Sautéing

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Items that are Sautéed can include potatoes, bacon, and onions

Sautéing is a method of cooking food that uses a small amount of fat in a shallow pan over relatively high heat. Sauter means "to jump" in French. It most likely gets the name for one of two reasons, because the food is cooked until it "jumps".^[1] or because the food is jumped in the pan ^[2]

Food that is sautéed is usually cooked for a relatively short period of time over high heat, with the goal of browning the food while preserving its color, moisture and flavor. This is very common with more tender cuts of meat, e.g. tenderloin and filet mignon. Sautéing differs from searing in that the sautéed food is thoroughly cooked in the process. One may sear simply to add flavor and improve appearance before another process is used to finish cooking it.

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 oils due to the presence of milk solids.

1 Sweating
2 Performing a sauté
3 See also
4 References

[edit] Sweating

A related cooking method, called a sweat, starts with the same raw materials as a sauté (a pan and some fat), but uses a low heat. The purpose of the sweat is simply to soften the food, not brown it as in a sauté. Food is often salted during sweating, to allow some of the food's moisture to "sweat" out. Recipes that use this technique often use the words "cook without colour"

[edit] Performing a sauté

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To sauté, a hot pan is required, large enough to hold all of the food in one layer. A sauté pan is ideal for sautéing; it has a wide flat base and shallow straight sides, to maximize the surface area available for the sauté. Only enough fat to lightly coat the bottom of the pan is needed. Using too much fat will cause the sauté to fry rather than to slide. The food is spread across the hot fat in the pan, and left to brown, turning or tossing occasionally for even cooking. A fork should not be used for turning as it will pierce the meat and let the juices escape.^[3] Tossing or stirring the items in the pan by shaking the pan can cause the pan to cool faster, and make the sauté take longer.

The two most important items to watch are that the pan is very hot, and that the food is not crowded into the pan. This ensures that the food browns well without absorbing the fat or stewing in its own juices. Furthermore, the food must be relatively dry in order to keep the pan from cooling and to keep the moisture from building up in the pan; moisture will steam or stew the food. This is particularly significant in the case of food that has been marinated.

The tossing technique is an element that some choose to use while sautéing. The act of tossing involves first tightly gripping the handle of the pan, then pushing it forward to the front of the pan and quickly yanking the pan an inch or so backwards, causing the food to slide up the near side of the pan and into the air if performed correctly. This requires a fairly non-stick pan with rounded edges, so that the food is curled up and back, rather than jettisoned forward.