Before there were those 16-in-1 do-everything pans that promise unprecedented versatility and revolutionary design that get thrown in your face on Instagram, there was the sauté pan. Somewhere between a frying pan and a saucepan, the sauté pan is a versatile friend in the kitchen that can often serve as a stand-in for skillets, stockpots and Dutch ovens alike.
Our top picks
The best sauté pan overall: All-Clad D3 3-Quart Sauté Pan
The best budget sauté pan: Goldilocks 3.5-Quart Sauté Pan
A larger upgrade: Fissler M5 Pro-Ply 5-Quart Sauté Pan
A sauté pan is basically a skillet with taller straight sides, which makes it better equipped for any cooking project that requires more liquid. Braises, pasta sauces, brothy beans, one-pot rice dishes—a sauté pan can execute them all flawlessly.
Whether you’re assembling your own massive cookware set or looking for a versatile pan that can accommodate a more minimal kitchen setup, a sauté pan is a pan worth having.
To find the best sauté pan, we put nine different pans through a series of tests, cooking chicken thigh after chicken thigh (after chicken thigh). Scroll on to find out top picks, and keep going to read more about how we chose the winners
The best sauté pan overall: All-Clad D3 3-qt. sauté pan
Pros and cons
Pros:
- Generous cooking area
- Even heating
- Lightweight
Cons:
- A tad shallow
Specs
Pan weight: 3 lb. 5 oz.
Pan height: 2⅜" high
Top diameter: 11⅛"
Cooking surface diameter: 10"
Lid weight: 1 lb. 3 oz,
Volume: 3 qt.
Material: stainless steel and aluminum
Warranty: Lifetime
If you’re familiar with our reviews, you might think we choose All-Clad by default, but we promise that’s not the case. These pans consistently hold up to scrutiny and demonstrate a quality and reliability that makes the investment worth it.
What we loved:
The 3-qt. All-Clad stainless-steel sauté pan delivered consistently throughout every single test. It seared chicken thighs well, demonstrated even heating in our flour test, and browned onions up without scorching them. The D3 line is their tri-ply stainless-steel line, meaning the pan consists of two layers of 18/10 stainless steel sandwiching an aluminum core. The aluminum heats up fast and the stainless steel retains and distributes that heat across the cooking surface. While most stainless-steel cookware is constructed this way these days, All-Clad has been doing it for a while and has really perfected the form. These pans heat up at a steady rate, giving you plenty of control over the cooking process even when working with high heat.
The D3 is one of the lightest we tested, which makes it easy to maneuver with one hand around the cooktop and into the oven. It also had the largest cooking surface relative to its volume (3 qt.). This gives you maximum surface area for searing meat and also allows liquid to evaporate faster for making pan sauces and reductions.
What we’d leave:
Our main gripe with this pan is with its height. The All-Clad is not a very deep sauté pan—in fact, it has the shortest sides of all the pans we tested. All-Clad does make larger volume sauté pans, but they increase the diameter more than the height. We think a tweaking the ratio slightly would be nice for braising larger pieces of meat.
The budget pick: Goldilocks 3.5 qt. sauté pan
Pros and cons
Pros:
- Spacious
- Affordable
- Lightweight
Cons:
- Harder to manage at high temps
- Not a great handle
Specs
Pan weight: 3lb. 4 oz.
Pan height: 2⅝" high
Top diameter: 10¾" top diameter
Cooking surface diameter: 10"
Lid weight: 14 oz.
Volume: 3.5 qt.
Material: stainless steel and aluminum
Warranty: Lifetime
True to its name, the Goldilocks pan was just right in terms of size, weight, and dimensions. It’s not perfect, but for a sub-$100 sauté pan it earns its keep.
What we loved:
The Goldilocks has dimensions similar to the All-Clad, but uses that extra half quart in volume to give the pan a little more height than our winner. It’s lightweight and easy to maneuver around the stovetop and into the oven and has an ample-size helper handle. As a tri-ply stainless-steel pan, it demonstrated pretty even heat distribution across the cooking surface. Of all the budget pans we tested, this one was the most well-designed.
What we’d leave:
The metal cladding is on the thinner side, so the pan scorched a bit on the bottom at medium to high temperatures. That’s the sort of issue you should expect to arise with less-expensive pans, though. It doesn’t make the Goldilocks a bad choice but does mean you have to keep a closer eye on things as they cook. Also, the thin handle wasn’t the most comfortable thing to hold.
A larger upgrade: Fissler M5 Pro-Ply 5 qt. sauté pan
If you are looking for a larger sauté pan and willing to invest in something that offers a truly exceptional cooking experience, the Fissler M5 Pro-Ply is an excellent choice.
What we loved:
Even compared to the All-Clad there was a noticeable difference in how the Fissler cooked. With the burner cranked up to high, this pan maintained a gradual dispersed heat that practically refused to burn food. It took intentional effort for us to try and get this pan to scorch something. Instead, it imparted a beautiful golden crust onto our chicken thighs and managed to sweat onions faster than other pans.
Pros and cons
Pros:
- Ample radiant heat
- Difficult to burn food
- Comfortable to use
- High-quality construction
Cons:
- $$$
Specs
Pan weight: 4 lb. 15 oz. pan
Pan height: 3¼" high
Top diameter: 12" top diameter
Cooking surface diameter: 11"
Lid weight: 1 lb. 6 oz.
Volume: 5 qt.
Material: stainless steel and aluminum
Warranty: Lifetime
We attribute the differences here to the pan’s ability to effectively provide indirect heat from its sides in addition to the direct heat from the cooking surface. Indirect heat (heat transferred through the air) is less intense, and won’t burn food so readily. When combined with the direct heat food cooks faster so you can remove it more quickly. The impact of that indirect heat was particularly noticeable in our onion test.
To be clear the Fissler isn’t the only pan to offer this feature—a greater amount of indirect heat is something you can expect from a cast-iron Dutch oven or other thick, 5-ply stainless-steel pans— but the Fissler M5 Pro-Ply manages to do it quickly and more efficiently without that much added bulk. Where lower quality 5-ply cookware can be hefty to move around and sluggish when warming up, the Fissler was still relatively lightweight and responsive. Maybe It’s the ratio of stainless steel to aluminum they use, I don’t know. But they’ve clearly figured something out, and it works.
Beyond that, the pan boasts other nice flourishes. It is a rivet-free design, has volumetric measurements, and a comfortable ergonomically designed handle.
What we’d leave:
All this praise aside, the reason we didn’t make this pan our top pick is because at the standard 3 quart size, the pan had one of the smallest cooking surfaces. It’s also quite expensive compared to the already expensive All-Clad D3 line. But if you size up to the larger 5 quart size, the Fissler has a perfect ratio of height and diameter. If you like the idea of a multifunctional, multipurpose pan, this is as good as it gets.
How we tested
We dusted the pan with a layer of flour and placed it over high heat. Then we left it undisturbed until the flour starts to brown (or burn). This told us how well heat was distributed across the cooking surface, where the pan would heat up fastest, and whether there were any obvious hot spots.
We seared 4 skin-on chicken thighs in oil. This told us whether the pan could handle what our editors agreed was a typical amount of meat for a casual weeknight dinner. It also told us more about how the pan distributes heat. We were able to observe this through how fast the thighs brown, and whether they stick to the pan.
We sweated and browned sliced onions in the pan with some oil while gradually cranking up the heat. Onions scorch easily, so this revealed how well a pan absorbed and distributed heat. A thin pan that’s too reactive to heat changes will scorch onions. A pan that’s too thick and conducts heat poorly will take a longer time to soften onions.
We boiled water in the pot with the lid on to get a sense of how well the lid retained moisture and whether it leaked.
We cleaned each pan with soap and water and a lot of elbow grease. We weren’t so concerned with pans being dishwasher safe, because even if they claim to be, stainless steel pans shouldn’t go into the dishwasher—the detergent corrodes steel and will shorten their lifespan considerably.
What we looked for
We limited our test to stainless-steel pans choosing not to include nonstick sauté pans in our tests. People love nonstick cookware, but ceramic nonstick does a very poor job searing meat. It is inferior to stainless-steel cookware at pretty much every job. And, because of the issues with forever chemicals, we don’t recommend Teflon pans of any kind. If you need your slide-y eggs, use your nonstick fry pan (or better yet a carbon steel or cast iron instead.)
Heat control
The most important quality in a pan is how it conducts and distributes heat from the heat source to the food. A good pan balances responsiveness to temperature with even heating. Stainless clad cookware is great for this purpose. They contain layers of metal—typically aluminum sandwiched between stainless steel. The aluminum demonstrates high thermal conductivity, meaning it heats up and cools down quickly. The stainless steel retains and distributes heat well. Combined, these two materials work together to make pans that are reactive to temperature while minimizing scorching and thermal inconsistencies on the cooking surface.
That being said, not all multi-clad pans are created equal. The thickness of the layers and the ratio of steel to aluminum all impact how a pan performs. Scorching occurs when a pan heats up too fast in a concentrated area, causing food to burn. You might think that when this happens it’s just because you have the heat up too high. But a pan that absorbs and distributes heat effectively will be capable of cooking at higher temperatures without scorching its contents.
A thicker pan will have a greater thermal capacity allowing it to produce more indirect heat from its entire surface. As noted in the discussion about the Fissler pan, more indirect heat means food gets cooked by the air surrounding it in addition to the heat it gets through direct contact with the pan. This is nice because indirect heat combined with direct heat helps cook meat more evenly, and will sweat and caramelize vegetables faster. But, more layers of cladding doesn’t necessarily equate to a better pan. An inferior 5-ply pan will too heavy and dense, reacting sluggishly to changes in heat, making it more like a cast-iron Dutch oven—an item that is notoriously slow to respond to changes in heat.
Maneuverability
Because of their size and shape sauté pans are most likely to go from the stove top to the oven, so they should be easy to move around (and all parts should be oven safe). We looked for pans with comfortable handles and helper handles. We also wanted a pan that was as lightweight as it could be before having a negative impact on the pan’s performance.
Dimensions
An interesting quirk of sauté pans is that they are sold by volume rather than by diameter (like a skillet would be). This means that sauté pans of the same volume will have very different dimensions from brand to brand. We think the ideal dimensions for a sauté pan are 10-11 inches in diameter and 2 ½ - 3 inches in height—translating to a 3 to 3.5 quart volume. For larger sauté pans we felt that the diameter shouldn’t exceed 12 inches, with additional volume going toward a greater height. That’s because the average four burner stovetop won’t have a heat source large enough to cover pans with diameters larger than 12 inches.
Others pans we tested and liked
The Misen pan performed well in all our tests. It is a 5-ply stainless steel pan, which provides great heat distribution and control throughout the cooking process. It seared chicken and browned onions well on high heat without scorching. It also has a thicker, hollow handle that stays cool while cooking, and many on staff found it to be one of the most comfortable designs in the line up. This pan is the second heaviest of the bunch, which made it harder for some in the kitchen to pick up with one hand, and since it didn’t out perform lighter, easier to maneuver alternatives, we chose not to dub it the best.
The Made In sauté pan was another strong contender. It handled well, and, at 3 pounds 2 ounces for the 3.5 quart size, it is on the lighter end of the spectrum. While the chicken test went fine, we noticed that the Made-In was more susceptible to scorching at higher heat relative to the All-Clad. Still not a bad pan though.
Sauté pans we don’t recommend
Tramontina is a popular budget brand for stainless-steel cookware, however we weren’t particularly impressed by this pan. Of all the pans we tested we had to keep our eye on the most during cooking because it was quick to scorch. The lack of a flared lip, while aesthetically pleasing, caused it to dribble when pouring excess fat from the pan. Its workable cooking surface was more cramped relative to the other pans in the running.
Calphalon is another well-known name in affordable stainless-steel cookware. This pan had few hot spots, and browned the chicken thighs nicely without too much babying. It came with a glass lid though. Some people like to know what’s going on under the hood, but we aren’t crazy about glass lids. They’re difficult to clean and retain heat poorly. It was the lightest sauté pan we tested at 2 pounds 14 ounces, however based on the slight warping on the bottom we discovered at the end of our tests, this pan is just too thin.
The dimensions of the Cuisinart pan were just off. It had one of the smallest diameters and really high sides, bordering quite close to saucier dimensions. During our cooking tests it was a little scorchy, but manageable with a careful eye, and not particularly heavy. But many of us found the handle design to be a bit thin and pointy, and uncomfortable to hold.
Good design shouldn’t sacrifice utility for aesthetics. Yes you can cook beautiful food with this pan, but we found it heavy, and difficult to maneuver. The lack of a lip also makes pouring from this pan messy. Also why on earth does the lid need to weigh almost 3 pounds?