Bratt pans are commercial cooking appliances which can generally perform up to eight different types of cooking: boiling, stewing, shallow-frying, deep-fat frying, roasting, poaching, steaming and braising.

Because of their large output and heavy-duty operation, they are generally used by large catering operations like hospitals, staff canteens or schools. Larger restaurants might also use bratt pans for large outputs.

One unique feature of bratt pans is their tilting feature, which can be either powered or manual. Because bratt pans are relatively large pieces of catering equipment they might not be ideal for smaller premises - although it could be argued that they have a relatively small footprint in comparison to separate fryers, ovens and steamers.