How do you Sauté Vegetables and Meats Like a Famous Chef?

Sautéing (from the French sauté, lit. "jumped, bounced" in reference to tossing while cooking) is a method of cooking food, that uses a small amount of oil or fat in a shallow pan over relatively high heat. Ingredients are usually cut into pieces or thinly sliced to facilitate fast cooking. The primary mode of heat transfer during sautéing is conduction between the pan and the food being cooked. Food that is sautéed is browned while preserving its texture, moisture and flavor. If meat, chicken, or fish is sautéed, the sauté is often finished by deglazing the pan's residue to make a sauce.

Home cooks sometimes have problems sautéing because our stoves don’t get hot enough to brown foods properly. Because all foods contain water that is released when the food is heated, sautéing requires high heat to evaporate this water as soon as it is released and to allow the outer surface of the food to develop a savory crust of caramelized natural sugars and other compounds. If your pan isn’t hot enough, the water is released too quickly, the temperature of the pan is lowered even more, and your food boils or steams in its own juices and never browns. Other than going out and buying a professional stove that delivers intense heat, there are a couple of ways to prevent this.

Chef Tricks for Sautéing Vegetables and Meats

First, use the heaviest pan or pot you’ve got. Heavy pots and pans not only provide even heat, they retain heat so their temperature doesn’t drop so quickly once you start adding food.

Second, and perhaps most important, add foods to be sautéed only a little bit at a time, making sure that the foods start to brown before you add more. If you’re sautéing meat, don’t start turning it until the side touching the pan is completely browned, and when you do start turning, turn only a few of the pieces at a time.

Last, if you have a choice, use a pan that’s shiny rather than dark on the inside. This allows you to see if you’re burning the juices. If you are, rinse out the pan while it’s still hot, once you’ve browned all the meat.

Do you know? How to Prevent Discoloration in Vegetables When Cooking

What's the difference between sautéing and pan searing?

Sautéing is often confused with pan frying, in which larger pieces of food (for example, chops or steaks) are cooked quickly, and flipped onto both sides. Some cooks make a distinction between the two based on the depth of the oil used, while others use the terms interchangeably. Sautéing differs from searing in that searing only browns the surface of the food. Olive oil or clarified butter are commonly used for sautéing, but most fats will do. Regular butter will produce more flavor but will burn at a lower temperature and more quickly than other fats due to the presence of milk solids, so clarified butter is more fit for this use.

Sautéing Technique

In a sauté, all the ingredients are heated at once, and cooked quickly. To facilitate this, the ingredients are rapidly moved around in the pan, either by the use of a utensil, or by repeatedly jerking the pan itself. A sauté pan must be large enough to hold all of the food in one layer, so steam can escape - which keeps the ingredients from stewing, and promotes the development of fond.

Most pans sold specifically as sauté pans have a wide flat base and low sides, to maximize the surface area available for heating. The low sides allow quick evaporation and escape of steam. While skillets typically have flared or rounded sides, sauté pans typically have straight, vertical sides - this keeps the ingredients from escaping as the pan is jerked or stirred. The culinary term fond, French for "base" or "foundation", refers to this sauce, although it is also sometimes used to describe the browned food bits instead (commonly in the United States).

Only enough fat to lightly coat the bottom of the pan is needed for sautéing; too much fat will cause the food to fry rather than just to slide, and may interfere with the development of fond. The food is spread across the hot fat in the pan, and left to brown, turning or tossing frequently for even cooking. The sauté technique involves gripping the handle of the sauté pan firmly, and using a sharp elbow motion to rapidly jerk the pan back toward you, repeating as necessary to ensure the ingredients have been thoroughly jumped. Tossing or stirring the items in the pan by shaking the pan too often, however, can cause the pan to cool faster and make the sauté take longer.

Learn about the Physics of Cooking Meat

Watch a Professional Chef Demonstrate his Sautéing Technique?