You’ve made the batter your grandmother perfected 70 years ago. Your cast iron griddle, a veteran of thousands of flapjacks has been perfectly seasoned since you inherited it from her, and is sitting, gently heated, waiting patiently… to waste your first flapjack.

There is an elegant logic to the first flapjack flop phenomenon, owing perhaps more to the ancient diety Vulcan than to today’s more widely revered pancake gods.

Before mingling myth and maple syrup, permit me to kindle this thesis with a bit of griddle physics.

Law and Order

All metals have a thermal efficiency (aka conductivity), which is the rate at which they pass energy, expressed as watts per meter (squared) per second, Kelvin (Fourier’s Law). Energy can diffuse throughout a metal while exciting (“working”) it, but will only complete its transmission upon transferring (“sinking”) into some material of lower temperature and higher potential for state change. The rate at which this transfer happens depends on the steepness of the decreasing temperature gradient (Second Law of Thermodynamics)

As an analogous example using Ohm’s Law, which applies to electricity, an incandescent light bulb passes 110v from copper (highly conductive, low resistance) into a highly resistant tungsten filament (the glowing bit) prompting a state change (accelerated particle vibration, which couples electrical and magnetic fields to throw off photons, i.e., the glow).

You now know 89% more than 99% of griddlenauts. On to where the carbs hit the pan — specifically frying something starchy like a pancake.

Enter, the Carbs

The energy going into a cast iron griddle works its way slowly through the metal (iron is a relatively low-efficiency transmitter at about 26–31W/㎡K, versus, say, copper at 401W/㎡K, so we think of iron as banking energy), transferring into a smear of oil, which equalizes with the metal almost immediately, before receiving its first glob of carbs (batter).

Upon contact, the carbs sink energy to complete to thermal circuit, transferring the banked energy built up in the iron. The heat is now flowing into the lower temperature batter — rather than building in the metal.

When this happens the surface of the iron assumes its operating temperature, whereas prior to being dosed with batter the surface crystalline structure of the iron is simply increasing its vibration with the addition of energy which is pouring into the metal faster than it transfers to the air surrounding the metal. The air, like the oil, is close to metal’s temperature and so is not much of a sink (unless it’s moving, which is why blowing on hot things cools them).

With the “heat column” in place, the iron is “operating” whereas prior to being dosed with batter the energy contained within it is considered “latent”. Eliminating latency is what keeps the pan itself from becoming the part of the energy chain that undergoes a state change; any metal (and most silicates) heated long and hot enough will begin to glow and ultimately melt.

To Caramelize, or Not to Caramelize

Pancake batter is made up of two principle ingredients that cause the browning so agreeable to our palates — carbohydrates and amino acids/proteins. At a pre-operational surface temperature, the first dose of batter hits a surface that is likely hovering somewhere around 300–500℉. This causes a low level (i.e., too cool to advance to browning) Maillard reaction to occur amongst egg and milk proteins and various aminos in the batter, encrusting the boundary layer of the pancake, preventing starchy ingredients from contacting the metal. The heat transfer inward from the proteinaceous boundary layer proceeds to “cake” (i.e., enchain proteins, especially gluten) the batter contained within the interior.

In a complex mix of egg, milk and wheat proteins, the Maillard reaction begins around 300–325℉. With a layer of congealed proteins encasing the pancake, starches or sugars fail to reach the cooking interface to caramelize, which is a different browning process happening at a much lower temperature (about 150–160℉ in the case of white flour and processed sugars, a little higher for unprocessed starches).

The temperature at which a state change begins to occur generally anchors the cooking surface operational range. If the pancake is browning at 160℉, the pan surface operates at this temperature as long as it’s in contact with the batter (conservation of energy).

The first sacrificial pancake steps the system energy down from 500℉ to about 300℉, mostly eliminating the potential for protein coagulation and allowing (tasty) caramelization of of starches.

The onset of this state change further lowers system interface energy to something in the range of the caramelization reaction (under 200℉ in most cases).

By eliminating latency and achieving an operational temperature much more conducive to the caramelization of starches, that’s precisely what ends up being your batter’s boundary layer. The next glob of batter will make contact with a surface that is not so hot that it coagulates surface proteins and aminos before converting starches and sugars, allowing the latter to change state first, ahead of the protein matrix.

Of course, carbohydrates proceed very quickly from caramelized to burned; without proteins in the mix, pure flour or sugar would hit that same 500℉ “pre-heated” pan and undergo pyrolysis (breaking all the hydrates out to leave pure carbon) very quickly. Protein and aminos, undergoing Maillard reactions at higher temperature sink some of the energy further into the system, relieving state-change pressure on the starches at the interface, allowing balanced, deep browning, and passing energy into the interior to facilitate caking. Of course, pyrolysis will occur if caramelization goes on too long; the metal’s interface temperature rises in lockstep with what it’s sinking energy into, and pyrolysis is a legitimate state change.

Vulcan is always most pleased to have something to which he might apply his hammer, that is, something into which to pass his energy. An aspect of Vulcan myth associates the god with a principle of fertility — penetration by Vulcan’s energy causes things to grow. Understanding our nourishment in a poetical dimension adds, I think, to the pleasures of both the making and the consuming, and I suspect that Vulcan himself would not resist having the title Pancake God added to his portfolio.

Flapjack Flop, the Finer Points was originally published in The Genuine Article on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

When it comes to cookware, no.

A curious meme has popped up on the interwebs regarding seasoning of non-stick pans, possibly because cast iron seasoning is on more peoples’ radars these days, but just as possibly because cookware that suggests it’s seasonable gets associated with cookware that is definitely seasonable, which ups the cachet of the former by imputing qualities of old-fashioned characteristic robustness of the latter.

PTFE and other non-stick surfaces, including most if not all “ceramic” or embedded silicate and colloidal types, are polymer based, meaning their bases are chained-up monomers, normally derived of hydrocarbons and mechanically bonded to the coarse, irregular metal surface of a pan. These polymers penetrate and form up inside the microscopic irregularities of the pan’s surface first, establishing the plastic-to-metal bond, and subsequent polymer layers are bonded over this to effect a uniform, flat, smooth working top coat. Polymers and metals are capable of forming neither chemical nor alloy bonds, rather, their bonds are entangled.

Pan seasoning with a cooking oil proceeds on the same basic principle, substituting (preferably) a seed oil (such as flax) for a hydrocarbon. Slow heating of a thin layer polymerizes the oil within the superficial micro structure of the pan, which, built up, results in first and foremost a protective layer for an iron or steel pan, and, with time and careful detergent-free cleaning, a solid, renewable non-stick working surface.

Two things are commonly observed about naked SS — first, it’s sticky, and second, it does not season.

Apart from protecting pans that are readily subject to oxidative corrosion, such pans have the requisite surface structure to accommodate lipid polymerization. Stainless steel and aluminum do not. The crystalline structure of SS is very finely granular (owing to its multi-metallic alloyed composition, a key factor in the material’s poor thermal efficiency) and resists soft polymer chain growth on its surface. This also accounts for two things commonly observed about naked SS — first, it’s sticky, and second, it does not season. SS does, however, accept pre-polymerized coatings applied under high heat and pressure, meaning it can be lined with PTFE or other pre-polymerized linings, which will mechanically bond with its surface.

Aluminum has a very regular and large crystalline structure (which accounts for its relatively high thermal efficiency) and offers little porosity in which a polymer could actively bond. Bare aluminum is, however, a very sticky cooking surface owing to a bunch of loose but complex chemical bonding potentials. For this reason it’s horrible to cook on directly, and is therefore popularly lined with non-stick polymer sheet. Like SS, under sufficient heat and pressure aluminum will anchor pre-polymerized material.

Both carbon steel and cast iron (gray and ductile) are highly porous with a relatively inefficient but open crystalline structure, and both accommodate active polymer formation and “interdigitation” (entanglement) easily and securely. These are realistically the only candidates for seasoning, both having the requisite surface micro-structure.

Carbon steel and cast iron are realistically the only candidates for seasoning, both having the requisite surface micro-structure.

PTFE and other non-stick surfaces are, obviously, very smooth. All polymers resist bonding to other polymers and chained substances, such as starches, sugars and other foods that are forming into complexes from simpler states while being cooked. This is the practical meaning of non-stick.

A non-stick pan has neither the surface characteristics nor the chemistry to accept seasoning when it’s new — this is why oils bead on non-stick surfaces. However, as such surfaces (quickly) age, they become dry and embrittled at the surface as much of what maintains the polymer bonds breaks down and outgasses with use. In the case of PTFE the byproduct of breakdown is PFOA, a documented carcinogen and ground water contaminant (be wary of manufacturer’s language in this regard: Non-stick surfaces are often touted as “made without PFOA”, which is true; PTFE is indeed made without PFOA. With the application of temperatures above 400℉ (gas range flame is ~3200℉ at the tip), PTFE makes PFOA sufficient to cause a range of maladies. Best practice is to never heat lined cookware empty).

It takes very little polymer degradation among “ceramic” non-stick linings to reveal embedded silicates, which then form a finely saw-toothed (hence very sticky) surface. These elements tend to disengage from their polymer lattice with stuck food that has to be loosened with increasing force, which in turn increases the rate of lining degradation. Pure PTFE-based linings, i.e., those without embedded silicates or other crystals, tend to degrade more slowly.

Degraded non-stick micro-contours could hypothetically be seasoned, i.e., interdigitate with an actively-forming polymer, however, the effort is likely futile as both the polymer and its metal substrate (aluminum or SS) are not conducive to active polymerization.

More likely would be that the oils intended to season remain encapsulated in the surface irregularities and oxidize (polyunsaturated oils oxidize very readily) to form an irregular lacquer over the damaged non-stick surface, which is nearly impossible to dissolve once it has formed. Owing to available oxygen bonding potentials, this lacquer tends to be very sticky — kind of an anti-seasoning. Solvents and propellents in spray oils (i.e., alcohol) tend to facilitate the lacquering process, promoting rapid oxidation of both the oils they propel, and oils infiltrating the decaying plastic surface of a pan, which causes rapid build up of the lacquer, or familiar “glaze,” on degraded non-stick surfaces.

Since it’s impossible to season a polymerized surface, not doing so has no bearing on its wear, longevity or working properties.

For Everything a Season? was originally published in The Genuine Article on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The Ground of Culture.

Real Green

I recently received an email from a visitor to our website that questioned whether we were “green-washing” the use of copper for cooking. Although I thought it was a fair question in light of the repackaging and rebranding of so many familiar goods and even services these days as “green” or “organic” or “sustainable”. I’d like to look at what might be behind both the movement to clean-up perceptions as opposed to just making good things, and how the satisfactions of working with good things helps us find our way in life and make positive, humane contributions.

New and improved?

In the US we have no trouble finding cookware. As basic tools go, vessels in which to prepare food are readily available. There’s a deli in my own Brooklyn neighborhood that always has a couple of over-priced stamped, non-stick aluminum pans hanging with the canned goods. There’s a layer of dust that suggests slow sales, but still, they have the tool if you want your take-out panini toasted once you get it home and your previous cheap deli-pan just (literally) flaked-out.

Cookware is commonplace, but doesn’t need replacing every day. How do makers of such things keep people interested in buying their goods? The obvious answer is to position the same thing as some new thing. In the case of pots and pans, they can be stamped from new materials, decorated elaborately, sprayed with the latest “non-stick” coating, given a “Stā-kool” handle, or have “Eco-” inserted somewhere in the name.

In other words, something can be made “better” than it used to be, often by simply disparaging what it used to be.

If something that performs a basic function can continually appear in “better” guise, was originally “good” version really any good to begin with? With respect to cookware, one could easily be led to believe that in the last couple of generations we’ve been making up for lost time, given the number of times it has been “revolutionized”.

Better is the enemy of good

The same might be said of the food we put into those pots and pans. Having these days no cultural rudder to steer us toward good food, and subject to the relentless prodding of entities that depend on our consumption of ever more of their products, we reinvent our diets every few years - not on the basis of what our senses tell us about what would be authentically nourishing, sustaining and tasty to eat, but on the basis of pronouncements from experts, government guidelines, and (most of all) advertising, all promising to relieve doubt and increase security.

Thus have we taken to cooking on plastic to avoid cleaning up, to complex processing and microwave radiation to avoid “wasting” time on cooking, to desktop takeout to avoid downtime, to carbohydrates to avoid fats, to vegetables to avoid meat, to meat to avoid carbohydrates, and to expertism on the premise that our own palates, having been our sole means for nearly 200,000 years, are suddenly untrustworthy. We have somehow become inauthentic arbiters of our sustenance.

If what we thought was the good is superseded daily by the better, this leads to a collapse of faith in anything being good enough, not least of which our own senses. Thus, who can be blamed for following others professing clarity and a better way? But “better” is necessarily forward-looking, so a culture committed to better will always want for anything good in the here-and-now. This, I believe, is why “authentic” things and experiences are of such interest these days, for they represent timeless goods.

A Taste for Good Things

Among the effects of this latest century of culinary “betterment” we’ve witnessed the collapse of the family meal, the disordering of eating, the sickening of the citizenry, the destruction of the environment and the vulgarization of taste, both literally and figuratively. Taste is the cardinal means by which humans discern pleasure and form social bonds, never more so than over food. It has been our capacity to find what tastes good to eat (and with the technologies of cooking to overcome the sometimes prickly defenses of things that are good to eat) that has allowed us to successfully forage and settle some otherwise pretty inhospitable parts of our planet.

Taste is the cardinal means by which humans discern pleasure and form social bonds, especially over food.

Hunting and growing our own food has gone the way of making our own tools or shelter, a cultural moment brought to you only in the last 60 years or so in the name of “convenience” and the advance of engineered (highly processed, or in industry vernacular “value-added”) food choices. Since we can’t smell or taste anything in a Tetra-Brik™, we read it first, turning first to language and then to science to sort out layers of extra-gustatory data. Depending on whether we’re soy, wheat, fat- or sugar-phobic this week, the nutrition information label on packaged food tells us if what we’re holding in the grocery aisle is for dinner by addressing our insecurity du jour. Feeding ourselves thus becomes first an intellectual exercise in identifying our quarry while the question of goodness is parsed linguistically (often with words such as “real”, “authentic” and “genuine”). If the “product” has been marketed successfully, this leads to an economic transaction, which in turn leads finally to caloric intake, often as a single serving ingested while walking, driving, or in front of a screen, providing energy to sustain a short burst of economically productive activity, and which foments demand for more of its kind. It is last of all a sensual, convivial pleasure over which a human connection can be formed.

Simple, unadulterated things… say, a perfectly ripe pear, a weathered Adirondack Chair, a dry martini, up… don’t need selling.

In my field, well-made-and-well-used cookware, even in its old, dented and patinated guise, emits an almost atavistic call and is highly prized. When we trust our senses to lead us to good tools, the results appear not only to our eyes, but to our sense of mastery and the satisfaction of our commitments — to ourselves and to those we love. If, for example, we’re committed to mastering any of the culinary arts, anything you can pull off in a cheap, disposable saucepan reaches its fullest expression most readily in a tin-lined copper saucepan. Nothing dry-sears half so well on other metals as it does on hot iron. The light, crispy lace of a perfectly fried egg is practically a given when using a properly seasoned carbon steel fry pan. A carbon steel knife takes and holds a fine edge better than stainless steel, and slices the ripest tomato without crushing it. The simple, everyday things we do for our sustenance can, given a decent tool, be done with greater competence sooner, and, importantly, with greater pleasure.

This is why such wares hang from the racks of the finest kitchens in the world, serving diners for whom the conviviality of sharing food and the sensual desideratum of great taste transforms feeding oneself into a reflective and aesthetic experience; in other words, from biological imperative through pleasure into culture.

The conviviality of sharing food and the sensual desideratum of great taste transforms feeding oneself into a reflective and aesthetic experience; in other words, from biological imperative through pleasure into culture.

It’s a pleasing thought that eating foods we learn about from loved ones and love for how they taste is the very ground of culture; think cuisine versus calories, conviviality versus convenience, civility versus consumption. The advance of civilizations is usually recorded in terms of competition and scarcity, but cultures emerge from pleasure, either promised or directly experienced. The effects of honoring the senses by, for example, eating good, well-prepared food are myriad.

Once you know what you like and give yourself permission to like it, you have a path you can make through life. Learn what to use, and good tools will help making your way pleasurable. In creating for your own delectation and delight, you’ll also be contributing to the culture of your time.

If you find there’s merit to what I’ve written Please tap or click “♥︎” to help promote this piece to others. If you disagree, please respond with comments and we can talk about it more.

Taste was originally published in The Genuine Article on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Let’s talk a bit about what goes in and what goes on inside the trophy piece that is the Brooklyn Copper Cookware 14 Quart Stocker. I’d like to dive into the difference between broth and stock, speed (fast versus slow), working every last bit of goodness out of food you might have been about to throw away, and how fast metal helps a slow-food technique.

Read to the bottom for my favorite stock recipe — maybe the first to come from a maker of the mission-critical ingredient for any stock — the stock pot.

Broth vs. Stock? Flesh vs. Bone.

Broth is derived of both the old Frankish brouet and German Brühe (“brew”), in this case of meat and aromatics. Bouillon is similar to broth in that it refers, literally, to liquid in which something has been boiled, except that it is generally highly seasoned. Like broth, there’s no bones about it.

Traditionally, broth is used to suspend ingredients as a soup or consumed by itself as a drink. Stock (or, as the French conceive of it, Fond de Cuisine: the “base of cuisine”) is a time-intensive reduction of aromatics, connective tissues, cartilage, perhaps some bits of meat, and bones, resulting in a much thicker, richer “base” on which you can build other preparations, such as sauces.

Recently the two culinary staples have been conflated into “bone broth”. Maybe foodsters are onto something here because this new favorite elixir’s backbone is, in fact, bone. And because bone broth is popularly drunk these days in the traditional way of broth — by itself.

The Three Ts.

Whether you’re brewing meats or bones, the way you get flavor out is basically the same — enough time at a relatively low simmer (time + temperature + turbulence). The critical variables are time and the part of the animal you prefer. Collagens and other proteins in bones take a lot longer to break down under heat and gentle agitation than the muscle proteins in meat.

There’s really no way to overcook stock as long as there’s liquid in the pot.

Even at the lowest simmer, at some point either the full measure of flavor and nutrients will be extracted from your ingredients, or your pot will go dry. While you want to get as close to the former as possible, don’t risk ruining your decoction and damaging your stock pot by reducing it too much. Based on the recipe below, the listed ingredients brewing in 11 quarts of water can comfortably go 12–18 hours (covered at a low simmer) without risk.

Half-a-day later, cartilage will be completely rendered and hard tissues extremely porous and brittle, indicating you’ve gotten about as much out of them as there is to get.

Take it to the max.

The advantage of a classic, heavy copper pot here is that you’ll get the maximum out of your ingredients owing to granular and highly complex distribution of heat channels within the pot. Copper’s heat distribution from the base of a pot is well-known, but honestly, any stock pot of any material will eventually equalize temperature across its floor. For maximum extractive effect, it’s best if the energy can get up off the floor.

Solid copper walls quickly walk the energy upward within the metal so that heating of the interior occurs from the sides of the pot as well.

Aluminum is adept this way too. Stainless steel, not so much — the thermal channels inside stainless steel vessels tend to be simple, vertical convection currents.

Wall heating causes more complex currents within the liquid, deflecting convection patterns and introducing more gentle turbulence. The practical effect of this is fewer eddies (pockets of low turbulence) forming around the solids in your stock. Fewer eddies mean more extraction to the liquid.

Go low and slow.

Very low heat and gentle agitation over a very long time teases out layers of flavor and gets as much as possible from your ingredients.

The reliably mellow and rich results of low simmering are owed to the break-down of protein into glutamic acid, one of the key amino acids behind deep umami (savory) flavor. Hard boiling reduces cooking time by driving down fluid volume (not our goal here) while emulsifying fats and proteins, making for a dull, grayish cast and a sapid aftertaste.

Save your scraps.

If you’d like to give the stock below a try, just pile up veg scraps in the freezer along with a bone or two (or five) from beef roasts and steaks. That’s all you need, and you’ll be making the most of your provisions.

If, however, you want the full value of working with bones it’s best to get a joint from your butcher and ask for it to be cut into smaller chunks for you. If you pass them through a hot oven first, fresh bones and joints will produce much more pronounced and complex umami flavor. Leftover bones from roasts don’t require re-roasting, but it certainly won’t hurt them.

I sometimes like roasting my aromatics as well, but it’s a mood thing — doing so does make a marked difference in the resulting stock.

And, although I’m talking primarily about beef bones here, all the above applies equally well to chicken bones (3 — 4 stripped chicken carcasses is approximately equivalent to 1 two-pound beef shank).

Schedule your stock.

I usually call my stock good at about 14–15 hours. I set everything up the night before, bring the whole mass to a boil first thing, simmer it all day and cool (covered, to mitigate spore infiltration) overnight. Once off the heat, the process immediately becomes exothermic in copper (meaning the heat is now higher inside the pot and so it flows to the outside). Energy resistant metals take longer to reverse course.

Like Michael Ruhlman, I don’t worry about bacteria as I’m straining the finished stock into freezer containers — after all, it’s going to be boiled again.

Have fun with this, and congratulations Alchemist! You can now turn scraps destined for the compost bucket into culinary gold.

Scrap Beef Stock

Ingredients for 5–6 quarts finished stock:

2 pounds beef shank and joint, chunked

1 onion, chunked, plus scraps

1 large carrot, chunked, plus scraps

Handful celery tops and trimmings

2 bay leaves

Optional: a few parsley and/or thyme sprigs

Between 8 and 11 quarts water (leave yourself about 20% of freeboard in whatever size pot you use)

Method:

Preheat oven to 450℉

Pile bones (and veg, if you like) loosely and lightly on one or more oiled baking sheet(s) and and roast 30–40 minutes.

Dump the lot along with the herbs into your stockpot and fill with water to desired level (at least covering your ingredients by 4–5 inches).

As pot comes to temperature, skim any milky foam that rises to the surface (but leave the fat — much of the nutrient value you’re cooking out of these ingredients is fat-soluble).

Once the pot is at a boil, reduce heat to a very low simmer, as close to a “roil” (bubble-less) as you can get. This reduces emulsification of fats, yields clearer stock and preserves fluid volume.

Let cook as long as possible, up to 18 hours covered.

If you find there’s merit to what I’ve written Please tap or click “♥︎” to help other people find it on social media. If you have any questions or comments please let us know so we can continue the conversation!

Taking Stock of Making Stock was originally published in The Genuine Article on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

You’ve just splurged for a fine piece of heavy copper cookware, perhaps the best cooking tool you’ve ever owned. It’s shiny and bright and ready to take your kitchen performance much higher. Unlike most other cookware, pure, elemental copper and tin are uniquely capable of letting you know how they’re improving every step of the way. It will be evident in the character of the metals themselves as well as the quality of your preparations.

Before We Start…

…it’s worth revisiting something that will have been stated (perhaps boldly) in the use and care instructions that came with your cookware:

Make sure there’s enough liquid or cooking fat in the pan to cover the bottom before applying heat.

Tin-lined copper cookware is extremely energy efficient, so excessive heat risks damaging the tin lining.

Generally, we advise that all lined pans be filled before heating. Doing so will protect enameled iron from shattering (“dinner plating”), stainless steel from delaminating and non-stick surfaces from outgassing toxic compounds. If you have to dry-sear or toast any food, it’s best to use a cast iron or heavy carbon steel pan.

Oh yes - definitely use wooden or silicone implements. Stainless steel tools bully the tin (which is pretty non-stick when it’s new, and only becomes more so with time — meaning, you won’t need to scrape (see below)).

Copper

Copper cookware comes with a fine, hand-buffed finish. Buffing metal is in fact microscopic etching which refracts light at all frequencies, resulting in the shine for which new copper is famous. As you first heat the pan, you activate the metal surface and cause it to begin reorganizing itself from a granularly chaotic (i.e., polished or buffed) crystalline structure into a harder, smoother, more uniform lattice of larger crystals (“aggregates”), which visually registers as the patina.

Patina is often confused with oxidation. While the two processes can occur on the same pan surface, influence each other, and represent state changes, patination is a mechanical process (operated on by force/energy) while oxidation is a chemical process (disparate molecules reacting to form new molecules).

The beginnings of patination is often first evident on the bottom of a pan, which makes first contact with heat. This is sometimes wrongly referred to as scorching, which would suggest the copper has burned. It has not; the buffed surface has begun settle down and form larger crystals. As the fine etching diminishes, light refracts along changing parts of the visible spectrum, resulting in the characteristic purple-blue-shifted coloration emerging from the pan base. At Brooklyn Copper Cookware we call this short-lived phenomenon the “bruise”.

What hue of pure copper’s many colorings your pan assumes will depend a lot on how much heat you put into it. Low heat will tend to shift to the red end of the spectrum, as evinced in the pictures above and characteristic of copper crystals organizing slowly. Higher heat and faster cooking will tend to shift to a yellower effect (see below), betraying larger crystal structure and shorter wavelengths of light reflecting from the surface. Generally speaking, you’ll get the same or better results from copper using lower heat, as the pan itself heats thoroughly without squandering energy.

Whether red or yellow shifted, the bruise yields fairly quickly to more uniform development of the copper’s patina. Again, with use the copper is becoming tougher and more efficient, progressively doing everything you count on it to do really well that much better.

It bears mentioning that, irrespective of which color shift your copper is showing, polishing will return a copper pan back to its original orange/pink copper hue.

A copper pan wears its patina like a badge of honor.

Tin

Much the same process will occur on the interior tin lining, but whereas copper needs polishing to remove the signs and stresses of its making into cookware, tin emerges from the molten hand-wiping process already shiny. Tinsmiths don’t generally polish linings after they wipe them in, which leaves the evidence of their hand-work intact as the classic wipe marks.

The transformation of tin from molten to solid (“seizing”) forms the bond between the lining and the copper pan body. Like copper, tin’s shine is a visual effect of a complex surface crystallization that will change with use, settling out to a matte gray color signifying a tougher, larger, smoother, highly uniform (“cured”) tin crystal lattice.

You can often see the tin organizing itself into larger crystals as you use the pan. This, again, is completely normal and signifies the working surface is becoming more durable and easier to use.

These effects are collectively known as tin’s patina. Patination is a characteristic common to materials that benefit from use. At Brooklyn Copper Cookware we encourage owners to think of tin (and copper) as they might leather — a bit of conditioning improves its performance, increases its lifespan and mellows its appearance.

With regard to cookware all of this “work-conditioning” is not exclusive to copper, but the thermally efficient nature of pure copper and tin allow the benefits to accrue quickly and uniformly. For many other cookware metals, such as stainless steel, work-conditioning happens slowly or not at all unless a great amount of heat is applied to an empty pan (never recommended), and then the conditioning can be irregular, as below.

Stainless steel has an extremely hard and complex crystal structure; curing and conditioning happen more readily and quickly through the thermally efficient nickel element of the alloy than, for example, through the iron element. These localized regions of bruising (i.e., conditioning) are what become the hot-spots for which stainless steel is unfortunately renowned.

Iron

Traditionally, iron handles on copper cookware are treated with a bit of culinary wax before shipping, which forms a “seasoned” finish at room temperature. Handling a handle softens the wax and causes what does not wipe off to penetrate over time, leaving plenty of surface porosity available for additional seasoning. The best quality iron handles for copper cookware are made with a specific process that, with the addition of a tiny bit of carbon and silicon, forms a finely tessellated crystalline lattice and allows them to expand and contract with the copper and tin. This tight crystal lattice has a concomitantly tight surface porosity, which seasons more readily as lipid chains settle closer to each other and link (polymerize) more easily.

With use a new iron handle will begin to shift shadings, likely darkening more toward the pan body, with variegated effects emerging further out from the pan. Whatever fats get on your handle (including skin oils), repeated heating and cooling cycles continuously re-seasons, protecting the iron from corrosion and giving it its own character — strictly speaking not patination (since the crystalline structure remains relatively unchanged), but no less lively.

Living with Lively Cookware

Pure elements such as copper, tin and iron are extremely responsive to energy and contact. You might think of these cookware ingredients as “living metals”, born dramatically, developing refinement and grit with experience, improving in all their relationships — with each other and with you.

If you find there’s merit to what I’ve written Please tap or click “♥︎” to help other people find it on social media. If you have any questions or comments please let us know so we can continue the conversation!

Meet Your Metal was originally published in The Genuine Article on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Just a few months from now it will be a wonder that anyone could ever have been lured in — the hyper-promotion, the audacious lies, the incoherent gibberish, the lack of substance, even the artificial orange tinting — it will all be so obvious. “What was I thinking?” will be threading, trending and tweeting (#junkpunkd). Belief in ideas that have repeatedly and unambiguously been exposed as defective, even dangerous, often by conspicuous promises to solve problems people don’t in fact have, is a stubbornly tragic leit motif of human history.

At Brooklyn Copper Cookware we get more than a few inquiries about the proliferation of “copper” non-stick pans squatting ad space in popular media these days. We’ve looked into a few of these products, hoping to spare you the trouble of doing so yourselves. Better yet, to spare you the regret of spending good money on bad tools.

The 7 Signs of Highly Misleading Marketing

1. Red Copper Pan (made by Ruipu Kitchenware, Zhejiang, China)

2. Copper Pro (made by Yongkang Minghan, Zhejiang, China)

3. Copper Chef (aka Tristar Copper, made by Zhejiang Zhongheng Industrial & Trade Co., Ltd. and Yongkang Haocheng Shengshi Industry and Trade Co. Ltd.)

4. Cooksmark Copper (made by Zhejiang Siwei Industry & Trade Co., Ltd.)

5. Jobox Copper (made by Zhejiang Whole World Kitchen Industry Co., Ltd.)

6. Tiabo Copper (made by Wuyi Baiyuan Kitchenware Co., Ltd.)

7. Gotham Steel (made, like its brethren, not of steel but of copper-colored aluminum by Ningbo Zaixing Kitchen Ware Co., Ltd.)

Infused. Like tea. Sort of.

Any traces of copper such cookware might contain is purely incidental — the detailed product description on the manufacturer’s Alibaba.com listing for the pan above states that the outer coating treatment is “high-temperature resistant paint”.

Paint.

So, what “infusion” of copper as there may be could perhaps be (charitably) viewed as pigmentation. These products are made of pressed aluminum sprayed with a garishly colored, silicate impregnated liner, the visual effect of which being the sole basis upon which the rhetorical association with copper is made.

Obviously, the word “copper” is used here as bait.

Contrary to what the appearance of these pans would have anyone believe, copper is not to be directly cooked upon other than in very specific circumstances, such as when preserving or making meringues. Authentic copper cookware is lined with an inert metal, often tin or stainless steel, which positions a barrier layer between the the conducting metal and acidic preparations. The products we’re talking about here flaunt their would-be copper “infusions” precisely where knowledgable cooks would least desire that metal to appear.

50 Shades of Scam

There being no copper about these pans, one could reasonably ask “is coloring a non-stick surface in a crayon copper hue such a bad thing?”

No more than coloring a non-stick lining green in order to market it as capital G “Green”.

Helpful color-coding notwithstanding, and unlike copper, green is not a complexion natural to metals, clays or other materials from which cookware could conceivably, much less safely, be made. The failure of green-colored non-stick surfaces in the cookware market is not mysterious: People didn’t buy the pans because they didn’t buy the green-washing.

The few who did buy these pans quickly discovered that what was most green about them ended up as plasticine flakes and chips in their food.

An equally bizarre variation on organic appeal are “marble” non-stick finishes (if ceramic is good, rock must be even better!). I missed this particular joke, which apparently plays better (or is more aggressively marketed) in countries other than the US. Maybe I ignored it because it didn’t leverage pure metal. More likely, I blinked in the time it took for the fad to inflate and pop.

Name Dropping

Having convinced a large swath of the eating public that cooking without fat is “healthy” while meeting ever more suspicion about the cooking-in-plastic-is-perfectly-safe fiction, how does a marketer get people to buy the successor to Teflon and its perfluoronated petrochemical-based analogues? Why, dress the same basic product in such a way as to ennoble it by association!

Think of Ford, circa 1976:

When polymer-painted “green” pans failed to catch on, the updated hustle would entail clumsy mimicry of prestige cookware optics and re-saturation of on-line and television ad space with obtuse suggestions of copper-like performance. A new infomercial star was born.

Your $20 Worth

This would all be far less troubling were the products in question at all worthy of the name cookware. Have a look at reviews on Amazon and elsewhere in the wider web for any of the products listed above; $19.95 buys 2–3 stuck and ruined dinners before the lining begins to degrade, and/or the pan body warps like a potato chip, and/or, in the case of “induction-ready” models, the steel induction plate violently delaminates.

Not surprisingly, marketing budgets for cheap wares include fabricated reviews. Almost all the positive reviews for any of the products above are posted within the same few calendar days following the product’s debut, whereas the critical reviews are uniformly more recent.

(By the way, “cheap” is not my word here, it’s in fact used often as a superlative in manufacturers’ listings for these pans, as in “Aluminum Non-stick Ceramic cheap & quality copper/Frying Pan!”)

Even if one succumbs to the ridiculous “seasoning” preparation recommended in the enclosures for many of these pans (the cookware-care equivalent of watering plastic flowers), the aluminum-dressed-in-copper-drag act collapses soon after getting one of these things on your range top. Between a flyweight, low-density stamped aluminum body, hollow metal or plastic handle and microns-thin copper-colored spray laminate, any of these pans will spend less time working for you than they did at sea in a shipping container.

Whatever else these products may have been produced to do (like make 400% profit margins), they do not tolerate being used for actual cooking very well, or for very long.

The same twenty of your dollars could be spent on a 2mm carbon steel pan from any of several manufacturers. Seasoning of carbon steel is a meaningful gesture in that it provides a durable and renewable non-stick surface in a pan that will provide good, trouble-free and non-toxic service for decades. In addition to tin-lined copper, simple steel is the genuine article the copper-tinted-poser crowd would have you believe they are.

Hucksterism reliably proclaims its own virtue loudly in the public square. On the bright side, I suppose it’s not the worst thing in the world for makers of authentic copper cookware that hucksters think copper has caché in the popular consciousness. I certainly don’t worry about anyone forming a false association with, or impression of, BCC’s wares, but I do regret that so many more chunks of metal with sand “infused” toxic plastic coatings will be in landfills by the time the junk peddlers have moved on to their next con.

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Better can be the enemy of the good.

In the US we have no trouble finding cookware. As basic tools go, vessels in which to prepare food are available everywhere. There’s a deli in my own Brooklyn neighborhood that always has a couple of cheap stamped, non-stick aluminum pans hanging with the canned goods. There’s a layer of dust that suggests slow sales, but still, they have the tool if you want your take-out panini toasted once you get it home and your last disposable pan just gave out.

Cookware may be a commonplace, but it doesn’t need replacing every day. How do makers of such things keep people interested in buying their goods? The obvious answer is to position the same old thing as some new thing. In the case of pots and pans, they can be formed of new materials, decorated elaborately, sprayed with the latest “non-stick” coating, given a “Stā-kool” handle, or have “Eco-” inserted somewhere in the name. Often something can be made to seem “better” by simply disparaging how it used to be.

If something that performs a basic function is continually reintroduced as “better”, was it ever any good to begin with? With respect to cookware, one could easily be led to believe that in the last couple of generations we’ve been making up for lost time, given the number of times simple pots have been “revolutionized”.

Often something can be made to seem “better” by simply disparaging how it used to be.

Prodding by entities that rely on our consumption of ever more of their products is not the same as having a cultural rudder to steer us in the direction of good anything, much less good food. Cultural rudderlessness has itself spawned an industry that reinvents our diets every few years — not on the basis of what our senses tell us about what would be authentically nourishing, sustaining and tasty to eat, but on the basis of assurances from experts, government guidelines, and, finally, advertising. All promise to relieve doubt and increase security, but all drive a wedge deeper into our relationship with our food.

Thus, with plenty of help we didn’t need or ask for, in just the past couple of generations we’ve taken to cooking on plastic to avoid cleaning up, to complicated processing to avoid “wasting” time on cooking, to drive-up dining to avoid downtime, to carbohydrates to avoid fats, to hydrogenated fats to avoid butter, to vegetables to avoid meat, to meat to avoid carbohydrates, and in every case we succumbed to expertism on the premise that our own palates, after hundreds of thousands of years, are suddenly inauthentic arbiters of our sustenance.

A culture committed to “better” will always want for anything good in the here-and-now.

If what we thought was the good is superseded daily by the better, this leads to a collapse of faith in anything being good enough, not least of which our own senses. But “better” is necessarily forward-looking, so a culture committed to better will always want for anything good in the here-and-now. This, I believe, is why “authentic” things and experiences are of such interest these days, for they represent, literally, timeless goods.

It’s often said that economies grow through innovation, and absolutists on this point insist that nothing is so good that it can’t be better. I’m a little ambivalent about this because I favor progress (not least my own), but I think a view of progress that neglects the mature behaviors, beliefs and technologies that for millennia have served the human spirit and built human connections is an arid and dissipated way forward. Each of us is at least partly a creation of both the people and the cultures that parented us; they are, in a sense, the vessels in which we’ve been prepared.

Cooking is a technology that reads out of the history of human evolution and translates what is not us into us. Cookware does not need innovation. We are the innovation, made anew with every meal. And if we cook well, we’re made better in countless ways.

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It’s morning. While you’re making coffee you pull out the egg pan, lob a dollop of butter in it, dial in some heat and start cracking the eggs. As you’re finishing with the whisk you hear the sizzle of the butter subside, and then a gentle ping. Turning to the stove you see your pan has birthed a fat-free dome, rising out of a moat of melted butter. A moment ago it was perfectly flat.

In addition to how such a thing happens to a slab of solid metal, you wonder if the deli has any sesame bagels left…

Why Things Warp

Repeated heating and cooling changes the hardness of any metal. Warping is essentially the differential expansion/contraction of a metal’s crystalline structure, meaning one part of a pan subtly changes its shape more often or at a different rate from another, such as when a pan base gets hotter than its walls.

Another factor is how walls act as both practical and structural containment for a pan.

As a practical matter, pan walls keep food contained over heat. Structurally, a solid ring (i.e., the wall of a circular pan) contributes to rigidity. This is why thin-walled pans frequently have a hardened steel bead rolled under the top edge.

The base of your pan cannot expand horizontally beyond the ring, so the only direction it has to go on heat is up or down. More often than not, straight-sided pans will “cup” downward (concave), while slope-sided pans tend to “crown” upward (convex). This has to do with the inclination of crystalline stresses at the “knee” or the curve where the base ascends into the wall.

Thin pans are generally much more likely to warp than thickly constructed ones because the more material there is within its thickness the more a metal can differentially expand and contract. Types of metal play a big role too, as does their method of manufacture (e.g., stamped pans, owing to stretching at the knee, warp much more readily than spun pans). Given enough use, soft metals (such as copper and aluminum) almost always warp if thinly constructed. Harder, more resistant metals, such as carbon or stainless steel, resist warping but will still do so under the right circumstances. They are concomitantly much more difficult to true (i.e., flatten).

Generally, if a pan has food in it before heating it’s protected from warping by never getting hotter than the food within it (nominally about the boiling point of water).

Different metals, owing to their ingrained thermal resistance, will store or discharge heat more or less quickly (e.g., copper moves energy at a quick 400 kilowatts per meter per second, while most stainless steel clocks ~16kW/m). With food in a pan acting as a heat sink, energy can slowly and uniformly harden the metal and, with time, the pan becomes less likely to warp.

Hardening and Annealing

Hardening, or “toughening” happens when a (usually ferrous) metal is heated and cooled rapidly, which seizes its crystalline structure in a relatively open lattice of large grains, or when it is cold-worked, which through pressure and motion deform fine metallic crystals into long, continuous grains. Heat-tempering steel requires controlled rapid heating and cooling, while spinning or hammering copper into hardened shapes exemplify cold-working.

Warping happens when an isolated part (usually the base) of a pan is heated to the point of expansion and then either constrained or cooled quickly, seizing the metal in its new, expanded configuration.

For a given thickness, metals that bank a lot of energy (i.e., move it slowly) are much more inclined to warp if they’ve not been hardened in manufacturing, or by judicious use. A classic way to lose true on a relatively new pan is to heat it empty, sear some foodstuff, and then plunge it into water. Even heavy stainless can warp under such circumstances (see photo above).

The opposite of hardening is annealing, which softens metal, making it more pliable and plastic. As in the case of hardening a lot of heat is involved, but when annealing the metal is cooled slowly rather than seized by quenching in water, allowing finer crystal grains to form (“recrystallization”) and enhancing the metal’s plasticity. Metallic crystals slide against one another (“creep”) in their boundaries, so the more boundaries there are, the more motile crystals can be, resulting in more ductile metal. Copper enjoys even greater advantages here, as its crystalline structure is highly regular (“non-corrugated”), so grains creep with very little friction. Hardened or annealed, copper is very resilient.

Truing a Warped Pan

Annealing means hope for a warped, higher quality pan. If you care to try anything I describe below, you do so, of course, at your own risk, but with care and patience, you have a chance to restore a favorite pan’s true.

Whether you should true your pan or not depends mostly on the value of (or your attachment to) the pan. Even if a pan clears the worthiness bar to re-true it takes a little doing.

I hate to say any pan should be junked, but if it was low-quality junk to begin with, warping is only one of the ways it’s fated to disappoint you.

Better pans start more “true” than others in many regards and reward not only proper use, but extra effort given to their repair when damaged.

You may be aware of folks who have tried to true a warped pan by striking it with a hammer. While this may give the appearance of straightening a hardened curve, what it is in fact doing is opening artificial boundaries within large (toughened) crystal grains, increasing granular complexity at the expense of crystalline integrity. These artificial boundaries are corrugated, and friction between adjacent crystals weakens the metal’s integrity, otherwise known as metal fatigue. Not only will the pan likely re-warp soon, the metal will be permanently damaged.

Weight + Heat + Time

Provided your pan is sufficiently valuable to you to merit the effort, “crowned” pans can be trued by heating with a heavy, metallic weight in the pan.

A preferred method is the use of flat iron gym weights, with the diameter of the weight in the bottom of the pan covering as much surface as possible. Heating the pan with the weight in it for an extended period and letting it cool slowly where it sits on the stove top can true a warped pan base.

A restaurant chef I know here in NYC (and from whom I first learned of this trick) needed 200 pounds and over two hours of steady low heat to flatten a heavy four-burner cast iron griddle. On the first pass the griddle relaxed suddenly and two of the four weight stacks were disrupted. Fortunately, they tipped only onto the range top, but the exercise had to be rerun since the griddle did not anneal (cool slowly) under steady weight. The second pass worked quickly and thoroughly as the griddle was already partly annealed and close to true from the first effort. After a little re-seasoning the griddle was flat and good as new (however, I’m told the kitchen did smell like a metal shop for some time after). This is similar to the technique our smiths use in the BCC retinning and restoration program.

Crowning most readily befalls skillets and fry surfaces owing to their mode of use and their curved walls. Fortunately these are relatively easy to stack with weight. The thinner the metal, the faster the effect, which you can check by simply looking at the pan base during the process (be careful!) to see if it’s settled down. Once the pan is flat, simply turn off the heat and let everything cool slowly. If at first you don’t succeed, try again.

For concave, or cupped, pans the same basic technique works, except the weight(s) rest on the wall of the pan at the upper rim, rather than in the bottom of the pan. This applies pressure downward at the outer margin of the base, which will gently work cupping back to level. Because there is no weight resting on the surface over heat, there is no mass into which to sink the energy, so the pan bottom will heat much faster. Be sure to go low and slow with your heat, and don’t over-weight the pan wall — remember, you’re softening metal. Too much time on heat or weight on wall will cause the wall to soften and “belly” outward.

Some additional caveats are called for here, such as if your pan is non-stick (Teflon and many so called “ceramic” linings contain polymer bases) it’s not a candidate for repair since heating it empty not only out-gasses toxic compounds, but the lining will be irreparably damaged. If your pan is tinned copper, the tin lining will be likewise damaged, but fortunately it’s completely reparable, and a copper pan body is probably valuable enough to merit the effort. Enameled linings will often “dinnerplate” (fracture) under weighted heat, while “sandwiched” or bi-metal pans can delaminate.

Of course, the iron weights themselves must be unpainted / uncoated.

As the total weight required varies by pan (thicker pan, more weight), due care should be taken in balancing lots of hot metal — no inverted pyramids! It goes without saying that your range top should be as flat (and level) as possible. Also, use only a gas range, which will distribute energy load out and up the stack sides until the metals come up to temperature. Electric ranges might work, but there’s risk to the coil elements from concentrating heat beneath the stack before it begins to flow uniformly. No matter what metal you need to true (including ferrous), induction ranges will not work for this technique.

Bear in mind, too, that this method is applicable only to warped, not bent, metal. Bending weakens a metal’s crystalline structure, while warping does not affect metal integrity, just its shape (see “metal fatigue” above).

If you incline toward heavy-bottomed cookware you’re already less likely to need a pan trued because of the robust nature of the pan’s construction (and because you’re likely the kind of person who is thoughtful about good tools and their proper use).

Apart from pure metal construction, a key unseen indicator of high-quality are the many stresses such pans are put through just in their making; the resilience that results is one of the attributes they bring to your table.

Heavy pans stay true.

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Warped was originally published in The Genuine Article on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Sometimes what you’re making demands it.

There was an interesting article in the New York Times recently that prompted the title question of this article. My company, Brooklyn Copper Cookware (BCC), produces hundreds of pots, pans and covers at a time, entirely by hand. At least in the case of copper cookware it’s not defiance of modern, more efficient or more cost-effective methods that motivates the hand-making process; if one respects the nature of the material and the purposes for which any cookware is intended, making it by any means other than by hand suddenly seems almost an impertinence.

As the Times article notes, a great many manufacturing jobs have been lost to automation. Those that caused, at minimum, repetitive stress injuries (or, at most, death) were first to go, and now machines are starting to show aptitude for skilled service tasks, such as contract negotiations and medical diagnosis. Automation has effected human employment much more than the outsourcing our politicians are fond of citing. It’s no secret that even in China manufacturing that can be done more cost-effectively and safely by machines is, well, done by machines (very often German and American machines).

To do justice to both the metal and the history you have to get your hands dirty.

As (very) cool as hand-made is, sometimes from a purely practical standpoint the hands and five senses of a human artisan are simply best, maybe the only, means by which to make certain things properly. When it’s copper cookware you’re making, to do justice to both the metal and the history you have to get your hands dirty.

Copper, being soft and fiercely conductive, toughens quickly when worked. Thin copper can be worked on an automated lathe because its structural and mechanical resistance is relatively low. Thick copper “bell tempers” at the same rate as thinner material, but, being thicker, is more structurally and mechanically resistant. Every inch of its progress up a lathe mandrel (the tool over which a pot or pan is formed) represents a different degree of toughening. A risk is that the metal will “seize” (i.e., harden enough to produce a bell-like ringing) before it’s fully formed. Any working past this point can split or warp the metal.

An equal risk is that it will not be sufficiently work-hardened once formed. Copper starts very soft and is toughened in the spinning process in part so it can support its own weight over decades and centuries. The smith endeavors to strike an ideal balance by attaining bell-temper just as the pan is fully formed.

Each piece of copper mounted on the lathe will behave slightly or substantially differently than the previous piece.

The smith, therefore, not only has to be moving the copper manually to feel the change in the metal, but he has to actively listen to its tone as it’s being worked. That operator knows how much time he has left based on how the metal sounds and feels, so he “flops” more or less quickly in order to synchronize the work-toughening of the metal and its complete formation on the mandrel. A skilled copper smith is said to be “saved by the bell” because he can coax the ringing tone just as the piece is perfectly formed.

Spinning heavy copper cookware may be iterative (we make many sauté pans in a run), but it is far from repetitive. Each piece of copper mounted on the lathe will behave slightly or substantially differently than the previous piece, so absent a fine sensitivity to its behavioral cues, a smith could easily transform an expensive slab of copper sheet into hard, misshapen scrap or a pretty shell too soft to support its own weight.

And then there’s tinning. The automated version of this, of course, is electroplating. This is a method of electrochemically depositing tin on copper, but as a passive process, and even for only cosmetic coverage, electroplating takes time. Most electroplated tin measures between 20 and 50 microns thick (1 micron is 1/1000 of a mm) after 30–45 minutes. To withstand the rigors of regular use in cooking tin must be thick; laying up the .4 — .45mm thickness needed is done by hand in less than 15 minutes. The same thickness would take 10–12 hours in a “rack” electroplating tank. Once again, there’s no substitute for hand workmanship here.

And the hand that succeeds at wipe tinning has the deftest of touches. Between managing a pan that has been heated to over 600℉ and ladling into it molten 500℉ tin, flame, steam and smoke compromise a good deal of visual perception. A tin smith is literally feeling his way through the process, sensing at his fingertips the flow and crystallization of the tin as well as the steady cooling of the pan, all the while compensating for temperature and humidity in the shop. This is all done reflexively (or intuitively), taking about a minute once a pan is prepared and heated. As with jazz, there are years and years of exhausting practice on display in every effortless riff.

Another way to think about it is tin and copper give a smith about a minute to arrange and consummate their “marriage”. When getting together, should timing, temperature or some other factor be inauspicious, tin and copper have a conveniently natural attraction; tin goes back to the pool, copper gets itself cleaned up, and you just arrange another date.

Tinning by hand, we attain in less than 15 minutes what would take 10–12 hours in an electroplating tank.

BCC’s handles have a slightly different story, one where quality and safety are better left, at least partly, to a machine. The ductile iron casting foundry that casts BCC handles uses the Roberts-Sinto process, which requires just three operators to manage a machine that is capable of producing thousands of castings from BCC’s match plates (casting tools). This is a lot faster, cleaner, safer and much less wasteful than hand-tipping a crucible of molten iron into a casting flask. During the early industrial revolution the “cope and drag” casting process took two laborers walking the casting line, decanting red-hot iron until they ran out, or the iron crystallized, or they collapsed from the heat and effort. In those days only the guys who consistently decanted all their molten iron at the correct flow rate and managed to return time and again for red-hot reloads got to keep their jobs. These were not the good old days of American manufacturing.

Even if the hot part of the iron casting process is now automated, each new handle is still individually treated and inspected to prepare it for its pot. Once cast, the metal has to be deburred and hand-finished to remove casting residues and sharp edges, and to ensure a uniform finish.

Perhaps there are automated systems capable of making BCC’s pans, but let’s face it: The demand for heavy copper cookware is small and the smithing required to make it is subtle, changeable and complex. To automate the process would take several very sophisticated machines with dozens of sensors mimicking not only human sensitivity but human-like ability to make continuously variable ad hoc judgments and adjustments (i.e., something like real artificial intelligence). And for what? To produce relatively small quantities for a niche audience with a clear preference for hand-made goods (for instance, their own dinner). As a business proposition, it’s a rare case where robots are cost-prohibitive in a manufacturing context, whereas for thousands of years all that has been needed to make copper cookware has been easily managed by two opposing thumbs and five senses.

We use sharp tools to cut and shape our raw materials and heat to transform assembled ingredients into something we’re happy to bring to the table.

I don’t care to have anything BCC makes cause unnecessary risk to anyone involved in making it, but anything made by hand puts at least those hands in harm’s way, so we’re thoughtful about all our processes. In the case of casting ductile iron handles we let a machine manage the truly dangerous stuff, which has the added benefit of making for a much cleaner process. In general, however, the kinds of risks BCC smiths take in the shop are not so different form those you and I take in the kitchen; we use sharp tools to cut and shape our raw materials and heat to transform assembled ingredients into something we’re happy to bring to the table.

Making copper cookware resists being done by machine because, like cooking, the process is by nature imprecise, and it’s imprecise owing to the character of the materials themselves. Pure copper and pure tin have personalities which do not lend themselves to being led quietly by robots, but instead reward the human touch, as much in the fabricating as on the cooking side. Copper cookware is justly prized for cleanly conducting energy, and all the forms of energy that go into it when it’s made may be as important as the energy that comes out of it in the form of dinner.

The politics and economics of American manufacturing can be spun lots of ways, but when it comes to making heavy copper cookware, that’s best spun by hand or not at all.

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Why Hand-Made? was originally published in The Genuine Article on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.