
Pans are measured according to the diameter of the lip, not the diameter of the cooking surface. Most home burners can only comfortably fit a pan of around 12 inches in diameter. Because of its straight sides, a 12-inch sauté pan will also have a large, 12-inch-wide cooking surface (about 113 square inches). A skillet, on the other hand, loses at least an inch on each side, making the effective cooking area only 10 inches wide (about 79 square inches). This means that, given a skillet and a sauté pan of equal diameter, the skillet will have 30% less cooking area than the sauté pan. That's not an insignificant amount.

Cast Iron Grill Pan In Oven

CERAMIC FRYING PANS


In the range of cookware, skillets and pans are two of the most commonly interchanged. They are fairly similar in shape, available in almost the same sizes, and are often chunked into the same product category.