Unlike their beloved personal knife sets, the pans a professional chef uses at work are much more likely to be of the nameless, faceless, “whatever’s around the kitchen” sort of equipment. That’s largely for utilitarian reasons. When churning out cover after cover at the saute station you can’t exactly be picky about what’s on the shelf above the stove.
But that doesn’t mean professional chefs don’t have opinions about the pans they use every day during service. And the good news for most home cooks, is that often, the equipment on the fire in restaurant kitchens is affordable and easy to get.
Different chefs and different restaurants have different needs and different specialties, leading to very different answers to the question of “what is the pan you use most?” Which means that if you follow the advice of these 10 chefs from some of our favorite restaurants and bakeries, your kitchen will be pretty complete.
Made In saucier
It’s pretty rare for a DTC cookware brand to get namechecked by a professional kitchen, but Made In has made a lot of inroads to the restaurant scene over the years. Jackie Carnesi of Kellog’s Diner loves her sizable Made In Saucier, which she got in a breakup several years ago. “It’s great for items you might have to whisk like a caramel or anything you might need a rubber spatula for” she says. “It’s also great for tossing and, because it’s relatively lightweight, easy for flipping too”
Kama-Asa carbon steel skillet
Carbon steel pans are common in professional kitchens. Less common probably are hand-hammered Japanese carbon steel pans. That’s what Fredrik Berselius, executive chef at Michelin-starred Aska, turns to though. “They are heavy, but the long handles make them very balanced.”
Hotel pan
If you have never worked in a professional kitchen you could be forgiven for not being familiar with a hotel pan. They’re the deep trays that are often used for mass steaming operations. But they’re good for much more than that. Chef Mary Attea from the Musket Room likes them for their surprising resilience given their light weight, and uses them to start big batches of rice on the stove or to quickly smoke dishes inside with the help of some heavy duty foil.
Le Creuset braiser
The presence of a Le Creuset pan on a list of chef’s favorites should surprise no one. Chef Neal Kajalle of Adda uses a small braiser to cook dishes and then serve them as well. “It’s cast iron so it gives you a nice sear. It holds the temperature really well and just gets the job done.” Kajalle also uses a handy Le Creuset accessory in the restaurant: A set of magnetic trivets that snap right on to the bottom of any Le Creuset pan that protect the table when using the braiser as a serving dish straight out of a hot oven.
Báhn xèo pan
Unless you already have a deep knowledge of Vietnamese cuisine, you probably do not have Nhu Tahn’s favorite pan: a light, aluminum báhn xèo wok, used specifically to make super thin Vietnamese pancakes. It’s the only pan Tahn brought with her when she moved to America and now it’s the workhorse at Bahn Ahn Em. “It’s light enough to move the batter and adjust the heat easily,” she says. Something she can’t get from materials like cast iron or carbon steel.
Cast iron skillet
Chef Maria Barriga of Oxomoco likes cast iron for the same reason we like cast iron: “You can cook on low or medium heat, or bring it up to really high temperature for amazing searing.” She also has words for those of you with the classic cast iron concern of upkeep: “It’s actually pretty easy to season. Just use a little bit of salt, a little bit of fat (butter or oil) and the more you use it the more seasoned it will become and then it will become nonstick.”
Sheet pan
What Miro Uskokovic, owner of Hani’s bakery, relies on most are his trusty sheet pans. It’s what he uses to finish baking the bakery’s famous cinnamon buns as well as for “family meal” when the staff cook for each other each day. He recommends looking for a 14 or 16 gauge pan (it may be labeled “heavy duty”), because they’ll last longer and won’t warp.
All Clad skillet
An All Clad skillet is what we recommend as a frying pan for home cooks, but professional ones recognize the quality too. Atsushi Kono of Kono uses his All Clad as part of the tool kit to prepare his yakitori omakase that landed him a spot on BA’s 2023 Best New Restaurant list.
Nonstick skillet
There are not an insignificant number of comments on the portion of the video below during which not one, but two pros explain why a nonstick pan is their most used piece of cookware. Nonstick pans have become as intensely polarizing as a piece of cookware can be in recent years, as more research has been done into the impact of some of the chemicals used to make traditional nonstick coatings. But there’s nothing inherently wrong using a ceramic-coated nonstick on the regular (we’ve found several suitable nonstick pans in our own testing). As long as you care for them properly and replace them when it’s time, nonsticks can be useful tools. Alec Horen who used them at the Musket Room said he “made 60-70 fried mashed potatoes a night, and without this pan there’s no way we could do it.”
More cookware that aced our kitchen tests
- Our favorite cookware sets (are smaller than you might think)
- The stainless steel skillets we use every day
- The best cast iron skillets for a lifetime of cooking