There are two main types of Dutch ovens: traditional Dutch ovens and camping Dutch ovens.  A traditional Dutch oven has three legs and a flat bottom and is suitable for use over an open fire or coals.  The Camp Dutch oven, on the other hand, has a flat bottom and is designed to be used on the stovetop or in a conventional oven.

Skillets and sauté pans appear very similar, but the main difference lies in their shape.

Frying pans are also useful for toasting nuts and seeds, melting chocolate, and cooking pancakes.

A frying pan sports a shallow broad metal pan with sloping sides and does not have a lid but has an open design for better thermal distribution during cooking.

Outdoor Cooking: Dutch ovens are commonly used for outdoor cooking, such as camping and barbecues. Their ability to maintain consistent heat makes them ideal for preparing meals in outdoor settings.

Fry pans come in a greater variety of sizes, making it easy to adjust to the food being cooked, whereas French skillets are designed to handle larger quantities of food.

Mini Cast Iron Skillet

The French skillet has an extended handle on one end and often a grab handle on the other, functioning the same way as a skillet’s handle and making it easy to move around.

While a lid isn’t customary on a French skillet, it shares several characteristics with a sauté pan, so it’s possible to get one with one if you like to preserve the ingredients while cooking.

Now this is a pretty tricky one. Frypans and skillets both rarely come with lids. When a frypan does come with a lid, it’s often made from glass which allows you to monitor food easily. Even so, it’s pretty rare for a lid to be available unless you specifically purchase the lid as an add-on.

Because of its wide base, a sauté pan is significantly heavier than the equivalent skillet, often necessitating the addition of a helper handle on the opposite side of the main handle to facilitate lifting and moving. While this weight is no problem when the pan is sitting still on the stovetop or in the oven, the lighter weight of a skillet makes it superior for shaking and stirring to promote even cooking of vegetables or pieces of chopped meat.