The saucier has emerged as a staple piece of cookware, offering home cooks the possibility to experiment with a wide range of recipes and cooking techniques. Whether you need to simmer a soup, prepare a side dish, or make a delicious breakfast oatmeal, our Saucier is essential to any growing cookware collection.
But what exactly makes the Saucier such a beloved piece of cookware?
Le Creuset Sauciers are designed and produced to be kitchen staples for years to come, embodying the buy-it-once-for-life nature of our cookware. Available in two materials, stainless steel and enamelled cast iron, our line of saucier pans have inspired generations of home cooks.
Of course, familiarizing yourself with our sauciers is essential before adding it to your Le Creuset collection. From saucier features and uses to a few recipes to explore, we have you covered.
What is a Saucier?
A saucier is a specialized pan used primarily for making sauces. In fact, in France, a saucier refers to a chef who specializes in making sauces, giving this versatile piece of cookware its name. While the saucier shares many similarities with a traditional saucepan, they nonetheless have key differences. For one, the saucier pan is designed with rounded sides, making whisking or stirring ingredients easier. Saucepans, by contrast, have taller, straight sides.
Additionally, the saucier pan comes equipped with a rounded bottom, ensuring no sauce sticks to the corners and gets burned. Le Creuset’s Sauciers also feature an ergonomic stay-cool handle, providing home cooks with a safe and confident grip when transferring this piece of cookware.
Finally, our Sauciers come with a tight-fitting lid, locking in heat and moisture at every turn.
The saucier serves a number of crucial purposes around the kitchen, from preparing risottos and sides to grains and breakfast dishes such as oatmeal.
Saucier Features
Le Creuset’s Sauciers have been expertly crafted to produce delectable results time after time, combining premium materials and a keen attention to detail. From its tight-fitting lid to its rounded bottom, these crucial features ensure our saucier pans have established themselves as staples in any kitchen.
Curved Sides
The Saucier’s unique curved corners ensure ingredients are exposed to a consistent heat source, simplifying stirring or whisking a delicate sauce. This pan’s curved corners ultimately promote superior heat distribution, ensuring your favourite sauces cook evenly, avoiding hot spots. Finally, the saucier pan’s smoothly curved sides promote efficient stirring and constant movement.
Rounded Bottom
Unlike traditional saucepans, the Saucier features a rounded bottom and a shorter profile. This pan’s unique design ensures sauces and delicate ingredients do not stick to the corners, making cleanup a breeze. The saucier’s rounded bottom ultimately creates the perfect environment for whisking a sauce without the fear of burning it.
Tight-fitting lid
Le Creuset’s Sauciers also come equipped with a tight-fitting lid, preventing boil overs. This pan’s tight-fitting lid is designed to lock in heat and moisture, making the saucier pan particularly ideal when preparing side dishes and grains. Our Sauciers have also been carefully designed with an ergonomic handle and a helper tab, helping you transfer it around the kitchen effortlessly.
Why is the Saucier an essential piece of cookware?
The saucier has established itself as yet another Le Creuset essential piece of cookware and is beloved by home cooks for its versatility and durability. As its name suggests, this piece of cookware is ideal for simmering a delicate sauce to perfection. Our saucier pans open up the possibilities in the kitchen, serving a number of crucial everyday purposes. From preparing vegetables and side dishes to healthy breakfast meals, this versatile pan has you covered, providing superior heat retention every step of the way.
The saucier’s rounded sides ensure you have everything you need to take your sauce-making game to the next level, providing a larger surface area. Beyond its versatility and its unique design, Le Creuset’s sauciers feature a design and materials you can depend on for years of cooking. Compatible with any heat source, including on the stovetop and in the oven, this pan is a must-have in any kitchen setup.
What cooking techniques are best suited to a Saucier?
Adding a saucier pan to your Le Creuset collection is a great way to expand your repertoire of recipes, helping you experiment with a variety of new cooking techniques. From simmering a sauce to preparing risottos, this versatile pan can help you elevate your cooking.
The primary use of the saucier is to prepare delicate sauces for all your favourite dishes. Featuring a rounded bottom and curved sides, this pan simplifies whisking and stirring ingredients, ensuring no sauce gets stuck on the corners.
Crafted with enamelled cast iron or stainless steel, Le Creuset’s sauciers offer superior heat retention and even heat distribution, exposing ingredients to a consistent heat source. Whether you are making a pasta recipe for the first time, or preparing your very own lasagna, our saucier pan makes the cooking process effortless and enjoyable.
The saucier pan is also ideal for boiling your favourite ingredients with ease, simplifying everyday meal preparation. From boiling a side of beans, eggs, or vegetables, this versatile pan has everything you need to step up your cooking game and experiment with a wide range of recipes and flavours.
Featuring a stainless steel or enamelled cast iron construction, Le Creuset sauciers are excellent retainers of heat, boiling ingredients more effectively. They also come equipped with a convenient steam hole, preventing boil overs. Additionally, the saucier’s tight-fitting lid creates the perfect environment for boiling, and is particularly ideal for beginner home cooks.
The saucier pan is equally adept at simmering soups, trapping in heat, moisture, and flavour thanks to its tight-fitting lid. This pan’s rounded bottom and unique curved sides ensure you can stir your soup with the minimum of fuss until it is ready to be served, promoting constant movement.
Built with enamelled cast iron or stainless steel, the saucier creates the ideal environment for soup to simmer to perfection, providing superior heat retention. Get simmering with your saucier pan and experiment with the classic minestrone or a traditional onion soup!
Side dishes are pivotal to dinner time, complementing main courses to perfection. Best of all, these recipes can easily be prepared with your saucier pan, whether you are preparing a side of rice, veggies, or a range of delicious grain dishes, to name a few.
Indeed, Le Creuset’s sauciers are particularly ideal for recipes that require constant stirring and mixing due to their rounded bottom and curved sides, ensuring all flavours infuse themselves evenly throughout. Featuring a tight-fitting lid, the saucier pan locks in heat and moisture for an effortless cook.
The key to a good risotto is patience and attention to detail, requiring lots of stirring, making the saucier the perfect piece of cookware for this recipe. Its smoothly curved sides and rounded bottom promote efficient stirring all-while ensuring no ingredients get stuck to the corners.
This is particularly important when preparing a risotto as you have to continuously stir as the rice lightly fries. The saucier’s rounded bottom makes it equally suited to prepare a range of your favourite pasta dishes, exposing ingredients to a consistent heat source without burning them.
The saucier pan can also be used to prepare oatmeal in the morning, helping you stir the oats and any other ingredients effortlessly thanks to the pan’s rounded bottom and uniquely sloped sides. Additionally, this pan offers a large surface area compared to traditional saucepans, giving home cooks the ability to mix and match their favourite ingredients with ease.
The saucier’s unique design is built to create a lifetime of meals, delivering consistent results every single time – even when preparing the simplest of recipes. Our Fruit and Pistachio Oatmeal is a great place to start with this versatile piece of cookware, helping you start your morning off on the right foot.
Saucier Recipes
From soups and sauces to grains and risottos, the saucier pan makes for an extremely versatile addition to any Le Creuset collection. Here are four effortless saucier recipes you can try!
Minestrone Soup
Looking for a hearty recipe that is sure to soothe the soul? Look no further than our delicious minestrone soup. Our version of this classic Italian staple features carrots, celery, zucchini, squash, tomatoes, green beans and leafy greens.
Our Saucier is the only piece of cookware you’ll need to slow-cook this recipe, delivering a rich array of flavours. Equipped with a tight-fitting lid and a curved bottom, this versatile pan locks in heat and moisture all-while making stirring a breeze. This recipe takes approximately two hours to prepare from start to finish, serving up to six portions at a time.
See the recipes
Scallop, Pumpkin and Sage Risotto
While our Scallop, Pumpkin, and Sage Risotto offers an unconventional twist on traditional risotto recipes, your palette will be thanking you once it has been served. After all, the best chefs regularly step out of their comfort zone.
The Saucier’s rounded bottom and curved sides simplify this recipe, promoting constant movement and efficient stirring. Indeed, regular monitoring and stirring is crucial to the success of any risotto and is no different with this one. The end result is a delicious medley of flavours and textures in just over an hour.
See the recipes
Pearled Couscous Salad
Our Pearled Couscous Salad is yet another example of a delicious side and nutritious recipe that is simplified by your saucier pan. Combining Dijon mustard, maple syrup, and orange juice, this recipe offers a unique twist on traditional couscous recipes!
Our Saucier creates the ideal environment for preparing this recipe, trapping in heat and moisture thanks to its tight-fitting lid, ensuring the couscous blends seamlessly with the shallots, apricots, and cranberries. This recipe serves between four and six people, taking less than 30 minutes to prepare – making it perfect for a potluck or quick and easy lunch.
See the recipes
Seaweed Compound Butter
Preparing this Seaweed Compound Butter is as simple as following four simple steps and can elevate your favourite recipes. Featuring a blend of fresh ingredients, including nori sheets, dried wakame, red pepper flakes, garlic, lemon juice, and bonito flakes, this easy-to-follow recipe has all the makings to become an instant classic alongside your main courses.
Our Saucier can be used to first toast the seaweed along with the red pepper flakes until very fragrant. Next, return all the ingredients to the saucier pan and stir until the garlic becomes tender before blending the remaining cubed butter with the melted butter mixture, toasted seaweed mixture and bonito flake until completely smooth. This recipe is ready in just under 30 minutes and can be stored in the fridge for up to a week, covered.
See the recipesPicking a Le Creuset Saucier
Le Creuset sauciers epitomize our commitment to innovation and excellence in the kitchen, combining premium materials and an authentic, timeless design. Available in both stainless steel and enamelled cast iron, our saucier pans deliver superior heat retention and even heat distribution, delivering consistent results every single time.
From making sauces and preparing risotto, to boiling ingredients and simmering a soup, no cookware collection is complete without a saucier. For more information or inspiration on our sauciers, be sure to visit our blog, or our very own Cooking School, where we break down the most common cooking, baking, and knife techniques.