Copper Chef Fryer – Strong Out of The Gate!

My friend Scott has been gushing about his arsenal of Copper Pots that he got from a local hardware store near Three Oaks, MI for a while now, so when Groupon slashed Amazon’s price by over half, I couldn’t resist the urge to test the waters and see what the bruhaha is all about with these pots.

As I most often do, when I saw the $29.99 sticker price through Groupon, I immediately checked Amazon to see how good of a deal this was/not. Amazon had the same thing listed for $79.99 [a week later, Amazon is now selling this for $51.55] so in retrospect, the conspiracist in me could see a connection between the Groupon deal and drastic fluctuation in Amazon’s pricing – but I digress.

I had a tremendous amount of fun using the pot for our trial run and look forward to see what kind of impact it can make on an on-going basis. Trial runs are simple – we get hungry and then I concoct a meal that I can make in the new pot. Simple as that!

The first thing I did was to “Season” the Copper Pot. There is really no instruction manual that directs this, but I read enough reviews that mentioned it to the point it was worth the 10 minutes or so to do it:

HOW TO SEASON A COPPER CHEF POT/PAN
1. If you haven’t already, wash the pot with hot, soapy water.
2. Turn burner to med/high and let the pot heat up for a couple of minutes
3. Pour in enough cooking oil to coat the bottom and allow that to heat for several minutes until it smells/starts to smoke (Use grapeseed, vegetable, or other high-smoke oil; Olive oil only if it’s the only thing you have)
4. Turn heat off, allow the oil to cool, and pour out oil. Wipe out any excess. You are now ready to rock and roll with your Copper Pot

Here is the pot in action, starting from the top left:

• I cracked two eggs into the pot, no butter, oil, or other fat needed
• The eggs slipped around without sticking at all
• I didn’t think to take prior pictures, but I browned a half pound of shredded potatoes with onions and garlic to make the crispiest hashbrowns I’ve achieved to date – using no fat
• For dinner, I found the frying basket to be the perfect partner for boiling pasta noodles
• I invented a wine cream sauce by sauteing some veg without liquid
• And finally adding a heavy pour of red wine which I let reduce down considerably for the final sauce – I did use plenty of butter in the sauce for taste/textural purposes

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I plan to showcase the pot with some one-pot meal ideas due to the versatility of it. It also came with a steaming insert so I’ll be sure that is included next.

The preliminary verdict is all positive!