Free Sample
The Complete Handbook of Tilt Skillets
The practical reference for commercial kitchens, food-service operators, and serious cooks who want to buy, use, and maintain a tilt skillet with confidence.
by Alumigogo Books
Chapter 1: Understanding Tilt Skillets
The Tilt Skillet: A Machine That Does Four Jobs
A tilt skillet is a large, shallow cooking pan, typically rectangular, mounted on a stand with a mechanism that allows the entire pan body to pivot forward and pour its contents out over a front lip. Under that simple description lies a piece of equipment that is rare in its versatility, and equally rare in its misuse by cooks who never fully understand what they are operating. The machine is also known as a tilting braising pan, a tilting skillet, or a tilting griddle, and those names hint at the breadth of its functions. It is not a stockpot, it is not a griddle, and it is not a fryer, but it can perform many of the tasks of all three, often faster and with less labor.
Understanding the tilt skillet starts with understanding its geometry. A typical unit has a cooking surface that is wide and shallow relative to a stockpot. A common 40-gallon floor model, for instance, has a cooking surface roughly 36 inches wide and 24 inches deep, but the pan depth is only about 12 to 14 inches. That shallow, wide basin is the heart of its utility. It exposes a large area of food to a heated bottom, allowing you to brown, sear, or sauté a large volume of product in a single layer, or to hold a shallow braise with rapid evaporation. You cannot get that surface-to-volume ratio in a