The commercial brand of stainless-steel frying pans was introduced in America by Lifetime Stainless Products in 1951. Since the pans were composed of metal instead of steel, they offered a less expensive alternative to high-quality frying pans.

A sauté pan is a shallow pan with straight sidewalls. This is the main difference between a sauté pan and a skillet or frying pan, which has slanted sides. The straight sides make the sauté pan better suited for certain tasks that require cooking ingredients in a liquid, such as shallow frying or braising, because these liquids could leak over a skillet’s slated sides.A sauté pan can also be used to sauté, stir-fry, or sear in the same way that a skillet can. However, despite its name, a sauté pan is not necessarily the best pan to use to sauté ingredients, and some chefs actually prefer using a skillet for sautéing because of its slanted sides.