Like many boomer kids, and some later ones as well, I spent part of my childhood polishing the copper bottoms of my mother’s Revere Ware pots. Actually, I think it was the only part of dish-washing that I liked, revealing the copper gleam on the pots, which were hung on a pegboard in our kitchen. Pegboards are another post I’m sure to get to.
When I moved out some thirty years or so ago, I went out and bought myself my own set…but without copper bottoms. They had the same lightweight and nearly indestructible design, and they served me well until about the turn of the century when my wife and I merged households. She too had spent hours cleaning the copper-bottomed pots, but her mom tended to burn things more often than mine, so it wasn’t quite the fun task I remembered it as.
Seeing my pots show up just about gave her nightmares, in fact.
So we went out and bought a set of highly recommended expensive cookware, which has gotten shoved to the back of the cupboard, except for a saucepan that’s the right size for making rice in, and we generally cook on a collection of mismatched non-stick pots. Not that I have anything against mismatched pots. Really. The expensive cookware turned out to be too heavy for my gal’s wrists, which is ironic since she’s in much better shape than I am. I’m a guy and a fairly big one, so where she has me in speed, I’ve got her in horsepower. Unfortunately, she’s also got me in horse-sense.
My Revere Ware had all the durability of fancy stainless steel cookware, with none of the weight, and the pistol grips were every bit as ergonomic as anything Good Grips has come up with. Later on, Revere would add an aluminum disc sandwiched between two layers of stainless, to create their “tri-ply” cookware, with better heat distribution, but I never liked them much. To me, it seemed like they took an elegant design and made it clunky.
The sole remaining representative of my cookware is my 8 QT Stockpot, which looks nearly new though it’s over thirty years old. It’s my go-to pot for soups, and I really like it. Every time I use it though, it reminds me of the rest of the set. Which I miss.
I set out to find it, or at least one like it.
The original set I owned is no longer in production, though the tri-ply ones are still available online. Still, thanks to eBay, which opened the attics of the world to shoppers everywhere, I’ve found a few sets like mine still out there for around a hundred bucks.
The next step in my plan should be obvious to any married person. I now had to get my wife’s permission to get it. Hopefully, the terror of her mother’s pots had diminished over time. To broach the subject, I first made soup using the stockpot, then while she was sampling it…I mused (loudly) over the virtues of the pot. It’s lightness, durability, ease of cleaning, and willingness to suffer any abrasive or chemical cleaner. “Really,” I extolled, “they don’t make them like this anymore.”
“Fine.” She said, not fooled for a second. “As long as I can keep the saucepan that makes perfect rice and a pair of non-stick frying pans, I’m happy for you to get whatever you want.”
That was easy. She was probably impressed by the soup.
Update: The “new” pots just arrived, they’re in fantastic condition, and I like them just as much as I did their predecessors. Can’t wait to go cook something in them, and this weekend will be a good start…I’m making chicken stock three ways to see which I like best for soup: broth, stock, or roasted.
Stainless Revere Ware (introduced in 1974) was styled identical to that of traditional Copper Clad Revere Ware, it used the stainless steel clad carbon steel core material first used in Patriot Ware and later in the Contempora and finally Tri-Ply Revere Ware lines. This provided satisfactory cooking performance, and retained the Revere Ware “look”. Stainless Revere Ware became Revere’s main line, and remained in production into the 1990’s. Produced at the Clinton plant, the copper clad production it displaced was transferred to the Rome plant, allowing that plants’ copper clad line (mothballed since 1968) to restart. – Source: Revere Ware Hstory