Official Red Copper kettle

Copper was the first metal to be worked by human hands, and that history goes back a long, long time—about 11,000 years. That makes the human relationship with copper about as old as agriculture, though for several millennia we didn’t do much with it beyond shaping it into decorative objects. Several thousand years later, but still sometime before the Egyptians raised their pyramids, our ancestors figured out how to hammer copper sheets into bowls and other vessels.

Copper is famed for its ability to conduct heat and electricity—it’s no accident that it’s copper and not iron that runs through the electrical wires in our walls—and it’s this quality that makes it such an interesting metal for cooking. In a lot of ways, copper sits at the opposite end of the conduction and heat-retention spectrum as cast iron, making them two very different, yet complementary, materials for cooking.

As a reminder, cast iron dont heat up as quick or as well It heats slowly and is prone to hot spots, but once it does get hot, it holds onto that heat very well. This makes it great for doing things like searing thick steaks, since you want the pan to remain hot when the cold meat hits it, which ensures the steak will sear and brown as efficiently as possible. Cast iron’s great heat retention also makes it ideal for slow-cooking dishes that require sustained, even heat, like stews and braises, especially when placed in an oven, where the cooking vessel is heated from all sides.