Kitting your kitchen: copper

Posted by Dana McMahan on February 16, 2008

I’ve long lusted over the gleaming copper cookware in seemingly every magazine kitchen and TV kitchen. On a trip to Paris in 2006 my husband and I decided to start our own French copper collection. I marked the location of a legendary kitchen supply store, E. Dehillerin — Le Spécialiste du Matériel de Cuisine — on a map and waited eagerly for the shopping expedition.

As it turned out we left the hotel without my map but I vaguely remembered the general location in the first arrondissement and we set out in search of the store. We didn’t find it but we did find La Bovida, a sprawling kitchen/restaurant supply store where I went a bit mad. I delved into the store like the proverbial kid in a candy store, loading up on kitchen trinkets I may or may not ever use. But the real prize was the copper, the luminous, weighty copper pans beckoning to me from their display.

After much deliberation and consultation with the bemused staff in an awkward French and English exchange, we chose a 1.2-qt sauce pan and lid and a 3 qt sauté pan with cast iron handle. The pans, both Mauviel, feature a stainless steel lining.

I couldn’t wait to get home and cook with them, but first we had to get them back to the hotel. We’ve never had much luck getting taxis in Paris so we started walking from the store at 36 Rue Montmartre towards our hotel near the top of the Avenue des Champs-Elysées. A 3 ½ kilometer walk in Paris on a nice fall day is a pleasure. A 3 ½ kilometer walk lugging two shopping bags bulging with kitchen accoutrements including two pans with a combined weight of five pounds is no easy task. After a break for sustenance at a wine bar we managed to pick up a taxi for the rest of the trip.

The pans flew home with me as carry-ons — no way would I entrust my new treasures to the baggage-flingers. Cooking with them was as fabulous as I hoped. No wonder copper is the choice of great chefs. I feel like a great chef cooking in it. Copper heats and cools quickly, and distributes the heat evenly. It responds well to the heat level, allowing the cook to change quickly from rapid boil to simmer. The quality craftsmanship means we’ll have this cookware forever.

Mauviel comes from a Normandy village called Villedieu-les-Poêles ("the city of copper"), where the company was created by Monsieur Ernest Mauviel in 1830. The village has an 800-year of heritage of copper manufacturing. I like being part of that tradition every time I fire up the stove and start the butter melting in my copper pan for another delicious dish.

I’m headed back to Paris next month and have already begun to dream about which copper pan to bring home next time.

TAGS: Cookware, Copper, Pans
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