The Best Saucepans

Our longtime winner excelled, with uniform, steady heating and good visibility inside the saucepan to monitor browning. Its cup-shaped stay-cool handle was easy to grip, and a helper handle provided another grabbing point when the pan was full. Even after brutal whacking on concrete, this model emerged with only tiny dents inside and one slight dent on the bottom, and it still sat flat on the counter.

This small saucepan performed very well, earning a place in our kitchen. It cooked evenly and steadily and survived our durability tests virtually unscathed. Its handle felt secure and comfortable in our hands and stayed cool throughout testing. It also cleaned up easily. We think it’d make a great addition to any cookware collection.

This fully clad saucepan made perfect custard and evenly cooked rice pilaf, heating relatively quickly despite its five-ply construction. Its moderate weight was nicely balanced, so the pot never felt overly heavy even when laden with food; a large, looped helper handle also gave us some lifting assistance when we needed it. It was easy to grip its long main handle, which was set at a comfortable angle from the pot. Our only quibbles? It dented just a tad when we whacked it on concrete, though not enough to affect performance. And its lid has a deep trough around its perimeter that can be a pain to clean.

This wide five-ply saucepan made perfect food and was built like a tank; weighing five pounds with the lid on, it survived testing without so much as a dent. Because it’s a bit thick and heavy, though, it took a little longer to heat up. It was also rather hard to lift, not only because of its weight but because its main handle is on the short side, throwing off the balance of the pot and making it seem even heavier. With this in mind, we especially appreciated its large looped helper handle, which lightened our load a bit. We also liked that the interior of the pot was smooth with no rivets around which food might accumulate.

This saucepan has the same tri-ply fully-clad construction as our top-rated All-Clad pan, with two layers of stainless steel sandwiched around a layer of aluminum. It performed almost as well, but ran a little fast and hot, so onions browned slightly around the perimeter of the pan. The cooking surface is relatively narrow. The moderately heavy frame was easy to lift and scrape food from, but its handle gets hot during extended cooking. Its shiny interior dulled after cleaning up pilaf, and it suffered more damage in our abuse testing than higher-ranked models.

This pan performed quite well. The rounded handle felt a touch less secure in our palm (particularly when we were holding the pan aloft to scrape out food) and it got hot after a while on the stove, but we never lost our grip and simply used a pot holder when we needed to. This model dented in our concrete ledge abuse tests but overall is a quality pan at a great price.

Onions cooked evenly and rice came out fluffy and separate in this wide, sturdy saucepan. The round handle stayed completely cool but sometimes slipped in our hands when we were scooping and scraping out food because the saucepan is heavy. It cleaned up well and emerged from abuse testing with only small dents.

If our Best Buy isn’t available, this tri-ply saucepan is a great option, offering good value for its midrange price. It made excellent food and was relatively easy to clean as well. Because it’s on the lighter side, it was fairly comfortable to lift, though its handle curves upward at an awkward angle that throws off the pot’s balance slightly. (You might need to choke up on the handle in order to be able to get a good, controlled pour from the pot.) It lacks a helper handle, and dented slightly when we whacked it on a concrete block but not enough to compromise its performance.

Though this saucepan is solidly built, its performance was volatile: It heated very slowly and then cooked too fast. Plus, its balance was off, making it awkward to hoist. Its skirted lid took longer to place properly on the saucepan and was difficult to place over a towel when making pilaf. The dark nonstick interior was great for cleanup but not for monitoring browning; worse, fluffing rice with a fork left scratches. Thermal shock warped it slightly, and it dented during abuse testing.

Rice cooked unevenly, thanks to this saucepan’s shaky stovetop performance, which required us to constantly adjust the heat, although we were able to produce good browned butter and crème anglaise with extra vigilance. It felt more cumbersome than heavier models, and its handle became hot. Instead of a loop, the lid had a knob that became hot, and felt very small to grab. Its shiny surface quickly dulled with use, and it became visibly dented when we knocked it on concrete.

Only the base of this saucepan was clad, so food at the thinner edges overcooked: Onions browned too deeply and custard stuck. Its curved-in walls also made it hard to see what was going on inside the pan when browning butter, and its balance was off-kilter, making it feel heavy. The pan was difficult to lift and tilt since the handle became hot and rotated in our hands. The interior discolored and was hard to scrub clean. Abuse testing left this model dented.