The Best Stainless-Steel Pan for Searing, Roasting, and Everything Else You Need to Do on the Stovetop

A great stainless-steel skillet, says Bon Appétit food director Chris Morocco, is a pan that “you will never get bored of, cannot destroy, and will never let you down.” High-quality stainless-steel cookware can withstand heavy use for decades—so, unlike something a short-lived as a nonstick frying pan, it’s a worthwhile investment. Home cooks and professional chefs alike rely on these skillets because they’re resilient and reliable; they’re oven-safe and can withstand high temperatures.

Nonstick pans might be convenient, but they quickly lose their coating and become unsafe for cooking. Cast-iron skillets might have high heat retention, meaning they hold a steady, stable temperature for a long time, but they require serious TLC. But anything you might make in those pans you can make in a stainless-steel skillet. You can sauté, stir-fry, and braise. They are excellent for searing steaks, chicken thighs, or fillets of salmon to a state of exquisite crustiness. You can make omelets, pan sauces, and caramel. And unlike nonstick cookware, you don’t need to tiptoe around stainless steel. With no nonstick coating to scratch, these pans can really take a beating from metal utensils.

Simply put, no kitchen’s cookware arsenal is complete without a stainless-steel skillet. But the prices on these babies vary widely. To find the right version for you, scroll down for our top picks, based on our hands-on experience in the test kitchen, plus recommendations from chefs around the country and our product-testing colleagues at Epicurious.

Of all the cookware that gets used in our test kitchen every day, editors are quick to praise All-Clad, a brand long considered synonymous with high quality stainless-steel cookware. All-Clad’s pans are the standard choice for our recipe developers just as they are for many professional chefs in restaurant kitchens and culinary schools across America. Deputy food editor Hana Asbrink notes that, regardless of whether it was an entry-level pan or a high-end one from All-Clad, she notices remarkable consistency. These pans don’t warp like some cheaper options do, and they heat evenly all the way across the pan. They are also, according to Hana, “largely indestructible.”

As Hana points out, All-Clad offers several lines of stainless steel with different kinds of cladding—that is, the layers of metal that make up the pan. But for the best value, we recommend the D3 Everyday line. These 3-ply pans contain a layer of aluminum bonded between two layers of stainless-steel cladding. The aluminum core allows the pan to heat up quickly and evenly and also makes it lighter and easier to wield than solid stainless-steel cookware.

The All-Clad D3 Frying Pan has a large cooking surface thanks to a gently sloped edge that also facilitates easy pouring. The 10" and even 12" fry pans from the D3 line are lightweight and easy to maneuver with one hand and have remarkably even heat distribution.

These pans have been around long enough to prove that they last (they have a limited lifetime warranty to back that up). One thing to note though: As tough and durable as these pans are, we still recommend hand-washing them. While stainless-steel pans in general tend to be dishwasher-safe, strong detergents will eventually dull the surface, and All-Clad pans in particular are known to wear away at the edges in the dishwasher, making them very sharp. Wash them by hand with soapy water and a sponge, and use a little Bar Keepers Friend to loosen stuck on gunk.

Specs:

Sizes: 10", 12", 14"
Weights (with lid): 3.5 lb., 4 lb., 5.5 lb.
Oven-safe to: 600°F

Ninja is best known for its budget-friendly small appliances like air fryers and blenders, and the brand is relatively new to the cookware game. However, during a recent side-by-side test of the best stainless-steel pans, the product reviews team from our sister site, Epicurious, dubbed Ninja’s Tri-ply Everclad pan the best budget pan, edging out more established affordable brands like Oxo, Cuisinart, and Tramontina. The pan heats quickly and adapts to temperature adjustments well, and while it did heat in the center more quickly than it does on the edges of the cook surface, the discrepancy was small compared to similarly priced competitors.

The Ninja Everclad Commercial-Grade Fry Pan is heavier than the All-Clad D3, and it requires two hands to move from stovetop to oven, but for anybody on a budget looking for a stainless-steel frying pan that will give them the most bang for their buck, the Ninja is a smart choice.

Specs:

Sizes: 10", 12",
Weights: 2.75 lb., 3.5 lb.,
Oven-safe to: 600°F

There are only a small handful of brands with a reputation that rivals All-Clad in professional kitchens. Mauviel is one of them, and it’s what chef David Fisher of 7 Adams in San Francisco uses. “I believe they are still the head of the class as they never seem to break down,” he says. “I am able to sear, reduce sauces without residual or unwanted flavor, sauté vegetables, make à la minute sauces, glaze pastas, and even use them for roasting.”

Mauviel is most famous for its copper cookware sets and carbon-steel pans, but it produces several quality lines of stainless steel as well. The most widely used is their M’Cook line, which, while obviously compatible with gas and electric stoves, was specifically designed for induction cooktops. These are 5-ply pans, which means they have three layers of aluminum sandwiched between two layers of stainless steel. That’s two extra layers of aluminum beyond what the All-Clad D3 has, which helps it heat up and cool down more quickly. Because these pans demonstrate such efficient and consistent heat conduction, the manufacturer actually suggests using slightly lower heat levels than you would with other cookware: If a recipe says high heat, you’ll want to shoot for medium to medium-high instead.

The primary downside to these pans is their price, which can sometimes run more than $200. But with these pans, you can expect a lifetime of use and reliable, consistent performance each time you cook.

Specs:

Sizes: 8", 9.4", 10.2", 11.8"
Weights: 1.7 lb., 2.6 lb. 2.8 lb., 3 lb.
Oven-safe to: 572°F

One of the coolest new entrants into the stainless-steel cookware space isn’t from one of the DTC darlings like Made In or Misen, but from luxury kitchen company Hestan. The brand, which also offers an induction-compatible line of copper-core cookware, first released Nanobond way back in 2017, but it is so different from other stainless-steel skillets it continues to wow new users. It sports a titanium coating that makes the surface of the pan incredibly hard, as well as much less sticky than traditional stainless steel. And while Chris doesn’t think the sauté pan he’s been using from the Nanobond will totally replace his range of carbon-steel pans or cast-iron Dutch ovens, he does say that “simply put, the Hestan Nanobond is the most durable stainless cookware I’ve ever seen.”

The Nanobond skillet fared impressively in head-to-head product tests as well, crisping the skin on chicken thighs two minutes faster than the All-Clad D3. It has a high angled handle that’s particularly comfortable to hold as you move the pan into the oven. It’s also remarkably easy to clean—its quasi-nonstick surface makes hand-washing easy enough, but, unlike any All-Clad line, it’s also dishwasher-safe.

Like the Mauviel, this is an expensive pan, but it has actually come down quite a bit in price since we first used it. We won’t go so far as to say this is an affordable skillet (especially compared to something like the Ninja), but it is a remarkable piece of cookware engineering.

Specs:

Sizes: 8.5", 11", 12.5"
Weights: 1.8 lb., 2.7 lb., 3.4 lb.
Oven-safe to: 1050°F

Between our test kitchen editors and the Epicurious product testers, we have years of experience searing, sautéing, roasting, and saucing with a wide range of skillets. We’ve used bargain no-name pans from restaurant supply stores all the way up to the kinds of beautiful, pricey pans that look like they belong in museums. The ones we recommend here represent what our editors think will work best for the most people—and last in your kitchen for years.

You can make nice soft scrambled eggs in a stainless-steel skillet, particularly if you use plenty of butter. But where this piece of equipment will really shine is whenever you want to get a good crust on a piece of seared protein. You’ll be impressed with the ASMR-ready crisp skin on your pan-roasted chicken thighs—and the deep brown sear on your steak that’s hiding a juicy medium-rare interior. In more good news, you don’t need to be afraid of adding lemon, tomatoes, or vinegar when you’re working with stainless steel like you do with a cast-iron pan (the acid can strip the seasoning of cast iron, but stainless isn’t fussy like that). So go all out with that pan sauce.