Why copper pans are great (and sometimes poisonous) 

whoever gave this man the money to test a solid silver pan is crazy and I adore it

Just to save you searching - a tiny silver frying pan costs around 2 and a half grand. A normal size frying pan costs around 5 grand. A saucepan costs between 5-7k depending on size.

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

There's a type of health condition where *Copper* builds up in your body naturally (it's not like copper poisoning where you've ingested massive quantities of Copper, it all comes from your food & just sticks around. I think it's due to an abnormal liver enzyme, but don't quote me.), called *Wilson's Disease.* What's incredibly wild about it is one of the defining symptoms: A *Copper Ring* around your *Iris!* Each eyeball has an _actual ring of metallic_ *Copper* build up at the border of the *Iris* & the *Sclera..!*

Two videos from now: "Why I season my solid gold pan"

Here's an interesting anecdotal tidbit about how metallic smell and taste is perceived. A friend of mine has hemachromatosis, meaning that his body holds onto WAY too much iron due to a genetic abnormality. Before he knew he had this, he would be able to SMELL his blood when he got a cut. That was often how he would find out he was bleeding in the first place, and he thought this was normal. After diagnosis and treatment, he can no longer smell his blood as distinctly as he did before, now that his iron levels are in a normal range. He was clearly smelling the excess iron in his blood.

The mug also feels cold because of copper’s thermal properties! A copper mug is much better at absorbing heat than a ceramic mug, as you said. This means that the mug is more effective at pulling your body’s thermal energy out of your body! This is why metals feel cold to the touch, especially on sensitive areas like your lips or fingers - they are not cold, they’re _making you colder._ I would think that definitely contributes to the overall sensation of drinking a Mule. I think this would also explain why some people are die-hard fans of metal water bottles.

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).

You can get copper pans that are lined with silver rather than tin. This has the advantage of being as thermally conductive but also the silver will last your lifetime rather than the needing to re-tin the pan as it ages.

Yes, absolutely on the silver purchase. Also a good opportunity to go into the weird antibacterial and antimicrobial biochemical properties of silver ions and the history of "silver"ware. Culinary nerds are quite literally salivating at the prospect!

You can use unlined copper for sweet stuff because sugar will reduce copper-ions back to elemental copper. This was actually used as a way to test for sugars.

Before cooking with a silver pan, check its melting point. If you put a silver pan on a gas stove you might melt it.

Yes. Silver pans please. I’m so looking forward to seeing your commentary style on something as extravagant as a solid silver pot

Hi Adam, my wife and I are big fans of the channel, but I noticed a few minor errors I wanted to point out: The eggwhites will foam up faster with copper ions in solution as they help form sulfur complexes faster than the disulfide bond formation, and the bonds are more flexible than the covalent disulfide ones. Hence, a stable foam with no grit. The stainless bowl has nothing to form sulfur complexes, so it will take longer for the protein network to form, AND the protein network is more prone to either denaturing or being overwhipped since these bonds do not break when the proteins are stretched, but the solvated ionic bonds within the copper complexes can. Also, the copper vessel and the liquid are likely at approximately the same temperature, in this case around 8C, as copper is an excellent conductor, meaning it will equilibrate in temperature to its surroundings (both the room and the liquid) much faster than an insulator. This also means it will conduct heat AWAY from your body at a much faster rate than ceramic. Indeed, if you take two pieces of material at the same temperature, one copper and one ceramic, the copper one will feel much colder as it's conducting heat away from your body faster than the insulator. Hence, if you refrigerate your ceramic and copper mugs, and take a drink from each, the copper will still feel substantially cooler than the ceramic, even at the same temp. So in your case, even though the mug was actually warmer than the ceramic, it felt cooler. Also, the reason the sugar should prevent copper ions from leeching out in the jam pot is due to the solution of jam being completely saturated with sugar, which has a much higher solubility than the copper.The water can only hold so much, and the sugar literally "gets in the way" of the ions mobilizing into the solution. Finally, yes, I think you should buy a silver one. At the end you could even do a cool electroplating experiment where you electroplate the silver pan in copper and watch the thermal conductivity go down in proportion with the amount of time you spend plating the pan, since you're basically coating your conductor with a worse conductor. And it's easily reversible with a mild acid/abrasive to preserve your expensive pan, lol.

No one ever explained to me why copper mixing bowls work better when I was a pastry chef, but it certainly worked better. I've always wondered about other bowls in the same metal group

you are the definition of thorough

A couple things 1) the insulator/conductor thing is why, if you wanna keep your groceries cold, paper is actually better than plastic. People always pick plastic because it feels colder, but that just means its sapping heat from the environment into your frozen groceries. 2) IIRC, the sense of temperature is based on rate of heat transfer, not absolute temperature. So the copper mug would likely feel colder even at the same temperature, as it would be drawing heat from your body faster.

9:55 minor detail: I don't think it's the cup being colder is what makes it feel colder. Although the ceramic is less heat conductive, it will still rather quickly become just as cold as the copper one (just think about how quickly your ceramic coffee mug is hot after you put coffee in it). The thing with more conductive materials feeling colder, is that they "extract" the heat more quickly from your body, the "heat" from your lips gets put straight away into the cold drink, the copper functioning as a heat sink so to say. This is also why a metal railing in your house "feels" colder then touching a piece of food furniture that obviously has the same room temperature (as long as that room temperature is lower than your body temperature, on very hot days the metal will feel hotter for the same reason but reversed).

Love how the main use of youtube's "most rewatched part of the vide" function is skipping the advert.

Dude, your add-reads are SMOOTH. And great video as always, I learned stuff.

I've heard before that the kind of glass you're using can affect your drink, I did not know adding more poison to it was an option

at a buffet, i personally sneak corndogs into the buffet so others can enjoy them. I hide 6 corndogs in my jacket pockets. it then, is a joy for me to see other patrons of the establishment eat my corndogs thinking they were part of the buffet.

I really appreciate that you provide the links to researches. It's so rare on youtube.

Watched several of your vids now. I fealt like you earned my sub after this one. You're a great presenter with great content. I like the way you delve into seemingly mundane things and revolutionize the way we think about them by the end. Cheers and thanks!

6:05 I would like to corroborate this statement of Adam's. I live in Pune, India and near my house, there is this small copper workshop, a really small business like 2-3 people forming sheet metal of copper into these pots and heaters of copper and honestly the sound of them bashing on copper continuously is kinda soothing, one might believe that constant metal striking on metal would create some cacophonous noise but on the contrary, it's quite good. You see a ton of foreigners there with their cameras trying to capture it and help the small local business (If anyone's wondering I'm talking about the Kasba Peth area in Pune)

Those RU-vid edit guys are going to go crazy with a clip of you saying "raw dog"

Really fascinating. The teacher at my cooking school (recreational not professional) went on about copper pots in one class, but I found that I couldn’t remember the details when I got home! So, this video was a really useful review & reminder. So well researched. Btw, I vote yes on the silver pot video!

I don't know why this channel suddenly popped up in my suggestions and other people's I know but I'm glad it did. I immediately subscribed.

Adam wants to be very clear that Dropbox only sponsored THAT PART of this week's video. Dropbox does NOT endorse copper cookware.

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.

wow! one of the best videos I have seen on RU-vid regarding chemistry. respect!

Thanks for giving the cues for the ads. Tapping my screen like a mad man

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!

Next episode: Adam proves he's not a werewolf. Also, what is the point of making a copper handle for a copper pan? What use is there for having a handle that's definitely going to get scorchingly hot?

Thank you for this thorough video. I really appreciate your detailed approach.

love your vids :) addition: for how fast it changes temperature not only thermal conductivity is important but also thermal capacity and heat transfer rate - meaning thermal energy exchange on the surface, as opposed to conductivity within the material itself (which is primary for the mentioned heating evenly)

I watch “The English Heritage“ and Mrs Crocombe talks about using a copper bowl to help eggs reach peaks faster and I was sitting there dumbfounded for a solid five minutes until I convinced myself it wasn’t important 😂😂 Thank you Adam

imagine frying potatoes with zinc in this pan and then generating electricity

Copper is traditionally used to store water in India, believed to be anti microbial and as mentioned we need a little bit of copper in our system 😉

please make a video for silver ware utensils. Today's the first day am binge watching your videos and got fan of the knowledge and sources you choose.

I love how Adam is so Interested in and appreciative of the scientists credited for the studies he cites.

My grandparents are from the north of Spain, where they got a very traditional Octopus recipe called Pulpo a Feira (Or Pulpo a la gallega). Every two weeks the town has an open flea market, where a lot of "pulpeiros" come to make the octopus. This was traditionally prepared on giant copper pots and suddenly the goverment banned them. Now I can assume it was realted to this chronic toxicity. Great video, as always!

Really cool to see a youtuber doing literature searches on stuff they're talking about, and highlighting relevant papers! Super cool

It's ironic that the ancient Romans lined their copper pans with lead to avoid copper poisoning but ended up being lead poisoned.

Just a quick addition I haven’t seen mentioned on why the copper mug feels colder than ceramic: the copper mug saps heat from your lips faster than the ceramic (in addition to losing its heat to the drink). The perceived temperature is likely lower than the actual temperature because of the higher rate of heat loss from your skin.

Copper is being used for traditional ibrik coffee as well, due to it's thermal conductivity. That would be worth a mention too.

Your ability to convey information is unparalleled and you are a gift to us all. Hopefully you create a team of sponges that can replicate this amazing wisdom.

Your intro to the promo=video is quite smart!

These little dents in the copper bowl also serve another purpose, the add regidity to the shape. Copper is most often cold worked (shaped and hammered while room temp) because by doing so you deform the crystals and thus strengthen the material. The technique (i believe) its called pin hammering and you can see everywhere, from copper to aluminium and even silver and gold.

Adam: I'm not telling you to go buy a copper bowl... Me: too late

You are such an incredible man Adam I learn so much from you

Fascinating video, Adam! And yes, please do the silver one (maybe without buying it if it's TOO expensive)

I'm always impressed with the amount of scientific inquiry and experimentation you present. I love Moscow Mules but never understood the concept of the copper cup as it definitely absorbs heat more rapidly. I never thought about the extra cold feel it provided when you drank out of it.

@10:05 Small correction. The cup probably feels colder because its conducting your heat faster. We don't sense temperature as well as we sense our loss of temperature. So things that conduct our heat faster feel colder, regardless of whether they actually are or not (within reason of course).

I think you've just solved for me why I've always preferred soda straight from a can over straight from a bottle or any other way. I perceive it as colder because of the metal

Wow, what you did in that copper bowl I had never seen before, thank you.

Looking at the numbers it doesn't seem like there's a big difference in thermal conductivity between copper and silver. Might be more resistant to oxidation and less hazardous, though. Also might turn you permanently blue.

the metallic taste or smell could also be due to a compound called octen-3-ol which is produced when some metals catalyze the breakdown of certain lipids. NileRed has a video on it.

im learning more from you about metals than i did in school. Thanks bro and nice videos

Your explanation of how brandy is made makes me wonder about how other types of alcohol are made. I don't know much about it but I find all the different ingredients and methods fascinating! Is that something you would ever do a video on?

Yes, buy the silver pan, but also buy a gold one. You need to make sure the sound it produces when you hit something with it is accurate to it's portrayal in videogames.

Fun fact: Many people around the world, where drinking water wasn't always reliable, would submerge a copper mug or tumbler into their pots of drinking water (for short periods of time). Apparently copper is toxic for a lot of bacteria and placing a copper utensil in a pot of water would kill them off. No idea if it works, but it's still a popular practice in India, where I live.

Thank you for using the Celsius as well. Much appreciated… here in… outside the US…

Almost at 2 mil Adam! Super exciting!

Another youtuber I watch, Alex, who is from Europe, did a video where he went to a friend's workshop in Turkey where they handmake special copper-silver alloy pans for cookware in the home and in restaurants. The prices aren't outrageous, so it might be interesting to research it for a future video---sort of like a best of both worlds thing? I'd also be more personally interested in pans like demeyere's silver-stainless mix where they have layers of silver between stainless pans. Are these any good?

in india my grandmother told us about silver pots n pans and how cheap and prevalent it used to be.

I love your videos (even though sometimes you speak really fast, and that says something coming from me) in this video, you spoke to little easier to follow, but I still learned tons of new information! I love all your videos pretty please keep up the good work

I can't believe Adam risked getting copper poisoning for us, only to tell us the copper flavour makes it better lol. And yes, a video about silver pans would be awesome!

The little indentations are there not only for an aesthetical homage to old copper tools, it may provide strength as well both by work hardening and by the fact that ridges (and other irregularities) increase the load capacity of thin metal sheets.

You bent the bowl!! Got me right in the feels

Silver is probably my favorite metal. Never heard of silver cookware, only service. Its significant antimicrobial properties have something to do with the latter use, I think. You should totally do a silver pan video.

For homebrewers here: if your brew reeks of sulfur (rotten eggs) in the fermenter, dip a sanitized (in oxipro, not starsan as it is an acid) copper wire in your brew. It will fix the flaw within 20 min. If you wait too long, H2S can form mercaptans (2-mercaptoethanol for instance) and this will never go away.

Man I've just discovered your channel and it is supper interesting! I am learnign so much about things i would never been interested in otherwise lol

This reminds me of a video Alex (French guy cooking) made a couple years ago. He showed a shop in Turkey called Soy where they hand-make silver-lined copper pans.

Hi Adam, enjoyed the video. I have also enjoyed the use of bare copper kitchen countertops in my home kitchens for the past 10 years. I build them myself - despite their reputation for being super expensive, high-end luxury products, but as a DIY project they're significantly cheaper and much easier than stone. One thing to be aware of, beyond the ability for clean bare copper to leach into food, is the corrosion that can form on bare copper over time. There are a variety of copper patinas, usually red, brown, green, or greenish-blue in color, containing a wide mix of copper salts and other compounds. Many of these are so water-soluble that if you swipe a tarnished copper surface with a wet finger, you can see the tarnish transfer onto your finger. (Don't lick it!) Some of these compounds are toxic to varying degrees. The water-soluble ones in particular are very easy to clean (a damp rag is sometimes enough, and if not there's always Bar Keepers Friend) but by the same token, they are the most likely to contaminate your food or drink if you don't clean them off. It's not hard to keep copper clean, especially pots and pans - countertops are a little more work since you're always setting things on them and water gets under a mug or whatever. But it is something to just be aware of and stay on top of (as with any tool). Copper that looks shiny is clean; copper that looks dull, maybe brownish, but still basically copper colored, I also consider clean. Any green, blue, red, or even black spots are "clean me now!" signs (though I rarely see the black and it doesn't seem to be water soluble). When we were first deciding whether to seal our countertops under a layer of food-safe epoxy, as many copper DIY-ers do, I did some research to see if I could find documented instances of poisoning related to bare copper surfaces. I found only one very concerning instance (this was many years ago, so I haven't got a citation) that took place about a century ago and involved commercial-scale operations and significant negligence. So we decided to go for it and we've been fans ever since, at least for countertops (still can't afford those fancy copper pans and sinks and what not). There is a text available online, "Metal Contamination of Food: Its Significance for Food Quality and Human Health" published by Blackwell Science that has a section about copper specifically. I think it provides a great overview of the subject.

1:00 rawdogg copper was my nickname in highschool

I find it absolutely fascinating that we have theories for the wide variety of complexities of the universe but only not conclusive studies for cooking that we have been practicing for almost all of human history

Haha, loved the end! Yes, video on silver ware wound be dope!

Very interesting video, and the silver one sounds very interesting too! I'm used to seeing a lot of red pots in my grandma's kitchen, usually far darker. I understand that copper was traditionally used for polenta -- my grandma used to say "una ramina di polenta", "ramina" being a dialectal term for "copper pot" (literally: "little copper one").

Alex from French Guy Cooking travelled to Istanbul to get a silver-lined cooper pot. All handmade by a father-son team. They claim that stirring is not necessary since the heat is so perfectly distributed. And if you put a lid on it that's also made with copper and lined with silver, you've just made a perfect small oven. Fascinating stuff. It's a part of his series on sauces if you wanna check it out.

Amazing Info!! Educational!! Your program is great, love it!! Thank you for sharing. Greetings from Singapore 🌷🌷🌷 Edith, a happy Subscriber

Your such a great teacher.

Yes Adam, you should absolutely make a video on solid silver cookware. That sounds like a great video!

I'd love to see a future video on silver cookware

Wow this is so informative, thank you

Honestly, I thought solid copper cookware was too fragile and too easily scratched to use in an everyday setting. Now the solid silver cookware seems like the ultimate wedding gift for a chef.

You could make a whole series of videos testing pans made out of any material and I'd be down for it

Great video Adam! :)

Great video, great content. Subbed.

I have no idea what this is worth but I thought I would add it (one year later so no one sees) I worked in a small metal plating shop as a teenager. The copper tanks filled with the familiar green color of faded copper...when dunking the metal to be coppered into the tanks, splashes happen, and every so often a smash would land in your mouth. It was very sweet tasting.

Rather than solid silver, I would love if you did a video on aluminum cookware and when it makes sense to get aluminum vs alternatives. I have sworn by my nonstick aluminum wok because the heat transfer is excellent and I theorize that it is the rate of heat transfer that makes a wok effective not the absolute temperature (above a certain point).

Hey Adam! Longtime lover of your channel here, I've been watching your content since the infamous "seasoning your cutting board" video (which I now sometimes do lol). I have a topic I'd love to see you cover: Mustard Oil! Due to it's high smoke point it's commonly used in India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, etc, but it is banned for internal consumption by the FDA here in the US. It's still sold as an "external massage oil" but is still used as a cooking ingredient by a lot of people. I think a video looking into mustard oil, it's safety, and some of it's culinary uses would be really interesting.

I know it's fairly common to coat copper pans in silver in the ultra high end pan market. Almost, if not, 1K for a jam pot even smaller than the one you showed off in the video. I couldn't imagine the cost of a full silver pot

The book recommendation „On food and cooking“ was incredibly valuable. The author has an open mind and has managed to meticulously gather information on very fundamental questions, then was able to transform this into a cohesive, exhaustive work.

I love this, thank you! I would love to see you use a pure silver pan, but I would also love to see you learn more about how they're made. that is such a niche market and i think it would be fascinating to learn more about the production side and the craftspeople behind it as well.

I grew up in southern West Virginia, where I learned that apple butter should be made in a copper pot -- probably for the same reasons as the French jam pot, and also because (I guess) the copper would even out the heat from a wood fire.

Very informative. Thanks.

Cool I hope some people keep creating videos like these ❤️

Some blade makers have been integrating copper as a layer in their kitchen cutlery in the last few years. It's known as CuMai and it has grown quite popular for the contrast that copper lends. I'm fine with it in non-food related blades, but I still have my reservations about them in the kitchen. If you do a silver pan episode, would you also be able to address this as well?

Adam, I have an interesting copper pan related observation you may be interested in investigating. The food RU-vidr Alex the French Guy did a series of videos on sauces where he traveled to Turkey to have a custom sauce pot made for him. It was made of copper with a thin silver liner bonded to its inside, ostensibly for the same reason that tin is used to line copper pots and pans-to shield the food from contact with copper. Visually speaking, the silver looks reminiscent of the stainless steel and tin liners, but silver is right under copper in the periodic table, and has similar properties (high conductivity, anti-microbial properties). Could you find out whether or not lining a copper pan with silver offers only illusory protection? I know that silver can cause heavy metal poisoning (argyria; do an image search for the term if you dare). I don't know of any micronutrient use for silver. So is lining a copper pan with silver just switching from one known form of harm to a potentially worse but unknown form of harm? Or is silver less soluble when in contact with acidic foods? Would a Moscow Mule copper mug be less dangerous if the inside were silver plated? Or is it just going to give you argyria and related silver poisoning instead of copper poisoning?