Whether you ’re deciding on a new purchase for yourkitchenor personate a professional chef for your latest undercover agent delegation , there may arrive a time when you ’ll desire to know the divergence between a skillet and a sauté genus Pan . Fortunately , it ’s moderately square .
As Business Insiderexplains , the face of a sauté genus Pan extend direct up from its base , while the sides of a skillet burn up out at an slant . Because the diam of every pan is measured from the brim — not the fundament — this signify the cook surface of a skillet is smaller than that of a sauté genus Pan . If , for example , you buy a 12 - column inch frying pan , you ’re only get about 10 inch of blank space tocookon . With a 12 - inch sauté pan , you ’ll get the full foot .
Without angled sides , a sauté genus Pan can control more liquid , and that liquid wo n’t slosh over onto your cooking stove ( or feet ) as easily as it would in a skillet . So if you ’re cooking with a generous measure of sauce , wine , oil colour , or any other liquid that you could easily run out , you might want to choose a sauté pan over a skillet .
Skillets , however , have their own skill set . According toSerious Eats ’s chief culinary consultant J. Kenji López - Alt , a skillet ’s smaller root word makes it lighter than a sauté goat god , so it ’s easier to oversee with just one script . And those sloped sides come in handy when you ’re trying to toss food like a professional , which help ensure that the contents cook evenly . In other word , sautéing is in reality a job well - suited to skillets , not sauté pans .
If you only have enough room ( in your kitchen or in your budget ) for one shallow pan , López - Alt recommends the frypan , since sautéing is so common inrecipes .
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