Copper Cookware Weirdness - 10 Insanely Creative Ways to Prepare Food For Cooking in Your Copper Pot

When cooking with copper cookware, you want to save time and money. I've gathered together some incredibly unique tips that will save you both.

1. Bamboo skewers can be used as cake testers, or to hold things like rollatini, cabbage rolls or veal envelopes together for cooking in your copper cookware skillet.

2. Some cooks use a mandolin for grating. Instead, try a hardware wood rasp. It gives you nice and long, thin shreds with little or no work. Hard cheese grates easily with this. You could also just buy a microplaner grater. These work on nutmeg too; also wide ribbon graters can be used for soft cheese, or even for peeling citrus zest!

3. Tablespoon sized citrus zester: This is nice but nonessential; some also have a blade that gives you a perfect peel: a wide zest strip of martini twist proportions.

4. For massive shredding jobs like big batches of coleslaw or crocks of sauerkraut: Use a big pizza delivery box plus aluminum foil. Put a box grater at one end, and the whole apparatus hooked onto the back of a chair with a big hook. The person gratiing stands behind the chair while the grated food slides into big bowl at the base of the chair. Kitchen aid brand with a slight curve is most stable and easiest to use. (No, I don't work for them, I'm just telling you.)

5. Fluted meat and fish slicer: Use this for thin slices of soft cooked meat like cured salmon or raw meat/fish for carpaccio. Cook this in your copper cookware. Just be careful when washing: hold the knife flat against nearest wall of a sink and scrub with a brush with a handle; air dry (don't put away wet: they rust).

6. You can offer some additional protection to the pan by always ensuring that it is never completely empty while heating it. Some olive or canola oil, or butter can be used for this purpose. Alternatively, simply add a liquid like water.

7. Few people know how to cook with flaxseed oil or Udo's oil. If you add it to the copper cookware during cooking, the oil will turn into a harmful trans fat due to the high temperatures, so you should just cook with water, or a little bit of temperature resistant oil like extra virgin olive oil. Then add the Udo's or flax oil afterwards for that wonderfully nutty, significant, delectable taste!

8. Sometimes, copper cookware may be coated with a lacquer that has to dissolved prior to use. Add a cup of baking soda to approximately two gallons of water hot, scalding water, and submerge the copper cookware. The coating will peel off nicely, after which you can wash it with soap and water, then dry.

9. When frying eggs, you can put some aluminum foil as a lining in your copper cookware frying pan. Then, after cooking, you can just flip the eggs and foil into a wide plate, for a wonderful pancake-shapped omelette. The best part is, your copper cookware frying pan will be spic and span clean!

10. French toast without a frying pan: Whip an egg with about 30 mL of milk and 1 tsp of cinnamon in a mixing bowl. A copper mixing bowl will give you the best rise. Then soak a piece of bread in it for 1 minute. Microwave the bread for a minute, turn it over, then microwave for another minute. Voila, french toast made WITHOUT a frying pan!