Saute versus Fry Pans

[cnspriggs]

I'm looking to buy copper of either a Saute or a frying pan but can't afford both. Would you say that a Saute pan can do what a frying pan can do but not the opposite? That was my impression but having never had a good quality copper pan in either wasn't sure.

Cheers!

[DerekW]

With its upright sides, the saute pan allows you to bounce food around - the 'jump' of 'saute' - without it flying out.

Those same sides will prevent you from sliding something like an omelette out of the pan, where the low frying pan accomodates you.

You're looking at stainless lined copper? I think it might be overkill for a straight saute pan. A solidly built stainless pan with a good thick disc base [probably encapsulated aluminum] will saute, and go on to shallow braise, just as well.

That said, Falk's saute evasee might be a shape that would work well for you - I like mine

Have you checked out the excellent eGullet Culinary Institute article on Understanding Stovetop Cookware?

[cnspriggs]

Hi there,

Thanks for the reply. In fact I've read the Understanding cookware article many times but I still finish reading it unsure as to what exactly I want.... One of the main things I struggle with in the kitchen is browing onions. I know it sounds silly but for some reason I find it challenging getting the onions to a really dark brown for a curry base without burning the onions in parts or the spices. While this is the impetus for the purchase I also love trying to cook and would like to see what copper is all about. It's a 'treat' purchase for a new job I have so I'm happy to spend a little bit more but can't buy more than one so was hoping to figure out which style of pan would work best for me. Currently leaning towards Falks Sautépan cilindric.

With its upright sides, the saute pan allows you to bounce food around - the 'jump' of 'saute' - without it flying out.

Those same sides will prevent you from sliding something like an omelette out of the pan, where the low frying pan accomodates you.

You're looking at stainless lined copper? I think it might be overkill for a straight saute pan. A solidly built stainless pan with a good thick disc base [probably encapsulated aluminum] will saute, and go on to shallow braise, just as well.

That said, Falk's saute evasee might be a shape that would work well for you - I like mine 

Have you checked out the excellent eGullet Culinary Institute article on Understanding Stovetop Cookware?

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[mrsadm]

For me, the saute is more useful than the frying pan. It holds more, stir frys, all kinds of dishes. So if it were my money, I'd get a copper saute and an inexpensive nonstick frying pan for those omelette occasions. Also you don't need a matching copper lid (unless displaying the pan is important to you) - any lid large enough to cover it will do. That can save a few bucks.

[paulraphael]

A voice for the minority opinion ...

My sauté pan is a 12" copper fry pan with sloped sides. I find it more versatile than an official sauté pan. The French-style straight-sided sauté pans have sides that are just too high for my taste. Makes it harder to reach in and turn the food. The sharp corners cans be a liability if you're making a pan sauce that needs whisking.

I find the American style sauté pans (with sides that are only about a 1/4 as high as the pan's diameter) to be more useable than the high-sided pans. But I don't much like any of the actual pans that come in this style.

There's no problem flipping food by shaking the pan back and forth with sloped sides. I don't know where this idea came from. The sloped sides actually flip the food. But with a large sauté pan, I'm usually turning the food, not tossing it.

The high sided sauté pans are great for a lot things besides sautéing. Anything where you actually need a lot of volume (because meat will be in the pan along with the sauce): braises, fricasees, etc..

My favorites are the 12" copper slope sided pan for large things that get turned, a 10" clad aluminum/stainless slope sided pan for food that gets tossed, and a 5qt rondeaux for all the non-sauté things that a straight sauté pan does so well. This is like a sauté pan, but with loop handles intead of a long handle, so it fits easier into the oven. Mine is anodized aluminum, but heavy copper would be a treat.

Whatever you chose, mrsadm is right ... skip the copper lid. you can get aluminum lids in every imaginable size at a restaurant supply store. If you get a few big ones, you can always just grab one of them and throw on top of any pan.

Edited May 27, 2007 by paulraphael (log)

[ghostrider]

I've had two of the classic Revereware copper-bottom stainless frying pans - a 12 & a 10 - for probably 25 years now & I just love 'em. They seem to distribute the heat evenly, apart from some old-gas-stove burner issues which are not the fault of the pans.

I know what you mean about the brown-without-burning onions thing. I can get that right by keeping a close eye on the flame height & rotating the pan a bit. If I had a better stove I think it'd be a snap.

I've never had a straight-sided saute pan so can't offer any comparisons.

[andiesenji]

A lot depends on the type and size burner you have on your stovetop. Unless you have a larger and stronger burner, it is difficult to get good browning on anything.

A cast iron pan works just fine with smaller batches (2 cups or less sliced onions).

High sides on a sauté pan means you get steaming rather than browning - the onions will cook to mush without ever browning if they are crowded into a pan with high sides..

For large batches I have found that I get the best results with this pan:

A Calphalon 14 inch sauté pan that is 2 3/4 inches deep.

All my copper saute pans are deeper, the fry pans are not wide enough, for my preference.

This one is wide enough to spread the onions out so they don't steam and are easy to turn with a broad spatula.

It is not non-stick!

The only time I use my copper sauté/brazier, is when I am going to start the onions on the stovetop and finish in the oven, because it has two loop handles instead of a long handle. They have to be stirred occasionally but the oven keeps them from steaming and they brown nicely.

[Blether]

... getting the onions to a really dark brown for a curry base without burning the onions in parts or the spices...

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For the same application, I choose a wide-but-deep 12" copper-base stainless stew pot. I was tired of (a) onions slipping out of the frying pan when I stirred; (b) never having enough room in the pan to finish the dish - and it was one big frying pan, and © having spots of oil all over the stovetop and surroundings after twenty minutes of onion frying. A stew pot fits in the oven, too.

Are you using enough oil ? (I'll note her that I used 1.5 cups of oil to 6 of chopped onions yesterday). With respect, I'd qualify andiesenji's comment and say you can fry your curry onions really quite deeply piled up and still get them brown.

As for saute pans, I never understood the attraction till I got one - reluctantly - as part of a set that had other stuff I wanted. Now I love it - there's more base area to a 12" saute pan than there is to a 12" frying pan, and much more room for completing a dish.

[slkinsey]

It's a fact that very few (Western) home cooks do any real sautéing, which involves movinjg the food items around almost constantly. This is compounded by the fact that most home stoves are underpowered for this high heat cooking task, and brecause most home cooks put way more food in the pan than the burner can handle.

It is also true that a lot of home cooks confuse the sautéing with frying. If the food is just sitting on the heat and not moving around, it is frying, not sautéing. So, for example, cnspriggs: What you want to do with onions isn't really sautéing. If you were to sauté onions, you'd move chunks of onion around and around in a hot pan until they were evenly browned on all sides. In order to get the deep, dark browning and Maillardization you want, the onions have to cook for a much longer time at a lower heat setting. Similarly, when paulraphael speaks of the difficulty in reaching in to a sauté to turn pieces of food, he is using a technique that is not sautéing. Sauté pans are designed with straight sides so that the cook can throw in the chunks of food and vigorously shake the pan back and forth on the burner grate, bouncing the food items off the straight walls of the pan back onto the cooking surface.

Paul does have a point that some "frypans" are perfectly fine for sautéing tasks. This is because the sides are tall enough and the slope is steep enough that food items are unlikely to slide out when one shakes the pan (although this can still happen if you shake the pan too hard). Unfortunately, the "taller, steeper" design makes these pans less than optimal for frying. The whole point of a frypan design is to facilitate frying: cooking flat pieces of food in a small amount of hot fat, not moving them around much (usually) with the goal of getting a crispy surface. Low, sloped sides are useful for this because they offer easy access to a spatula for turning and, mostly, because they facilitate efficient evaporation of liquid (the sizzling sound is water coming out of the food and boiling on the surface of the pan) which produces a crisp surface. The "taller, steeper" frypans are not so great for the spatula access and evaporation, and are closer to what I might call a "slope-sided" or "curved sauté pan" than a "frypan." I have a classic frypan design from Mauviel -- the sides are quite short and widely flared. It's quite easy to shake food right out the back of the pan, and one must resort to the "flipping" technique.

As Paul and Blether point out, however, there are plenty of things a sauté pan is useful for besides sautéing. They're great for doing little braises, for "shallow frying" (more accurately called "boiling in oil"), for making quick pasta sauces and finishing the pasta together in the pan with the sauce, etc. If you're someone who does some sautéing, but realistically not all that much, but who would like to benefit from the added functionality of a sauté pan, I very much recommend a curved sauteuse evasée -- called variously a curved sauteuse, saucière, sauteuse bombée, saucier, chef's pan, flared sauté pan, curved sauté pan (although these last two sometimes have shorter sides), etc. Both Falk and Bourgeat make excellent examples of this pan in stainless lined heavy copper.

Edited May 29, 2007 by slkinsey (log)

[paulraphael]

It is also true that a lot of home cooks confuse the sautéing with frying.  If the food is just sitting on the heat and not moving around, it is frying, not sautéing.

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This is probably true from a historical standpoint (sauté means "jump"). But in practice, among all the professional cooks I know, sautéing includes both tossing and high-heat pan frying with minimum amounts of oil. The key isn't whether the food is moved by a toss, a shake, or a turn with tongs; it's about high heat that browns the food rapidly, with only enough oil to reduce sticking and to improve conduction.

Any thoughts on this from the pros?

[slkinsey]

Yea, I touch on this in a related thread:

Sauté is more complicated, and one of my pet peeves in the culinary world.

The French word sauté is the past participle of the verb sauter, meaning "to jump."  Thus, something that is sauté is "jumped."  Where is it jumped?  Around in the pan.  So, for example, if you have poulet sauté, you have "jumped chicken" ("sautéed chicken," in restaurant-speak).  Other languages, such as Italian, take this one step further and will often say saltato in padella, meaning "jumped around in the pan."  This means that when we sauté (the French past participle having turned into an English verb), the food items are regularly agitated ("jumped") around in a large, flat pan so that all sides are browned.

Some people will suggest that one can sauté without moving the food around in the pan, and that the "jumped" part means that the pan is "so hot the food will jump up" when it touches the pan.  This doesn't withstand too much scrutiny.  First of all, the typical preparation that most of these people would call "sautéed fillet of snapper" or whatever isn't done over particularly high heat.  Second, a sauté pan is not particularly useful for this kind of cooking.  A sauté pan is, however, very useful when you would like to shake the pan back and forth over the burner and bounce the food around in the pan.

No, this other thing where you let the food sit in the pan, is frying, not sautéing.  Otherwise, it would be a "sautéed egg" instead of a "fried egg."  Nevertheless, it is true that in English usage, "sautéed" is commonly used as a stand-in for "fried" -- even among the kitchen staff.  This is for a lot of reasons. . .  Primarily I believe it is because "sautéed" sounds lighter, more healthful and more desirable than "fried," which is often incorrectly believed to imply cooking food that is partially or entirely sumberged in hot fat (this would have been called "boiling in oil" back in the old days).  And also perhaps because some professional kitchens operating under a brigade system call the position in charge of most stovetop cooking the "sauté station" -- despite the fact that this station does more frying than sautéing.  This is likely because this station is often considered the highest station under the sous-chef, which "rank" was previously occupied by the saucier (who was in charge of making sauces and stews as well as... you guessed it, sautéing food to order).  In any event, it is a fact that "sautéed fillet of snapper" would have meaning to most professional cooks, despite not actually being correct usage.  Notwithstanding the foregoing, however, it is correctly called a "fried fillet of snapper."

Yet another complication is that there are often dishes called "a sauté of mushrooms" or whatever.  These dishes typically involve sautéing as one step of the preparation process, but most often include other techniques.  For example, mushrooms might be briefly sautéed in hot fat, then some rich stock is added to the pan and the mushrooms are then braised for a while in the stock, after which time some butter and herbs might be added to create a sauce from the remaining liquid, and the whole thing called a "sauté of mushrooms" or "mushroom sauté."

As I say in the quote above, my experience is that there are plenty of things called "sauté" on both menus and inside kitchens that are neither tossed around the pan nor cooked over particularly high heat -- thus failing on any of the common definitions of "sauté." Again, I have no idea how "frying" came to be associated with a fairly deep layer of oil.

This distinction is neither here nor there, of course, when it comes to actual cooking -- so long as all the cooks in the kitchen have a common understanding of what it means. But it becomes more important when discussing cookware design, and particularly the sauté pan, which is designed to facilitate the constantly moving ("jumped") cooking technique I describe above. Someone who purchases a sauté pan thinking it is optimized for some of the other techniques (mis)-labeled "sautéing" will find that the sauté pan is a poor fit.

Edited May 29, 2007 by slkinsey (log)

[DerekW]

I find it challenging getting the onions to a really dark brown for a curry base without burning the onions in parts or the spices.

At the risk of 'teaching my grandmother to suck eggs' I'll mention that the addition of the spices before the onions have reached the desired color can be a source of trouble - if you are working the onions down in a small amount of fat then the spices can absorb the fat leading to localised burning. Perhaps toasting / frying the spices separately then adding them to the onion pan would give more control?

[cnspriggs]

From what you describe I'm not sure I see the difference between your description of 'saute' and what I imagine 'stir fry' to be??

It's a fact that very few (Western) home cooks do any real sautéing, which involves movinjg the food items around almost constantly. 

<snip>

If the food is just sitting on the heat and not moving around, it is frying, not sautéing. 

<snip>

Sauté pans are designed with straight sides so that the cook can throw in the chunks of food and vigorously shake the pan back and forth on the burner grate, bouncing the food items off the straight walls of the pan back onto the cooking surface.

<snip>

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[slkinsey]

From what you describe I'm not sure I see the difference between your description of 'saute' and what I imagine 'stir fry' to be??

There is no difference. The difference between "stir fry" and "sauté" is that the former is tyically applied to cooking Asian foods (classically, in a wok) and the latter is typically applied to cooking Western foods.

The term "stir fry" is a relatively modern addition to the English cooking lexicon (mid 20th century), and is generally credited to Buwei Yang Chao in the book "How to Cook and Eat in Chinese" where it was used to describe the chǎo technique -- although the complete chǎo technique involces a bit more specificity than what we have now come to think of as "stir frying" -- which generally now means "tossing around a bunch of Asian ingredients over high heat." More information stir-frying here on wikipedia.

[Darren72]

Just to add my 2 cents:

First, every time I read a post by slkinsey I learn something really valuable.

Way back when, I bought a stainless steel All-Clad fry pan and saute pan. They're great. No complaints, though knowing what I know now, I probably wouldn't have bought the set these came in.

There are some much lower cost options to consider, depending on how often you'll use each pan and what you'll use it for.

1. Cast iron skillet. A 12" skillet will probably cost less than $20. They're heavy and therefore aren't ideal for anything that involves a lot of moving around (like a saute). They also aren't great for stewing or boiling because I think that will work against seasoning the finish. But they are ideal, I think, for the low, slow heat you'll want for carmelizing onions. They are also ideal for pan-frying meat. I also like that they are nearly indestructible -- I like to put them directly on hot coals in the grill.

2. Aluminum frying pan from a restaurant supply store. A common brand here in Chicago is Vollrath. You can read more about the advantages and disadvantages of all-aluminum in Understanding Stovetop Cookware. The main advantage, for your purposes, is that it is very cheap, say $20-$30 for a pan. This might be the way to go if you want a high-quality saute pan, but also want a fry pan around for occasional use.

I have an aluminum frying pan with a non-stick coating that I think is perfect for eggs and fish: because it's cheap, I don't need to worry about the inevitable scratches in the non-stick coating.

[cnspriggs]

Fasinating! I agree with Darren72-your posts are always interesting even if I am now left a little less sure of what I want. It is interesting to me that classically if you 'stir fry' you use a carbon steel wok but if you 'saute' you use a copper pan....quite different materials for the same application.

From what you describe I'm not sure I see the difference between your description of 'saute' and what I imagine 'stir fry' to be??

There is no difference. The difference between "stir fry" and "sauté" is that the former is tyically applied to cooking Asian foods (classically, in a wok) and the latter is typically applied to cooking Western foods.

The term "stir fry" is a relatively modern addition to the English cooking lexicon (mid 20th century), and is generally credited to Buwei Yang Chao in the book "How to Cook and Eat in Chinese" where it was used to describe the chǎo technique -- although the complete chǎo technique involces a bit more specificity than what we have now come to think of as "stir frying" -- which generally now means "tossing around a bunch of Asian ingredients over high heat." More information stir-frying here on wikipedia.

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[slkinsey]

Fasinating! I agree with Darren72-your posts are always interesting even if I am now left a little less sure of what I want. It is interesting to me that classically if you 'stir fry' you use a carbon steel wok but if you 'saute' you use a copper pan....quite different materials for the same application.

There's more to it than that. In order to cook effetively in a wok, you need a specialized burner. Cooking in a sauté pan, on the other hand, is done over a regular Western-style burner. In my opinion, if you want to "stir fry" on a regular home stove, you're better off with a sauté pan. Note, for example, that Ah Leung uses a sauté pan in his Chinese cooking pictorials. The two pans both work for more-or-less the same kind of cooking because of the differnet burners. In general, woks suck over traditional Western burners. I've done side-by side tests, and a heavy sauté pan always performed better.

If you're unsure about what you want, I think the best way to approach it is to ask the question: what is it that I want to do on the stove that I can't do well enough right now? Then, once you know what you would like to do better/easier, you have a basis for choosing a cookware shape, design and material.

Edited June 4, 2007 by slkinsey (log)

[weinoo]

Just to add my 2 cents:

First, every time I read a post by slkinsey I learn something really valuable.

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Uh oh, now kinsey's gonna go and get a big head !!