My Bartender’s Secret

When I was on The Nate Berkus show earlier this week, I mentioned cleaning my copper with “my bartender’s secret” and I have gotten a number of questions about it. It’s not really a secret, it’s a friend -- Bar Keeper’s Friend, a great way to clean copper pots, pans and more. I like this because it seems to keep copper cleaner for longer than other products. Not only does BKF clean the tarnish off the copper, it also gets sudsy and makes a sheeting action, so that the copper doesn’t spot as easily.Before I moved to Wales, I had more than 100 pieces of kitchen copper, and I used this on all of them. You can find this in some grocery stores in the cleaning section (look at the bottom shelves) or in old-style hardware stores.

As we move into fall, there’s nothing prettier on the table than some copper pieces.