A sahan and a frying pan are not the same vessel. The sahan is deeper, usually carries two small handles, and travels from the hob straight to the table; eggs, menemen and sucuk with eggs are cooked in it and eaten out of it. A frying pan has one long handle, sits shallower and flares at the rim. Its job is to toss, to sear and to reduce a sauce.
What diameter to buy
- 16 to 18 cm: eggs for one, a small sauce, melting butter.
- 20 to 22 cm: breakfast for two.
- 24 to 26 cm: a household of four, the everyday pan.
- 28 to 32 cm: a crowded table and saç kavurma.
The figure on the label is the rim diameter, not the base. A pan marked 26 cm usually has a base of 20 to 21 cm. If your burner is wider than that base, the flame licks the side wall and the handle gets hot enough to catch you out.
The base should be 1.5 to 2 mm
On our pans the base runs 1.5 to 2 mm and the side wall 1 to 1.2 mm. The difference is deliberate. Heat comes in through the base; a thick wall helps nobody and only adds weight. On a 0.8 mm base the metal gets fierce wherever the flame touches it and stays lukewarm two fingers away, and food catches on that hot spot. A thick base spreads the heat sideways, which is the whole point of copper.
Before the first use
Wash it in warm soapy water, use nothing harder than a soft sponge, then dry it properly. Put a little sunflower oil on a paper towel and wipe a thin coat over the inside. Whatever the polishing left behind goes with it, and the tin is ready for its first heat.
Medium heat is enough
Copper conducts heat roughly twenty times faster than stainless steel. Use the setting you are used to on a steel pan and you will burn the food. Keep the flame inside the footprint of the base, stay on medium, and the pan will wait for you.
The rule that matters: never leave the pan empty over a flame. An empty copper pan on medium heat reaches 300 degrees in three or four minutes. Tin melts at 232. Melted tin pools in the middle of the base, freezes there as a bead when it cools, and the surface is spoiled. Oil first, flame second.
Deep frying is not its job
Do not deep fry in a copper pan. Even if the oil itself holds at 180 degrees, the spot where the flame meets the base runs much hotter while the oil is heating, and that sits right on the tin limit. Leave frying to steel or cast iron.
No metal spatula
Tin is softer than copper. A metal spatula, a fork tip or a whisk will score the surface, the scratch widens over time and the copper underneath is exposed. Use wood, bamboo or silicone.
Washing
The dishwasher is the enemy of copper. Machine detergent is alkaline: it eats the tin and stains the outside. Warm water, liquid soap, a soft sponge and drying straight away. A pan left wet will spot. Do not scrape at anything stuck to the base; soak it in warm water for half an hour and it lifts on its own.
How long the tin lasts
Three to five years in a home kitchen, twelve to eighteen months in a restaurant kitchen running ten hours a day. Tin going dull is normal. The real signal is a patch of red copper the size of your palm showing through the base. At that point the pan is not scrap; it goes back to the tinner and is relined.
The darkening outside is not a fault
Copper deepens in colour as it meets the air. That is patina, it protects the metal and it is not grounds for a return. If you want the shine back, rub the outside with half a lemon dipped in salt, then rinse and dry.
Induction
Copper is not magnetic, so an induction hob does not detect the pan at all. Models with a steel disc bonded to the base solve it, as does an adapter plate underneath, though the plate slows the heat up and blunts the quick response you bought copper for. On gas and conventional electric rings there is no such problem.
What it cooks well, and what it does not
Eggs, menemen in the sahan, butter sauces, mushrooms, vegetables and saç kavurma all gain from copper's fast, even heat. Keep it away from deep frying and from very acidic sauces that simmer for hours. Twenty minutes of tomato sauce is fine; three hours is not.
