Saucier pans are probably one of my favorite cooking tools. I've been using a two-quart size for all kinds of things for over a year now.
What I like about then mostly is the fact that they serve as both a sauce pan (in which role the curved sides allow for easy whisking and faster reduction) and a sautee pan (in which role these same sides allow for the "flipping" of the contents). The pans work equally as well for boiling vegetables, cooking rice, making pasta, and other tasks where you need a depth of liquid as part of the prep.
Just about the only thing I don't use my Saucier for are dishes that one starts on the top of the stove and finishes in the oven, such as my beloved rack of lamb. For those I continue to use more traditional sautee pans.
I'm partial to All Clad because of the thickness of the metal and the fact that it remains the same thickness up the sides of the pan. All Clad's handles also seem to stay cooler to me, and have a better feel to my hands. I buy whichever All Clad model is on sale or the cheapest. They have lines with black outer cladding, shiny metal, matte metal, and copper. I think they all function pretty much the same.
But, with the birthday party starting to approach, I knew I needed something that could hold a larger amount. So I broke down and got a shiny new Three Quart Saucier Pan.
But, of course, I'm currently too busy to make use of it, because that's the way the world works. And so after taking it out of the box and placing it on the stove, there it sits each night. Mocking me.
Posted by dowdy at October 10, 2003 05:58 AM