained in the culture, and has been around so long, that kettles are almost like cutlery. I can't imagine a house or business in the UK without one. Hell, you even find kettles in vans out on site. Where there is a Brit, with in about 20m, you'll find a kettle, and a tea bag.

The only exception to that could well be from recent immigrants. They may not be in to tea in the same way, and may not be so wedded to the kettle. Even then, one British thing immigrants quickly pick up, possibly to help integrate, its drinking tea.

In short, dont mess with the British and our tea.

Oh, BTW.

Im British, I can't stand tea. Nasty foul bitter bile. Who the hell likes this stuff? Surely only sadists actually like tea? I like coffee.....

New or not, I literally cannot picture a home without a microwave. My best guess is that most are the homes of immigrants.

Interestingly I live in the UK and have neither a microwave nor an electric kettle. Incidentally, I am technically an immigrant (from the US), though not with the connotations of what I assume you were envisioning.

I don't have a microwave. The only use I'd have for one is heating the occasional ready meal for my child, or heating milk for drinks. These are rare so I haven't bothered buying one. I have a fridge but it's not plugged in.

Nasty foul bitter bile.

Mnay teas are not at all bitter. Did you only try the cheap tea? PG Tips, Tetley, Typhoo, that sort of thing? The cheap stuff is horrible.

British tanks since the Centurion[1] all contain kettles or boiling vessels for tea. Don't mess with their tea, even in the heat of battle!

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centurion_tank

that's amazing. and for anyone who is curious about what they actually look like: http://www.militarysystems-tech.com/military-gallery/electro...

"I own a house without a microwave, ask me anything”?

Seriously, though: never saw the point. I do all my cooking from scratch, and heat up leftovers on the stove. Once every few months I find myself doing something where it would be more convenient to have a microwave, but it’s no more often than I find myself wishing I had a sous-vide cooker or a bread machine or electric kettle or any number of other kitchen gadgets. We have a smallish kitchen, and I’d rather have more counter space to work on when I’m cooking.

Thanks for mentioning Sous Vide. I found it interesting that a precisely temp controlled waterbath product only costs a little more than the crude kettles mentioned in the article, and the internet is full of folks who put great effort into creating homemade $40 sous vide rigs.

Also despite what the article claims, water doesn't boil at one temperature, if you program a PID or whatever to keep on firing until the water hits 100C you'll be in for a bit of a surprise in Denver or some mountain towns which are much higher than Denver. I know Big Sky MT is about 9000 ft ASL, water boils at 190F or so.

Heating up a stove takes considerably more energy than using a microwave.

On my microwave, it takes about 96,000 joules (800W x 2') to heat up a plate with leftovers, while doing it on my oven it takes around 432,000J (1800W * 4').

Speaking as someone with a commercial-grade sous-vide bath and variable-temperature PID-controlled pouring kettle sitting on his worktop, a microwave is also a useful gadget even for high-end cookery.

It's one of the best ways to cook many green vegetables, for example, and also makes remarkably good poached eggs:

http://www.bonappetit.com/test-kitchen/inside-our-kitchen/ar...

It’s not that I don’t think they’re useful; rather that the marginal utility (for us) of having one isn’t worth the kitchen space that it would cost us. Once every few months I wish we had one, but once every few months I wish I had lots of things. I try not to make a habit of rushing out to buy them.

I guess I'd ask how you got a house without a microwave. I've never lived without a microwave, but I have never purchased a microwave either.

An oven, a microwave, and a fridge are the three appliances I have been able to count on always being present when I move in somewhere. Typically the microwave is build into the cabinetry.

Apparently the previous owner didn’t feel the need to have one either. Note that we are discussing a house that was rebuilt from a barn in 1938 (no one really knows how old the barn was at the time). There are no kitchen cabinets into which a microwave might be built, just open shelves, which I find quite satisfactory.

When I redo the kitchen, I’ll add a range hood, but the next owner will also be buying a house without a microwave.

I think it's a regional thing. Every house I have owned came with the washer, dryer, fridge and stove. Even after I substantially upgraded the stoves in my first two houses, I left them there when I moved. Those houses were built in the 1950's and 1980's. Only my current house, built in the early 2000's came with a microwave.

OTOH, I'm told it's common in other parts of the country (I'm in the upper Midwest) to take major appliances when you move.

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