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See why.The Best Sauté Pans
A cross between a skillet and a saucepan, this versatile pan can be used for shallow frying, searing, braising, and more.
By Published Nov. 22, 2022
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What You Need To Know
The best sauté pans heat evenly, have a broad cooking surface, and are comfortable to hold and pour from. We liked many of the pans we tested, but we found a favorite in the Made In Stainless Clad Saute Pan. It had a roomy cooking surface and browned food evenly, and its moderately high walls corralled splatters. We also liked its comfortable handle.
What You Need to Know
Sauté pans offer the broad cooking surface of a skillet but unlike skillets, they have moderately high, L-shaped walls. Their walls are high enough to contain food and prevent spills as you stir but low enough that it’s easy to reach in with tongs to flip food. They’re one of our go-to pans for braising, shallow frying, and cooking large amounts of greens.
All the pans in our lineup are made from stainless steel, which is good for developing fond, the flavorful bits of food left behind after browning that serve as the base for pan sauces. Stainless steel can withstand high temperatures: The pans in our lineup are ovensafe to at least 500 degrees Fahrenheit. The pans we tested hold between 3 and 3.5 quarts, offering a cooking surface similar to that of a 12-inch skillet.
The pans have another important thing in common: They’re fully clad, which we know from previous testings that we prefer to disk-bottom pans. Fully clad pans are made of layers of aluminum sandwiched between stainless steel. Aluminum quickly conducts heat, while stainless steel retains heat well. During our testing, we identified other key features that mean the difference between a good sauté pan and a great sauté pan.
What to Look For
- A Broad Cooking Surface: Our favorite pans had wide cooking surfaces that measured between 9.5 and 9.8 inches. A large cooking surface meant we could cook more food at once. Meatballs weren’t crowded together, and there was room for us to reach in with tongs and rotate them. Greens cooked quicker because they could be spread in a thinner layer.
- Moderately High Walls: Walls on our pans ranged from 2 to nearly 3 inches tall, but we preferred pans with walls that were just under 2.5 inches, which not only contained the food we cooked in them but also made it easy to access the cooking food.
- Moderate Weight: When transferring food to a plate, pouring off fat before making a pan sauce, or moving a full sauté pan to the oven, it’s important that the pan be comfortable to lift. Moderately heavy pans were ideal. They felt sturdy, but we could still lift them and pour from them without too much strain.
- A Long, Straight, Comfortable Handle: We preferred pans with long, straight handles; they were the most comfortable to use. A dedicated place to rest our thumbs was a ...
Everything We Tested
Highly Recommended
- Performance: 3 stars out of 3.
- Ease of Use: 3 stars out of 3.
- Cleanup/Durability: 3 stars out of 3.
This pan wowed our cooks from the start. It browned food evenly on the stovetop and produced fluffy rice in the oven. Its broad cooking surface provided plenty of room to brown meatballs and accommodate one pound of raw spinach. Its walls were high enough that we didn’t lose any food when stirring but low enough that it was easy to reach inside with tongs to flip food. Its moderate weight meant it wasn’t too heavy to pour from. Its handle was long, offset, and straight, with a small divot on which we could rest our thumb. It retained one small dent during the abuse test, but this divot didn’t affect the pan’s stability.
- Performance: 3 stars out of 3.
- Ease of Use: 2.5 stars out of 3.
- Cleanup/Durability: 3 stars out of 3.
This pan browned meatballs evenly, and it cooked spinach quickly. It had one of the widest cooking surfaces of all the pans in our lineup, so food was never crowded. Although it weighs slightly more than our winner, it was still easy enough to pour from and carry to and from the oven. It had the lowest walls in our lineup, which allowed us to comfortably reach in with a spatula and tongs, but we lost some food over the edge when stirring. Also, it’s the only pan in our lineup that’s not dishwasher-safe.
Recommended
- Performance: 3 stars out of 3.
- Ease of Use: 2 stars out of 3.
- Cleanup/Durability: 3 stars out of 3.
This beautiful pan was a pleasure to cook in. Its broad cooking surface allowed us enough space to cook one pound of spinach and brown meatballs. Its walls were high enough to contain food but low enough to enable easy access. Its handle swooped rather dramatically up and away from the pan. For shorter testers, this handle was awkward to hold. Additionally, the balance of the weight between the pan and handle wasn’t even. This made the pan seem heavier than other models when we were holding it. However, we like that the rivets inside the pan are flush with the pan’s walls, making cleanup a breeze.
- Performance: 3 stars out of 3.
- Ease of Use: 1.5 stars out of 3.
- Cleanup/Durability: 3 stars out of 3.
With a broad cooking surface and solid construction, this pan produced fluffy rice and nicely browned meatballs. This pan was the heaviest in our lineup, and it felt poorly balanced and thus pan-heavy. It didn’t help that users couldn’t choke up on the pan’s handle due to its shape, a criticism that was voiced repeatedly by several testers while lifting the pan and pouring from it. There were no rivets on the inside of the pan, which meant that there were no tiny crevices for food to get stuck—a small design choice that we appreciated each time we cleaned the pan.
Recommended with reservations
- Performance: 3 stars out of 3.
- Ease of Use: 1 stars out of 3.
- Cleanup/Durability: 3 stars out of 3.
Due to its narrow cooking surface and high walls, this pan’s capacity seemed a lot smaller than the stated 3.5 quarts. There was less room to cook, and we struggled to fit one pound of raw spinach. Plus, we had to awkwardly reach over the walls when we wanted to sweep a nonstick spatula around its edges or flip meatballs with tongs. Its slightly curved, thin handle was comfortable to use, though we didn’t like it as much as straight, more substantial handles.
- Performance: 3 stars out of 3.
- Ease of Use: 0.5 stars out of 3.
- Cleanup/Durability: 3 stars out of 3.
Like all the models in our lineup, this pan cooked food evenly. However, it differed from other pans in our lineup in two key ways: It lacked a helper handle, and its lid was made of glass rather than stainless steel. When we carried this pan to and from the oven, we had to support the pan’s weight single-handedly with just an oven mitt for protection. While the aim of the glass lid was to make monitoring our food easier, our view was often obscured by steam. Also, the lid was annoyingly heavy. Users struggled with this pan’s short stubby handle, which pressed uncomfortably into the middle of our palms. The rivets inside the pan were flush with the interior, which made it very easy to clean.
- Performance: 3 stars out of 3.
- Ease of Use: 1.5 stars out of 3.
- Cleanup/Durability: 2 stars out of 3.
Users liked the ease of pouring from the lightest pan in our lineup. It was easy to move it in and out of the oven too. However, with only 8.5 inches of cooking surface, food was more crowded than it was in the pans with broader interiors. We struggled to fit a pound of raw spinach in this pan. The pan’s narrowness plus its high walls made it challenging to reach in with a silicone spatula or tongs. Its long, thin handle was comfortable to hold, and it felt secure in our hands while pouring hot oil from the pan. Unfortunately, during abuse testing, it retained two nickel-size dents on either side of the bottom of the pan.
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The mission of America’s Test Kitchen Reviews is to find the best equipment and ingredients for the home cook through rigorous, hands-on testing.
Carolyn Grillo
Carolyn is a senior editor for ATK Reviews. She's a French-trained professional baker.
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