Copper Frying Pans & Sahan Dishes

Copper frying pans and sahan dishes

Copper conducts heat better than any other metal used in the kitchen, roughly twenty times faster than steel. No hot spots form on the surface, so food cooks at the same rate everywhere, and the pan cools the moment you lift it off the heat. That is why professional kitchens still reach for copper. All interiors are tin-lined for food safety.

Wall thickness is the honest measure of a copper pan. Ours are worked from 1.2 to 2 mm sheet depending on diameter, and the base is left heaviest. Thin copper is quick but it warps and it scorches; the extra weight in the base is exactly what gives you the even, forgiving heat people buy copper for. A 24 cm pan built this way weighs around 1.2 to 1.6 kg.

Pan or sahan?

A sahan is shallow, handled and usually lidded, it goes from stove to table for menemen, eggs with sucuk and single portions. A frying pan is wider and deeper, made for searing and sautéing. Breakfast sahan dishes run 12 to 18 cm (5 to 7 in); cooking pans 20 to 28 cm (8 to 11 in).

For two people at breakfast, a pair of 14 cm sahan beats one large pan. Each person gets their own, and the copper keeps the egg hot at the table long after the stove is off.

Cooking on tin

• Low to medium heat is enough. Copper reaches temperature far sooner than you expect it to.
• Never heat an empty pan hard. Tin softens near 230 °C and melts at 232 °C.
• Put the fat into a warm pan, not a hot one.
• Wooden or silicone tools only; metal spatulas score the lining.
• Deglaze off the heat, because copper is still cooking after the flame is out.

Use and care

Dishwashers and steel wool wear the tin away. Wash by hand with warm water and a soft sponge, dry at once, and store without stacking heavy pans inside the lining. When copper colour starts showing through the interior, the pan needs re-tinning, a service, not a defect. A well-used pan comes back from the tinning bench ready for another decade of work.