Kitchen Equipment A Better Copper Pot

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September 12, 1979, Section C, Page 2Buy Reprints
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AS anyone who has ever cooked with a copper pot knows, there is no better cooking tool available because the copper distributes heat so evenly and quickly. It is just as well known that the tin lining in most copper pots, which keeps the potentially toxic copper away from the food being cooked, is a nuisance.

The tin deteriorates gradually even if you are careful, and it disintegrates instantly if you are careless. In any case, relining, an expensive procedure, is often required.

So it was with a combination of optimism and skepticism that I approached a new line of Canadian pots lined with a nickel alloy, which, according to the manufacturers, is more durable than tin.

During several weeks I tested a 10inch sauté pan from this line. I could tell immediately that it was a handsome pot, well balanced and heavy so that it would be stable. And I was attracted to the tight‐fitting lid. (It is incredible to me that most copper pots do not come with good lids.)

I started out by braising pork chops with onions and garlic and then deglazed the pot with vinegar. The heat, as the chops browned, was evenly distributed. At no time did the chops stick.

Taking advantage of the tight lid, I used the pot to make a chicken and eggplant casserole with rice, cooked all at the same time. Here, of course, one wants to retain the steam inside the pot, and it did just that, performing exquisitely.

Then I did a few things to abuse this handsome utensil. I reduced stewed tomatoes at high heat to see if there would be any burning, as there would be in, say, a stainless steel pot. There was none.

I left the pot empty on an extremely high flame for a couple of minutes until it began to glow, an exercise that surely would destroy tin lining, but this lining survived.

The lining of the pot is not, however, impervious to damage. Sharp utensils can scratch it (the manufacturers provide a nonabrasive pad as an inducement to be gentle). Even so, it seems far less susceptible to harm than pure tin.

The one reservation I have grows out of the fact that my tests were performed over a period of weeks and not years. It is possible that in time the pot will warp, as some do, or that the lining will turn out to be less durable than it appears.

But for now my feeling is that the makers of this pot, Coventry Coppers of Montreal, have arrived at something valuable, that they have in fact produced an efficient copper pot that avoids the nuisance of retinning.

The cost of these pots, like that of tinned copper pots, is high. The line includes a 10‐inch frying pan ($44.30), and several lidded pots: a 10‐inch sauté pan ($86), a 1',‐quart saucepan ($63.45), a VA‐quart saucepan ($72.35) and a five‐quart saucepan ($106.50). They're sold at the Professional Kitchen,18 Cooper Square.