Meaning & use
sauté
Last updated
Meanings
verbtransitive
To cook food quickly in a shallow pan with a little hot oil or butter, stirring or shaking it often.
Grammar: Takes an object: sauté the onions.
Patterns
- sauté something in something
- sauté something until something
Sauté the garlic in olive oil for one minute.
He sautéed the mushrooms until they turned golden.
We sautéed a handful of spinach and served it with eggs.
nouncountable
A dish of food cooked this way, often served with the juices from the pan.
Grammar: Often appears with the main ingredient: a chicken sauté.
Patterns
- a sauté of something
Tonight's special is a sauté of shrimp and peppers.
The restaurant served a vegetable sauté with rice.
She ordered the mushroom sauté as a side.
Word forms
| third person singular | sautés |
|---|---|
| past tense | sautéed |
| past participle | sautéed |
| -ing form | sautéing |
| plural | sautés |
Common combinations
- sauté onions
- Sauté onions until they are soft and clear.
- sauté in butter
- Sauté the fish in butter for three minutes a side.
- sauté pan
- Use a wide sauté pan so the food does not steam.
- lightly sauté
- Lightly sauté the herbs before adding the tomatoes.
- sautéed vegetables
- The sautéed vegetables were still crisp.
Synonyms and how they differ
- fry
- Fry is broader and often uses more fat or longer cooking, while sauté means quick cooking in a little fat with movement.
- stir-fry
- Stir-fry is a wok technique with constant stirring over very high heat, which is rougher than a typical sauté.
- pan-fry
- Pan-fry usually means cooking larger pieces without much stirring, such as a steak or fish fillet.
- brown
- Brown names the result, a darker color, rather than the technique itself.
Word family
- sautéed adjective
- cooked quickly in a little hot fat
- sautéing noun
- the cooking method of sautéing
- sauteuse noun
- a pan with sloped sides used for sautéing
Commonly confused: sauté or sought? sauté or simmer?
sauté vs sought
Sought is the past of seek and is not related; some learners mis-hear the final sound of sauté.
sauté vs simmer
Simmer means cooking gently in liquid just below boiling, while sauté uses fat and higher heat.
Practice
To ___ the onions, heat a little oil in a pan and stir them over medium-high heat until soft.
Choose one answer.
Sauté means quick cooking in a little hot fat with stirring. Boiling, poaching and steaming all use liquid or vapor, not oil.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “sauté”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.