Talk:Sautéing

Consider removing the telegraph article as a source
To my layman's eyes the telegraph article, currently cited as source [7], obviously confuses extra virgin olive oil with refined olive oil.

Quoting the telegraph article:

[While discussing Avocado oil] "Produced in New Zealand and pressed from the fleshy pulp surrounding the avocado pip, this has a high enough smoke point (255°C) to be used like extra virgin olive oil. "

[While discussing cold pressed rapeseed oil] "While the French use rapeseed oil for dressings and dips only, Weijers argues it can be used in the same way as extra virgin olive oil. "Because it's got a high flash point, it's good for roasting potatoes, vegetables, and as a butter replacement in crumble mixes, Yorkshire puddings and mashed potato.""

Actually, I find the assertion that cold pressed rapeseed oil has a high flash point quite dubious. However, I do not actually know much about this, and would ask someone more knowledgable to chime in regarding this.

In conclusion, I suspect that the telegraph article is a bad source. For now, I have therefore taken the liberty to edit out extra virgin olive oil from the following sentence in the article:

"Olive oil should not be used to sauté due to its low smoke point.[5][6] Clarified butter, rapeseed oil, extra virgin olive oil and sunflower oil are commonly used for sautéing,[7] but most fats will do." — Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.206.205.74 (talk) 00:10, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

Moving Rapidly?
Quote: "To facilitate this, the ingredients are rapidly moved around in the pan,"

This article seems to be confusing saute with stir-fry. In saute, the food is allowed to brown, so it should not be moved around too much. Instead it should be allowed to move around only enough to even out the cooking. In stir-fry the food should not brown, hence it needs to be moved around constantly. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 14.140.69.164 (talk) 12:28, 14 November 2013 (UTC)

Sauté Pan vs. Frying Pan
I believe an entire section of this article confuses a frying pan with a Sauté pan and incorrectly labels a Sauté pan a "saucepan with shallow sides." The cookware manufacturers are not labeling their pans wrong, this article is wrong. A Sauté pan has a flat bottom and short, straight sides. A frying pan, also known as a skillet, has a flat bottom and shallow, sloping sides that facilitate tossing food in the pan. Mattvellom (talk) 23:54, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

You are correct, the article is wrong. Although these days some sauté pans do have flared sides like a frying pan, but are called a sautéuse (literally the female version). They're also sometimes called a chefs pan. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Surmanspeaks (talk • contribs) 01:27, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

In agreement with these comments, I was just coming here to say that the article linked to in this section, "cookware and bakeware," actually describes a saute pan as a "short-sided" sauce pan, which this article spuriously disavows. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 140.180.20.53 (talk) 03:35, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

I must add to the comments that this article has the incorrect information (and picture) about the description of a sauté pan. I cite below the definition of sauté pan according to Epicurean's food dictionary.

"sauté pan: A wide pan with straight or slightly curved sides that are generally a little higher than those of a frying pan. It has a long handle on one side; heavy sauté pans usually have a loop handle on the other side so the pan can be easily lifted. Sauté pans are most often made of stainless steel, enameled cast iron, aluminum, anodized aluminum or copper. As the name suggests, a sauté pan efficiently browns and cooks meats and a variety of other foods.

© Copyright Barron's Educational Services, Inc. 1995 based on THE FOOD LOVER'S COMPANION, 2nd edition, by Sharon Tyler Herbst."

In addition, I would like to suggest the photo accompanying the article shows two inaccuracies: The most glaring is that the pan is not a sauté pan, but a skillet (AKA frying pan); secondly, the vegetables are piled into the pan too high to correctly portray a sauté process. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.133.74.137 (talk) 02:23, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

I agree with the above definition and the article, a saute pan must have curved/flared sides, how the heck are you going to flip the food (to saute, aka "to jump" the food) with straight edges? (yes you could use a implement, but that feels more like Pan frying) That said they seem to cover both sauce and fry pan categories nicely in terms of potential usage; which is why we use them at my workplace (I'm a saucier professionally).Requen (talk) 11:14, 19 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Pictures being worth a thousand words, I just added one. And fixed up a lot of language. FiveRings (talk) 19:39, 22 May 2009 (UTC)
 * followup - I looked at Fanny Farmer, Escoffier, and the New and Original Joy of cooking. Fanny Farmer wasn't useful - no description. Escoffier notes how to prepare a chicken for saute (much larger pieces than I would have expected), and notes it should be finished with another heat source. He's mostly concerned about the sauce (as would be expected). JOC is pretty much consistent with the article as it is now. New JOC cribs shamelessly from Escoffier. The saute pan shape issue is clearly arising from restaurant technique (downjerk and flip) vs. home technique (spatula, or shake-on-the-hod). The former works better for things like medallions, the latter is a whole lot easier. Problem is, that's personal experience. So, until I can find a cite, not sure how to proceed. FiveRings (talk) 21:03, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

It's more than 2 years after this discussion seems to have ended, but for what it's worth: my cooking school, and the textbook they issue, define a "sauteuse" as "the basic saute pan with sloping sides and a single long handle". A "sautoir" is a saute pan with *straight* sides and a single long handle. Perhaps that's part of the confusion. We were taught that the sloping sides are for tossing and flipping, while the straight sides of the sautoir are more suited to cooking in liquid and/or reducing liquids, as the liquid being reduced might collect and cook onto the sloped sides of a sauteuse more than onto the straight side of a sautoir. (The textbook is "On Cooking", 5th ed., by Labensky, Hause, & Martel) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.111.17.151 (talk) 20:25, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

Two "E"s?
Is "sauteeing" with two "e"s an accepted spelling? Websters online (http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary) gives "sauteing" only.

153.9.35.74 18:35 Feb 10, 2003 (UTC)
 * Saute (or sauté) would be a better article title, but Webster's III Unabridged does give sauteeing and not sauteing. Ortolan88


 * Thanks. I'll go with sauteeing then. All the other cooking technique article titles, though, seem to be in the gerund verbal noun (???ing) form (boiling, grilling, etc.), so I suppose this one should probably too. Arthur 21:22 Feb 10, 2003 (UTC)


 * I know I'm taking up an old one here, but as anonymous points out above, MW's 11th Collegiate only gives sautéing or sauteing, no double-e version. The OED also gives only sautéing.  Note however, that both give sautéed (with two e's) as the past participle.  Comparing with the only other comparable word I could think of—flambé—one finds the same treatment.  Moreover, popular use (as gaged by Google) backs the distinction up: sautéed beats sautéd, but sautéing beats sautéeing; flambéed beats flambéd, but flambéing beats flambéeing (with or without the accent on all accounts).


 * There appears to be some grammatical reasoning going on, and tho it doesn't really make sense to me, the consensus seems to be that the gerund takes one e, the past participle two. So I'm with anonymous guy and think this article should be changed to sautéing, perhaps with a note like "(also sautéeing, past tense sautéd or sautéed, and often without the accent)".  -- Severinus 05:01, 6 February 2007 (UTC)


 * I'm gonna go ahead and make the move-- Iosef U T C  19:13, 9 March 2007 (UTC)


 * In the original French, sauté is masculine and sautée is feminine, depending on the corresponding noun or direct object. English speakers tend to use ée in most such words (settée), but not in sauté. The e in sautéed is not from ée but is part of the English suffix ed. Sluggoster (talk) 03:33, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

Technique of sauteeing
I thought that the classical french culinary technique of the sauté involves these stages:

1. Browning of vegetables and meat on high heat 2. Removal of vegetables and meat 3. Deglazing of pan with alcohol and/or stock 4. Adding the meats/vegetables and covering with a lid 5. Allowing the meats/vegetables to simmer on a medium to low heat

The technique of sauteeing is french in origin, and therefor one should refer to the french, classical technique. ---Qwerty qwerty 13:56, 1 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Interesting; I've never heard of such a technique being called a sauté. Do you have a cite for that? &mdash; Wwagner 14:23, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

I don't yet have a cite from the Internet, I will check my library though, and I will also get Larousse Gastronomique, which is the ultimate culinary reference book.

Contradiction
Food that is sautéed is usually cooked for a relatively short period of time over high heat in order to brown the food, while preserving its color it is browned, but doesn't change color? -Iopq 08:45, 7 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Hmmm. Does the sauté preserve texture, instead of color?  That would make sense to me, but then I don't have any fancy book-learning about cooking. :) &mdash; Wwagner 13:53, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

Nonsense
This article is contradictory and is generally nonsense. Sauteing is not the same as pan frying. You only have to look at the etymology to realize this; if you are not making your food jump, you are not sauteing. Half of the article acknowledges this (recommending a pan with sloped sides, talking about tossing technique, etc.) and half of the article contradicts this (recommending a pan with straight sides, recommending letting food sit and then turning it with utensils, etc.). None of it has references. --71.235.102.239 02:19, 5 March 2007 (UTC)


 * There's another complication in that it's also an (old) name for making chips (Br)/ fries (US), qv the first definition in the Shorter OED :

Of meat, vegetables etc.:Fried in a pan with a little butter over a quick fire, while being tossed from time to time; (of potatoes) cut into finger-shaped pieces and fried in deep fat; 'chipped' 1869. Now back in the real world this Briton would always regard sautéed potatoes as being shallow fried, and either ~1cm cubes or at least quartered (but never sliced), but it's probably worth mentioning this definition somehow. And it could do with more on the potato angle in general. Plus references of course.... FlagSteward 01:23, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

Other languages
The links to other languages seem to be missing on this page, but they are present in the source of the page. I couldn't discover why, though. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.250.234.174 (talk) 12:49, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

Original research?
Why on earth is there a template warning against original research and unverified claims? This is a cooking article for goodness' sake, not biochemical engineering. Denihilonihil (talk) 12:35, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

Because cooking deserves the same quality of articles as biochemical engineering. The contradictions noted above describe explicitly why references are needed. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.234.229.126 (talk) 21:30, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

I totally agree with Denihilonihil. In cookery written references may not be available. Most work is based on practice and should be accepted in good faith. Again the opinions given here are not final say as the opinions can vary as per the cook. Only a cook can understand what I write here and not a hard boiled theorist editor who has never done cooking. Work based on practice may be dubbed as original research and removed. That will only reduce usefulness of this wikipedia to students of this subject. Not all rules led down in wiki rule book are applicable everywhere. Pathare Prabhu (talk) 12:38, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

Etymology section
The Etymology section starts with etymology, but then somehow morphs into a kind of how-to section. And, the information there is unsourced and seems questionable such as "True Sauté can be performed without even moving the pan at all." I don't know the true answer; my culinary school textbook ("On Cooking", by Labensky, Hause, and Martel) does not mention any movement of the pan in the glossary definition, but in a specific recipe for sautéing vegetables, it does instruct to "toss the vegetables using the sloped sides of the saute pan or wok". Also, our chef-instructor definitely described the tossing motion as integral to saute technique. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.111.17.151 (talk) 20:18, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

Stir Fry
Having read the articles on Sauté and on Stir Fry, I'm left none the wiser on how they differ. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.73.145.84 (talk) 10:38, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

temperature
"...to about 250°C (482°F) or higher."

Tin melts at 450F - saute is done BELOW 450F.

Many, many copper cooking pans are tin lined, including my saute pan. Cooking, including saute, at 482F would result in molten tin in the food.

350-375F is sufficient to "BROWN", 482F or more would be used to "SEAR" (not in tin lined).

We are cautioned to be careful of the temperature with tin lined cookware on the fire, under the broiler or in the oven.

For reference refer to the physical characteristics of tin (Sn) in any reference book or Wikipedia. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.20.4.19 (talk) 02:08, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

poêlé sauteing variation
According to a side bar in ''Food Wars! Volume 2'', poêlé is a French cooking technique that is a sauteing variation. I don't have a secondary source - but I hope that someone else does.Penelope Gordon (talk) 00:35, 15 December 2014 (UTC)