The Cookware Material David Chang Would Deck Out His Kitchen With
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If you're a professional chef, spending anywhere from a third of your day or more working in the kitchen, it is perfectly reasonable to want to be surrounded by beautiful equipment, and that includes the pots and pans you cook with. For Chef David Chang, it's copper cookware that catches his eye, and he revealed to GQ that his dream would be to own an entire kitchen stocked with an aesthetically pleasing set of copper pots and pans. "This is just real nice," Chang says with longing.
Even if you're an amateur chef, copper cookware offers benefits beyond the visual. Copper cooks beautifully, Chang explains, and the material isn't heavy or cumbersome to use. Plus, as water boils and ingredients cook in copper products, trace minerals are added to recipes and offer health benefits that support digestion and immune function (via Allóra). Be warned, however, there's a reason Chang isn't in possession of his dream. Outfitting a kitchen with copper products can be an expensive endeavor, even for professional chefs.
A pretty expensive product
Even Julia Child recognized that copper is more conductive when compared to stainless steel cookware — in fact, the golden material is 10 times more so. That means pots will heat up more quickly once placed on the stove, and you can get to work on recipes without wasting time for pans to warm. With heat more evenly distributed across the surface of your cookware, you won't need to worry about places on the pan where delicate scallops might burn.
Yet to kit out your kitchen in copper cookware, get your wallet ready. Due to limited supply and increasing demand for copper products, these sets are pricey, so much so that even professionals are hesitant to invest. A single Mauviel copper saucepan like the one Chang is holding in the video will run you around $250, so if you're looking to fill your kitchen with a set of these pretty items, you can estimate that you'll need to reserve thousands for your considerable yet very attractive investment.