Before there were those 16-in-1 do-everything pans getting thrown in your face on Instagram, with makers that claim unprecedented versatility and revolutionary design, 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
- A new favorite sauté pan: Heritage Steel X Eater 4-Quart Sauté Pan
- A long-standing, top-performing all-star: All-Clad D3 3-Quart Sauté Pan
- The best budget sauté pan: Goldilocks 3.5-Quart Sauté Pan
- For strong burners and high-heat cooking: 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.
We put thirteen different pans through a series of tests, cooking chicken thigh after 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.
New in this update: We tested several new pans—two from Heritage Steel, and the All-Clad D5 line. In addition to our preexisting tests, we retested them alongside our reigning winners using a more quantitative surface temperature test.
A new favorite sauté pan: Heritage Steel x Eater 4-qt. sauté pan
Pros and cons
Pros:
- Generous cooking area
- Even heating
- Lightweight
Cons:
- brushed exterior discolors slightly (cleanable)
Specs
Pan weight: 3 lb.
Pan height: 3.1"
Top diameter: 11"
Cooking surface diameter: 9.5"
Lid weight: 1.3 lb.
Volume: 4 qt.
Material: stainless steel and aluminum
Warranty: Lifetime
When it came down to hard numbers, the Heritage Steel x Eater pan held its own against our long-time favorite All-Clad D3. Based on our own long- and short-term testing with this sauté pan and the quantitative proof from our surface temperature test, we were ready to pick it as a new winner.
What we loved: This is a 5-ply pan, but performance is what counts, not the number of layers. Where many 5-ply pans heat slowly, this one didn’t—it heated up faster than the All-Clad D3 (which is only 3-ply) at both medium and medium-high heat. As for heat distribution across the cooking surface, it went toe-to-toe with the D3.
The Heritage Steel x Eater is also lighter than the All-Clad D3 while offering an extra quart of capacity. (One of our only gripes with the All-Clad is that it’s a bit shallow.) What’s nice is that you get that extra quart without the pan getting any wider. Heritage Steel’s sauté pan has a slightly smaller cooking surface diameter (9.5 inches compared to All-Clad’s 10) but is significantly deeper (3.1 inches versus All-Clad’s 2.5). Senior shopping editor Olivia Tarantino has cooked with a set of these Heritage Steel pans for over a year and says the extra depth makes a real difference: “I can simmer big batches of sauce without worrying about boilover, and the high sides protect against oil splatter when I’m searing proteins. The narrow, deep design gives me more volume without taking up extra stovetop space.”
Handle feel is a subjective thing (for every single handle, there’s a person in the kitchen who’ll love it and one who’ll hate it), but the Heritage Steel handle design of a flat topside with a round underside was easy to hold and stayed cool over the heat.
Tarantino has also found that the pans hold up nicely to regular use. As a newer cookware line, Heritage Steel doesn’t have the decades-long reputation for longevity that All-Clad does, but it’s a quality manufacturer, and this pan is evidence of that.
What we’d leave: Brushed stainless-steel exteriors are more likely to discolor, especially when cooking at higher temperatures. Nothing a scrub with Bar Keepers Friend can’t resolve, but just something to note if you haven’t experienced it before.
A long-standing, top-performing all-star: 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 isn’t the case. These pans consistently hold up to scrutiny and demonstrate a quality and reliability that make 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 and browned onions up without scorching them. The D3 line is the brand’s tri-ply stainless-steel line, meaning the pan consists of two layers of 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’s been doing it for a while and has really perfected the form.
The pans in the D3 line have a reputation for even heat, meaning that there is minimal temperature variation from the center to the edge. In our surface temperature test, this pan was one of the most efficient at diffusing heat evenly across the cooking surface. This gives 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 in 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 best budget sauté pan: 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: 3 lb. 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 shines.
What we loved: The Goldilocks has dimensions similar to the All-Clad, but it 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 it has an ample-size helper handle. As a tri-ply 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 it 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.
For strong burners and high-heat cooking: Fissler M5 Pro-Ply 5-qt. sauté pan
Pros and cons
Pros:
- Ample radiant heat
- Difficult to burn food
- Comfortable to use
- High-quality construction
Cons:
- $$$
- Prob not ideal for electric burners
Specs
Pan weight: 4 lb. 15 oz.
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
If you are willing and able to invest in something that offers a truly exceptional cooking experience, the Fissler M5 Pro-Ply is an excellent choice.
What we loved: There was a noticeable difference in how the Fissler cooked compared with every other pan we recommend. 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.
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 other thick 5-ply stainless-steel pans— but the Fissler M5 Pro-Ply manages to do it quickly and more efficiently without much added bulk. Five-ply cookware can be hefty to move around and sluggish when warming up, and while the Fissler sauté pan was slower compared to lighter high-end pans we tested, it was the pan that fared high-heat cooking the best. On a strong gas burner, this pan’s heat capacity allowed it to smoothly transition between temperatures, and the radiant heat from the sides of the pan reduced the onions nicely.
Beyond that, the pan has other nice flourishes, including a rivet-free design, volumetric measurements, and a comfortable ergonomically designed handle.
What we’d leave: All this praise aside, this pan heats up on the slower side. It was great on the powerful gas burners in our Test Kitchen, but if you have a weaker electric range (like I do at home), these pans might just be a bit too slow for you to really get the benefits. 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, and you have a stove that can blast high heat, this is as good as it gets.
How we tested
Thermal conductivity test
We put each pan through a series of controlled tests to observe how they conducted heat. We wanted to know how quickly a pan warms up and cools down and how evenly it heated. We did this by placing each pan over the same burner at the same heat level for two minutes, before removing it from the heat. We took simultaneous temperature readings from the center and edge of the cooking surface (using two Thermoworks surface thermometers). First, after two minutes on the heat, and then again at every minute off the heat for four minutes.
By measuring the change in surface temperature of the center and edge of each pan over time, we are able to observe how fast the pan distributes heat across the surface. The faster the difference between the two numbers went to zero, the better the pan distributed heat. An even-heating pan is easier to cook with and control.
You can see in the table below how quickly the surface temperature of the pans evened out after they were removed from the burner. While the All-Clad D5 had the smallest difference when we started measuring, our favorites—the Heritage Steel x Eater and the All-Clad D3—approached zero much more quickly.
| Heritage Steel x Eater | All-Clad D3 | All-Clad D5 | All-Clad Copper Core | Fissler M5 | Heritage Steel 5-ply | Viking | Goldilocks | |
| 0 min | 35℉ | 33℉ | 23℉ | 42℉ | 32℉ | 32℉ | 45℉ | 52℉ |
| 1 min off | 19℉ | 22℉ | 28℉ | 30℉ | 31℉ | 37℉ | 39℉ | 35℉ |
| 2 min off | 5℉ | 8℉ | 13℉ | 14℉ | 16℉ | 19℉ | 19℉ | 16℉ |
| 3 min off | 0℉ | 0℉ | 7℉ | 8℉ | 9℉ | 10℉ | 10℉ | 9℉ |
| 4 min off | 0℉ | 0℉ | 4℉ | 5℉ | 6℉ | 6℉ | 6℉ | 6℉ |
Cooking tests
Temperature readings are important, but we seared skin-on chicken thighs in oil so we could get a real-life sense measure how the pan distributed heat. We were able to observe this through how fast the thighs browned and whether they stuck to the pan.
We also sweated and browned sliced onions in the pan with some oil while gradually cranking up the heat. Onions scorch easily, so this also revealed how well a pan reacted to changes in heat.
Flour test
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.
Boiling and pouring test
We boiled water in the pan with the lid on to get a sense of how well the lid retained moisture and whether it leaked. We then poured water from the pan to get a sense of how easy it is to tilt the pan with its handle, as well as whether liquid dribbled over the lip.
Cleaning test
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 of 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 one 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 has 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 multiclad 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 be 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 stovetop 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 2½–3 inches in height—translating to a 3–3.5-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.
Other pans we tested and liked
Are titanium alloys are more corrosion resistant than stainless steel, yes. But stainless steel is already very corrosion resistant. So is this Heritage Steel pan gilding the lily? Maybe.
This was a great pan, but it was on the more volatile side in terms of heat control. It got hot and cooled down fast, but didn't do it as evenly as our winners. While certainly more durable than our budget pick, this pan demonstrated similar thermal properties to the Goldilocks pan.
More layers of cladding isn’t necessarily better. While the All-Clad D5 line is still a superb line of cookware, it isn’t demonstrably better than the D3 line. It’s heavier, more expensive, and a little slower to heat than its D3 sibling (not by much, but still). Let us be clear, this is still a top-notch piece of cookware that performed better the bulk of this list. It’s just not the best. If you can get it for a good deal or buy it second-hand, you’ll have a pan that’ll last you a lifetime. If you’re buying new, save a little money and some wear and tear on your wrists and get the D3.
The Misen pan performed well in all our tests. It is a 5-ply stainless-steel pan, which provided 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 lineup. 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 because 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’s 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 this one 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, but not in a good way. 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 on the dimensions of a saucier. During our cooking tests, it was a little scorchy, but manageable with a careful eye, and it wasn’t particularly heavy. Besides the weird dimensions and middling performance, many of us also found the handle design thin, pointy, and uncomfortable to hold.
Good design shouldn’t sacrifice utility for aesthetics. Unfortunately, the Caraway and all its soft curves do. Yes, you can cook beautiful food with it, 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?