If you’re a cooking enthusiast, you’ve probably heard of solid copper cookware. This type of cookware is highly sought after by professional chefs and home cooks alike for its exceptional heat conductivity, beautiful appearance, and potential health benefits. In this article, we’ll explore the properties of solid copper cookware and why it’s worth investing in.
Exceptional Heat Conductivity
One of the most significant advantages of solid copper cookware is its exceptional heat conductivity. Copper is a highly conductive material that allows heat to distribute evenly throughout the cooking surface. As a result, food cooks more quickly and evenly than with other materials. Copper is 25 times more thermally conductive than stainless steel and almost twice as conductive as aluminum, making it the ideal material for cooking at high temperatures.
Incredible Beauty
Another reason why people invest in solid copper cookware is for its stunning appearance. Copper has a unique warm color and shine that can add a touch of elegance to any kitchen. It’s no wonder that copper cookware is often displayed as decorative pieces in many homes and restaurants.
Potential Health Benefits
Copper is a micronutrient that is essential for human health. It’s involved in the production of red blood cells, the formation of connective tissues, and the maintenance of a healthy immune system. Although copper is toxic in large doses, it’s also beneficial in small amounts. The human body needs only a small amount of copper to function correctly.
Copper cookware may offer additional health benefits when used correctly. As mentioned earlier, copper is a highly conductive material, making it ideal for cooking at high temperatures. When cooking with copper, food can be prepared quickly and efficiently, reducing the amount of time it spends at high temperatures. This could help to preserve the nutrient content of the food being cooked.
However, it’s important to note that prolonged exposure to copper can be dangerous. Acidic foods, such as tomato sauce or citrus fruits, can cause copper to leach into food. To avoid this, it’s essential to use copper cookware only for cooking foods that are low in acidity. If you do cook acidic foods in copper cookware, ensure that the cookware has a non-reactive lining, such as tin or stainless steel, to prevent the copper from leaching into the food.
Copper Cookware for Specific Cooking Techniques
Copper cookware has been traditionally used for specific cooking techniques. For instance, in classical European cooking, a copper bowl is the traditional choice for beating egg whites. The copper ions that are released when beating egg whites react with proteins and make the foam more stable during beating and cooking. Copper’s affinity for sulfur is also one reason why people distill alcohol in copper vessels. Copper bonds with some of the sulfur in the distillate, pulling the sulfur out and making the final product more palatable.
In addition, copper pans are still commonly used for making sweets. If there’s a lot of sugar in your solution, that seems to keep copper from leaching. The French have been making jam in pure copper pots for centuries. People say the key to jam is to cook it really fast before you drive off all of the volatile fruity smells. And because copper is thermally conductive, it’ll get hot really fast, allowing you to cook your jam really fast.
Copper Cookware and Safety
It’s worth noting that copper cookware must be used with caution to avoid the risk of copper poisoning. When copper comes into contact with acidic foods, such as tomatoes or citrus fruits, it can leach into the food and become toxic. The risk of copper toxicity is even more significant when cooking with unlined copper cookware.
So why do people spend outrageous sums of money on solid copper cookware? As we’ve seen, copper has unique physical and chemical properties that make it a great choice for certain cooking tasks. Copper’s high thermal conductivity and even heating make it perfect for candy making and sugar work. Copper’s affinity for sulfur makes it great for beating egg whites and distilling brandy. And copper’s beautiful, shiny appearance makes it a prized addition to any kitchen.
But there are some potential downsides to using solid copper cookware, and it’s important to be aware of these before making an investment. For one thing, copper is a highly reactive metal, which means it can leach into food and potentially cause health problems. As we saw with the Moscow Mule craze, copper mugs can leach dangerous levels of copper into acidic drinks over time. Similarly, cooking acidic foods in unlined copper cookware can lead to copper leaching into the food and potentially causing nausea, vomiting, anemia, liver and kidney diseases, and other health issues.
For this reason, many copper pots and pans are lined on the inside with a nonreactive metal, such as tin or stainless steel. This lining prevents copper from leaching into food while still allowing the benefits of copper’s thermal conductivity and other properties. However, some traditional copper pots, such as jam pans, are still made without a lining, as the high sugar content of the jam prevents copper from leaching into the mixture.
Another potential downside of solid copper cookware is its high cost. Copper is a relatively rare metal, and its unique properties make it expensive to mine and refine. As a result, high-quality solid copper cookware can be very expensive, often costing hundreds or even thousands of dollars per piece. For many home cooks, this expense may not be justified by the relatively small benefits of using solid copper cookware.
Despite these potential downsides, many people continue to be drawn to the beauty and functionality of solid copper cookware. Whether you’re a professional chef or a home cook, copper pots and pans can add a touch of elegance and sophistication to your kitchen, while also helping you to achieve better cooking results. If you’re considering investing in solid copper cookware, it’s important to weigh the benefits and drawbacks carefully and make an informed decision based on your individual needs and preferences.
In conclusion, people spend outrageous sums of money on solid copper cookware for a variety of reasons, including its unique physical and chemical properties, its beautiful appearance, and its association with high-end cooking and culinary traditions. While there are some potential downsides to using solid copper cookware, such as the risk of copper leaching into food and its high cost, many home cooks and professional chefs continue to see the benefits of using copper pots and pans in their cooking. Whether you’re a seasoned chef or a beginner in the kitchen, there’s no denying the allure of solid copper cookware, and its unique properties and benefits are likely to keep it a popular choice for many years to come.
Copper has been the go-to material for making coffee pots ( džezva ) in Bosnia and Herzegovina for the past 500 years. Before modern heating was a thing, people used to place hot coals onto a table of sorts called mangale (also made from copper) and cover them to heat their houses, and as a bonus they could place the pots on the coals to make coffee on them. These pots are always layered with tin on the inside (and sometimes on the outside, for aesthetic reasons) and are imo the best souvenir you can get from Sarajevo’s Old City district, but you need a VERY good eye for copperware because those “craftsmen” sell lots of crap that was probably made in China. I own three copper džezve and they can easily last several lifetimes, you only need to have them re-tinned every 20-30 years or so and it doesn’t cost more than 10 Euros.
I’m a bartender and the number of times I hear the myth repeated by not just customers but other bartenders that using the copper mug keeps your drink colder longer is crazy. It literally does the opposite of that and any high school graduate should be able to figure that out.
I bought a copper bowl for whisking egg whites at a time when I was make dinner soufflés often, partly because I liked the look of it and partly based on general cooking advice. It did a fantastic job and it took me a while to understand why I never had a failure — and why I was puzzled at those who built foil or parchment-paper collars around their soufflé dish when cooking. I never did and never saw the need — but then I was using a copper bowl in which to whisk the whites, so my whisked egg whites were relatively robust and not prone to drooping or breaking down. I loved that copper bowl (and the soufflés).
On the note of leaching copper into acidic food, I wonder how much heat plays a factor in this. Adam explained that the time for a Moscow Mule greatly affected the amount of dangerous ions in the drink, however this is even at very cold temperatures. Many times chemists crank up the heat to speed up acid reactions, so I wonder, would cooking down a tomato sauce (possibly even with vinegar, wine, or vodka) leach dangerous levels of copper?
This was fascinating and also explains a rhyme that I learned Many Moon Ago:
“Copper kettles carrying comforts curing coughs and colds…” This was the beginning of a diction-and-scales warmup from my old high school choir days. Very fun, good practice, but for the longest time I couldn’t figure out why on earth someone would put tea in a copper kettle. In the intervening (cough)too-darn-many(cough) years I’ve learned that “comforts” doesn’t meant medicinal TEA, though. It means the original “cough syrup” – made with medicinal herbs boiled in Sugar And Water! Therefore – a copper kettle WOULD be ideal for preparing such things!
Neat!