sauté

/ˈsəʊteɪ//soʊˈteɪ/

sauté verb: to cook (food) using a small amount of fat in an open pan over a relatively high heat, allowing the food to brown and form a crust stopping it from sticking to the pan as it cooks.

Verb

sauté (third-person singular simple present sautés, present participle sautéing, simple past and past participle sautéed or sautéd)

(transitive) To cook (food) using a small amount of fat in an open pan over a relatively high heat, allowing the food to brown and form a crust stopping it from sticking to the pan as it cooks.
- Parboil three-fourths cup carrot, cut in strips, fifteen minutes; drain, and sauté in one tablespoon bacon fat to which has been added one tablespoon finely chopped onion.[…]Cook until potatoes are soft, then add twelve small onions cooked until soft, then drained and sautéd in two tablespoons...1906, Fannie Merritt Farmer, “Lamb and Mutton”, in The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book, section “Lamb en Casserole”, page 220
- Frying and sautéing are methods that heat foods for the most part by conduction from a hot, oiled pan, with temperatures between 350 and 450°F/175–225°C that encourage Maillard browning and flavor development.2004, Harold McGee, chapter 14, in On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen, Scribner, →ISBN

Noun

sauté (plural sautés)

A dish prepared this way.

sauté meaning in Marathi, Malay and Indonesian

sauté in Marathi

to cook (food) using a small amount of fat in an open pan over a relatively high heat: सॉटे करणे sŏṭe karṇe

sauté in Malay

to cook (food) using a small amount of fat in an open pan over a relatively high heat: tumis

sauté in Indonesian

to cook (food) using a small amount of fat in an open pan over a relatively high heat: tumis
a dish prepared this way: tumis, tumisan

Examples of sauté in a sentence

Onions need not be sautéd unless they are desired glazed.1906, Fannie Merritt Farmer, “Lamb and Mutton”, in The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book, section “Lamb en Casserole”, page 220:
Lightly sautéing fresh spinach in a drizzle of olive or avocado oil meets this baseline, and it’s tasty and nutritious as well.2021 July 1, Gregory McNamee, “Does spinach make you strong? Ask Popeye – and science”, in CNN, archived from the original on 11 Jun 2025:

Forms of sauté

Verb
third-person singular present	sautés
present participle	sautéing
past participle	sautéed
past	sautéed
past participle	sautéd
past	sautéd
alternative form	saute
alternative form	sautee
alternative form	sautée
alternative form (dated)	sauter
Noun
plural	sautés

Origin of sauté

Borrowed from French sauté, past participle of sauter (“to sauté”, literally “to jump”); in cooking, diced onions jump in the pan from the hot oil.

Words formed from sauté

Phrases with sauté

Questions about sauté

What does sauté mean?: Sauté means to cook (food) using a small amount of fat in an open pan over a relatively high heat, allowing the food to brown and form a crust stopping it from sticking to the pan as it cooks.
What is sauté in Marathi?: Sauté in Marathi is सॉटे करणे (sŏṭe karṇe). See Sauté meaning in Marathi.
How do you use sauté in a sentence?: Onions need not be sautéd unless they are desired glazed.
What part of speech is sauté?: Sauté can be a verb or a noun.
How do you pronounce sauté?: Sauté is pronounced /ˈsəʊteɪ/ (UK).
What is the past tense of sauté?: The past tense of sauté is sautéed.

Words near sauté in the dictionary

Adapted from Wiktionary: sauté (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-sauté.wav, En-us-sauté.oga.

Cite this entry: “sauté.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/saut%C3%A9. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.