Bratt Pan Hire

A bratt pan is a large, shallow, rectangular cooking vessel with a directly heated base, a hinged lid and a tilt mechanism that pours the contents out at the front. Sometimes written brat pan, it does in one unit what a kitchen would otherwise spread across a range top, a boiling pan and an oven.

Because the base is heated directly rather than through a water jacket, the pan browns and fries as well as it boils and braises, and that combination is what makes it a mass catering machine rather than a big saucepan. The tilt is the other half of it: 100 litres of finished food is poured into gastronorms rather than lifted out. The name comes from the German braten, to fry or roast.

Yes. They are two names for the same machine, which is why this page is titled both ways. Tilting skillet is the common term in North America and in a lot of manufacturer literature, bratt pan is what UK kitchens and UK catering colleges say, and braising pan turns up as a third name for it.

If you have been handed a specification that asks for a tilting skillet or a braising pan, the pans on this page are what it means. The one distinction actually worth knowing is between a bratt pan, which is shallow and heated across its base, and a boiling or tilting kettle, which is deep, jacketed and built for liquid. They are not interchangeable.

Almost anything that starts in a pan and finishes in a tray. Browning and searing, shallow frying, braising and stewing, boiling and blanching, poaching, steaming with the lid down, and holding a finished dish at temperature until it is served. For most volume kitchens it is the single most versatile piece of equipment on the floor.

What suits it to mass catering is the sequence rather than any one function. A bolognese, a chilli or a curry can be browned, deglazed, simmered and then poured out of the same vessel with nothing decanted in between, which cuts both handling and washing up. The lid traps steam for vegetables and rice, and the tilt empties the pan straight into gastronorms for a bain marie or a blast chiller.

Both models hold 100 litres and stand on the same footprint, one metre wide by 920 mm deep. The electric H48C is 850 mm high and the gas H48D is 890 mm. Those two are the whole range on this page, and the full specification for each is on its own model page above.

A 100 litre pan is a mass catering size, which puts it in hospital, school, prison, banqueting and event territory rather than on a restaurant line. Judge it by finished portions rather than by litres, and leave headroom when you fill it. A pan filled to the brim cannot be stirred properly and is not safe to tilt.

Let the services in the kitchen decide it. The electric H48C needs a 400 volt three phase supply and a 32 amp connection, which many small kitchens and most temporary ones do not have. The gas H48D needs a gas connection and only a 13 amp socket for its controls, so it suits a site with gas but little power.

Both hold 100 litres, both tilt the same way and both sit on the same footprint, so the cooking is not the deciding factor. If the pan is going into a temporary kitchen, a marquee, an outside catering set up or a site running on a generator, say so when you ask for a quote. That one detail usually settles which model you are offered.