What is a Heavy Bottom Saucepan

There seems to be a misguided recommendation that you should get a heavy bottom saucepan. While getting a heavy saucepan is advisable for all saucepan, the misunderstanding comes from how cookware use to be made. Depending on the manufacture, saucepan will often time comes with a heavy disk bottom. They did this so better distribute and hold heat when you sear food. The issue that arise from this is that the sidewall will not get the same heat regulation. As a result, food tends to scorch on the side. These type of pans are cheaper to produce than the fully cladded pan. If the food that you are cooking is burn sensitive, it is highly recommended that you avoid these pans. How you can ID them is by looking at the base. If you see a really thick base, it is a disc bottom pan.

Thanks to all Clad, most better quality cookware comes fully cladded. What that means is that the thickness and the metal used is the same from the bottom to the top of the pan. With these pots, the chances of food burning and scorching is reduced. They do cost a bit more than the disc bottom cookware though.

Heavy Bottom Saucepan for Candy Making

If you are interested in a saucepan particularly for candy making, I recommend that you look into Mauviels Copper Sugar Pot. Although they are more expensive, they are literally the Ferrari of the cookware industry. You can read my full review Here to get a better understanding why. In general, copper conducts heat better than most other metal. This means it lets you control the heat with ease and it prevents scorching at the same time. It will also heat up faster than any other pan.

If Mauviel is a little too expensive, All Clad sauce pan makes for a good alternative as well. They have many different model, but the most affordable one is the d3 version. You can also buy Tramonita for a similar performing saucepan at a fraction of the price.

Do not get cast iron saucepan for candy making. While they are heavy, they have horrible heat conduction. It will be full of heat spot and cast iron only knows one heat, high. If you accidentally overheated the pan, expect your caramel to burn. Not only that, you will have a lot of trouble judging the darkness of the caramel. If you must get a cast iron sugar pot, get one that is coated in enamel. Le Creuset makes some nice one but I still recommend avoiding them. Get something that is more heat responsive.

Quick Summary

To recap, the main benefit and what you should look for is below.
– A heavy pan gives you even heat distribution and it prevents scorching.
– Avoid Disk Bottom and Cast Iron Saucepan.
– The Best Saucepan are made with copper and Mauviel makes one of the Best.
– If copper Saucepan are too expensive, get a Fully cladded one. All Clad and Tramonita makes great alternative.

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