Equipment

Is a copper cezve safe to use?

Why copper is restricted at all

Clemson University’s extension service, summarising the regulatory position, puts it plainly: some foods are capable of dissolving metals, and in sufficient quantity leached copper can cause nausea, vomiting and diarrhoea. It notes that copper cookware is usually lined with tin or stainless steel, and that the FDA cautions against using unlined copper for general cooking.

The rule that applies in commercial kitchens is more specific. The FDA Food Code prohibits copper and copper alloys such as brass from contact with food below pH 6, naming vinegar, fruit juice and wine. That code governs restaurants and retail food businesses rather than your kitchen — but the chemistry it is responding to does not check where the pot is standing.

What we are not going to tell you

You will find plenty of pages that state coffee’s pH to two decimal places and then apply the Food Code threshold to it. We looked. The FDA’s own table of approximate food pH values has no entry for coffee — it runs Congee, Corn, Crabmeat — and Jezwa has measured nothing itself.

So we are not giving you a number. We do not need one: the caution against unlined copper does not depend on which food you put in it, and the practical advice is the same either way. Buy a lined pot.

The linings, and what each one asks of you

• Tin. The traditional lining, and the one most hand-made pots use. It is soft, and it wears with use and scrubbing. A tinned pot is a pot you will eventually have re-tinned. That is normal, not a defect — but it means inspecting the inside is part of owning one, and a pot showing bare copper through the lining has stopped being a lined pot.
• Stainless steel. Harder, does not wear through, and asks nothing of you. Less traditional, and it changes how the pot conducts heat.
• Other linings. Nickel and silver both appear on the market. Both are sold as food-safe. If you are buying one, ask the seller for the evidence rather than the adjective — and if you know you react to nickel, ask specifically.
• Unlined copper, or raw brass. Not for cooking in. Some are sold as decorative and some are sold without the distinction being made at all, which is the problem.

Where Jezwa stands

We do not sell a pot yet. When we do, this page will say what it is made of, what it is lined with, what that lining needs from you, and which hobs it works on — because those are the six things we think you are owed about a tool, and we would rather publish them than a photograph.

Until then this page exists because the question is worth answering whether or not you buy anything from us.

Something wrong here? Tell us at hello@jezwa.com, or read how we write these.