Reviews you can trust.
See why.The Best Saucepans
The saucepan is a kitchen essential, used to make everything from soup to custard. Which is best?
We tested a few additional saucepans. Our winners remain the same.
Top Picks
What You Need To Know
Our favorite saucepan is the All-Clad D3 Stainless 4-Qt Sauce Pan and has been for decades. With its fully clad construction, this all-purpose pot makes perfect soup and custard. It’s also durable and comfortable to lift and maneuver. For a less expensive option, try the Tramontina Tri-Ply Clad 4 Qt. Saucepan. It performs nearly as well as our favorite but is less durable and has a slightly smaller cooking surface.
If you’re looking for a slightly smaller saucepan, useful for cooking rice, boiling water, heating leftovers, or cooking recipes for one or two, we also like the smaller versions of our favorites, the All-Clad D3 Stainless 2-Qt Sauce Pan and the Tramontina Gourmet Stainless Steel Induction-Ready Tri-Ply Clad Covered Saucepan, 2 Quart.
And if you’re interested in a smaller nonstick saucepan, we have a full review here.
What You Need to Know
Cookware doesn’t get much simpler than a stainless-steel saucepan: It’s basically a steep-sided bowl with a handle and a lid. But it also doesn’t get more important, since this is the vessel you’ll use to prepare everything from soups and sauces to pasta and grains to custard and puddings. And when it comes to performance, we’ve found that the differences between models can be surprisingly significant.
What Size Saucepan Should You Get?
We think that a stainless-steel saucepan with a capacity of 4 quarts is the best all-purpose size for most cooks. It’s a little less than half the size of our favorite Dutch oven, giving you a handy medium-size vessel in which to make a wide variety of foods.
Consider a 2-quart saucepan if you cook for one or two people or just want a smaller but still durable saucepan that will let you warm up leftovers, make small batches of soup or rice, or heat milk or water.
Are Expensive Saucepans Worth the Money?
Yes, up to a point. Over the decades, we’ve tested dozens of saucepans in a wide range of prices. We’ve found that less expensive saucepans are often less well-made and less durable, warping or denting more easily or having handles that loosen over time. They can be too heavy or poorly balanced, making them difficult to lift and maneuver, or too lightweight, making them prone to warping. And they have other design flaws that make them perform less well.
Our favorite saucepan costs more but is worth the investment. It performs better than cheaper models, is easy to handle, and is much more durable—it will last a lifetime if you treat it right, saving you money in the long run. In our opinion, you don’t have to spend more than what our top choice costs—fancier, more expensive five-ply models won’t perform better and will be heavier...
Everything We Tested
Highly Recommended
- Cleanup: 3 stars out of 3.
- Durability: 3 stars out of 3.
- Ease of Use: 3 stars out of 3.
- Performance: 3 stars out of 3.
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.
- Cleanup: 3 stars out of 3.
- Durability: 3 stars out of 3.
- Ease of Use: 3 stars out of 3.
- Performance: 3 stars out of 3.
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.
Recommended
- Cleanup: 2.5 stars out of 3.
- Ease Of Use: 3 stars out of 3.
- Durability: 2.5 stars out of 3.
- Performance: 3 stars out of 3.
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.
- Cleanup: 3 stars out of 3.
- Ease Of Use: 2 stars out of 3.
- Durability: 3 stars out of 3.
- Performance: 3 stars out of 3.
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.
- Cleanup: 2.5 stars out of 3.
- Durability: 2 stars out of 3.
- Ease of Use: 2.5 stars out of 3.
- Performance: 2.5 stars out of 3.
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.
- Cleanup: 3 stars out of 3.
- Durability: 2 stars out of 3.
- Ease of Use: 2 stars out of 3.
- Performance: 3 stars out of 3.
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.
- Cleanup: 3 stars out of 3.
- Durability: 2.5 stars out of 3.
- Ease of Use: 2.5 stars out of 3.
- Performance: 3 stars out of 3.
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.
- Cleanup: 3 stars out of 3.
- Ease Of Use: 2.5 stars out of 3.
- Durability: 2.5 stars out of 3.
- Performance: 3 stars out of 3.
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.
Recommended with reservations
- Cleanup: 2.5 stars out of 3.
- Durability: 2 stars out of 3.
- Ease of Use: 1.5 stars out of 3.
- Performance: 2 stars out of 3.
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.
- Cleanup: 2.5 stars out of 3.
- Durability: 1.5 stars out of 3.
- Ease of Use: 2 stars out of 3.
- Performance: 2 stars out of 3.
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.
Not Recommended
- Cleanup: 1.5 stars out of 3.
- Durability: 1 stars out of 3.
- Ease of Use: 1 stars out of 3.
- Performance: 1.5 stars out of 3.
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.
Reviews you can trust
Reviews you can trust
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. We stand behind our winners so much that we even put our seal of approval on them.
Lisa McManus
Lisa is an executive editor for ATK Reviews, cohost of Gear Heads on YouTube, and gadget expert on TV's America's Test Kitchen.