What are the different types of pan called and what is each one for?

Recipes name pans as if everyone knows, and the names sound arbitrary until you see them in cross-section. Then it is obvious: a pan's sides determine how fast moisture escapes, how much liquid it can hold, and whether you can get a utensil under the food. Everything else follows.

Step by step

1. Frying pan or skillet: low, flared sides.The sloping sides let steam escape freely and let a fish slice slide under the food. This is the pan for anything you want browned rather than steamed — eggs, steaks, fish, pancakes, sautéed vegetables. It holds very little liquid, which is the point.
2. Sauté pan: straight, taller sides, usually with a lid.Despite the name, this is not primarily a sautéing pan. Its vertical sides hold a real depth of liquid without splashing, so it is the pan for browning meat and then simmering it in sauce in the same vessel — chicken chasseur, a ragù, anything braised on the hob.
3. Saucepan: taller than it is wide, vertical sides, long handle.Small surface area relative to volume, so liquid evaporates slowly and things stay wet. For boiling, for sauces, for pasta in the larger sizes. A milk pan is a small saucepan, often with a pouring lip.
4. Casserole or Dutch oven: wide, deep, heavy, two short handles, tight lid.Made to go from hob to oven and to hold its heat, so you brown in it and then braise in it. The heavy walls and the tight lid are what make it different from a large saucepan. Cast iron, usually enamelled.
5. Stockpot: tall and narrow with a very small surface for its volume.Deliberately shaped so that a stock reduces slowly and stays clear, and so that bones stay submerged. Also the right pan for boiling large quantities of pasta and for a big batch of soup.
6. Wok: high, steeply sloping sides.The base is the hot zone and the sides are progressively cooler, which is exactly what stir-frying needs — sear at the bottom, push cooked food up the side. A round-bottomed wok needs a gas ring or a wok ring; on an electric or induction hob use a flat-bottomed one.
7. Note the other shapes you will meet.A griddle pan is a heavy ridged pan for char marks and to keep food out of its own fat. A sauteuse or chef's pan has curved sloping sides — a compromise between frying pan and sauté pan, and a good single pan if you only own one. A roasting tin is not a pan at all, and going from tin to hob is where thin ones buckle.
8. Read pan sizes correctly.A pan is measured across the top rim, not the base. A 28cm frying pan with flared sides may have only 20cm of usable cooking surface, which is why food crowds in a pan that looked big enough. Check the base diameter, and check it against your hob ring.

Tips

• The thickness of the base matters more than the brand or the material. A thick base holds its heat when cold food lands on it; a thin one drops in temperature and the food steams.
• If you own one pan, make it a 26–28cm sauteuse or sauté pan with a lid — it will brown, simmer, fry and hold a sauce. If you own two, add a heavy 20cm saucepan.
• Pans with a helper handle opposite the main handle are much easier to lift full and hot, which matters more than it sounds with a heavy casserole.
• Check that a pan is oven-safe before you put it in one. Plastic and some composite handles have a maximum temperature; bare metal and cast iron do not.

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