6 Reasons To Start Using Chef Pans In Your Home Kitchen
Little Used The Food Industry, GN / Chef Pans Are Like … The Best Things Ever (In This Author’s Opinion)
Originally published on my blog:
To continue with the long progress of documenting random things I find interesting — evidenced visually by the mushrooming tags cloud in the sidebar of this blog — I thought I would write up a quick note on my love of Gastronorm pans, and commercial-grade cookware in general.
Gastronorm sizes are standard sizes of containers used in the catering industry specified in the EN 631 standards
Correct me if I am wrong, but I believe that few outside the catering and restaurant industry even know that these things exist.
Here are some reasons that is a travesty.
1: They Make Your Home Feel Like An All-You-Can-Eat Buffet
Nothing screams “home comfort” to me more than eating dinner served out of two Gastronorm pans. These are 1/6 (“sixth”) pans with a depth of 10cm. Want to bring the all you can eat buffet experience to your dining room table? GN pans will get you at least part of the way.
To get very to the Real McCoy, all you need is a pile of GN pans, a bain marie (or alternatively a more consumer-oriented electric buffet pan warmer; Amazon link here), some vaguely annoying background music, and a massive appetite.
And yes, if you’re really determined you can buy all of these things. Amazon even stocks them.
2: They’re Made for Restaurants, So Are Food-Industry-Tough
Gastronorm pans (also called “chef’s pans” or “GN pans”) are as hearty as they look.
Trust me, these things will take a beating.
My fridge fits exactly 4 GN pans in width and 2 x 1/6s in depth. Coincidence? I think not!
Gastronorm pans can be:
- Used as a percussion instrument in combination with your favorite’s chef’s spoon, which is another piece of industrial cookware that everybody absolutely should own. You can also bang on your gastronorm in this manner to let roommates or recalcitrant children know that dinner (itself served in GN pans) has been served.
- Used as a form of cymbal by clacking the Gastronorm’s lid against the body of the Gastronorm repetitively. This particular percussionary use is perhaps most appropriate to herald the arrival of food in the pans at Pot Lucks.
- Used in the same manner as a form of kitchen gong to indicate when a dish has been completed.
More conventionally, they can be:
- Put in an oven (they’re oven proof and used widely for baking loaves*)
- Put in a freezer (they’re freezer proof*)
- Put in a fridge
- Put on a hot plate
(Exact heat and cold resistance depends on material used. Ask the seller)
3: They’re Versatile! Perfect for Storing, Heating, and Serving
Anybody that’s been to a buffet, or bought a sandwich in Subway, has almost certainly interacted with a Gastronorm pan — although few besides the restaurant owners probably know them by that name.
Gastronorms fit perfectly in the refrigerator and I’ve observed that there seems to be some weird Gastronorm/refrigerator dynamic at play.
For instance: I can stack two 10cm Gastronorms into the lower shelf of my fridge and they fit perfectly with not a excess millimeter of headspace gone to waste.
Better than that, GN pans are the perfect receptacle for every stage of the food preparation and consumption process.
You can:
- Store raw ingredients in Gastronorms
- Store coked ingredients in Gastronorms
- Heat up food for serving directly in a Gastronom
- Insert said Gastronorms into a bain marie or place them onto a trivet to serve you or your guests from
If you have a label printer that can do thermal printed labels, you can also affix labels to the front of them to indicate the ones that you wish to keep for prep etc. Waterproof stickers also work.
4: They’re Modular (And Made To An International Standard)
GN pans are perfect for stacking one on top of the other in a way that regular kitchen storing bowls simply are not.
Because they’re standardized according to a European directive (yes, really; “EN-631: Materials and Articles in Contact with Foodstuffs — Catering Containers — Dimensions of Containers”), difference sizes of GN pan can also be stacked one on top of the other in a refrigerator.
In fact I would argue that the success with which the standard has been adopted internationally is pretty darn impressive.
Walk into a kitchen store (or order a deli sandwich) in Dublin, Jerusalem, and Boston and you should get more or less the same selection of pans.
Forget trying to get that IKEA bowl to sit on top of that rectangular box thing you got as a gift from your coworker.
Gastronorms fit perfectly whether alongside or on top of one another and make fantastic use out of refrigerator storage space.
To work out what will fit, all you need is to know some simple arithmetic / fractions: two 1/4 tubs will fit on top of a 1/2, etc.
In fact, the more Gastronorms you own the more uses you seem to find for them, just as you will often see in commercial kitchens.
I have one dedicated solely to housing lids for the other pans in my kitchen while another is boxing off ice storage trays in the freezer compartment.
Another fun facet of knowing Gastronorm sizes not to be taking lightly is that you can impress serving staff and friends by being able to describe the size of pan an ingredient is being held in. If there’s a cooler party trick, I don’t know of it.
“Some cabbage please,” marks you out as just another average punter looking for a sandwich filling. “Can I have a big of the cabbage? You see the one in that quarter [Gastronorm]” subtly communicates to staff that they’re dealing with a fellow food industry professional — and that they better be on their guard to make the best sandwich in the world for you. I’m just trying to be funny, of course.
Speaking of GN sizes, that’s actually my favorite thing about them.
As mentioned, it’s a legitimate international standard.
There are no regional or international “interpretations” that I’m aware of as to what size a quarter pan should be. Catalog examples from several countries all sporting the same terminology and gauge:
Just remember: lids aren’t typically included and catering suppliers — because they mostly sell to other businesses — often quote ex-VAT / sales tax.
The only differences you’ll find between manufacturers relate to the material used (you can find stainless steel, the commercial kitchen standard, as well as aluminimum, glass, and even plastic).
The sizes are described as fractions of a full (1/1 pan), such that four 1/4 Gastronorms (called a “quarter pan”) would fit perfectly into a horizontal 1/1 pan at a sandwich counter.
Join The Gastronom Way
As trivial as it may seem, the Gastronorm pan size convention is one of the best examples of successful international standardization (and cooperation) that I have ever come across (although granted my expertise on this matter is minor.)
Pan sizes for the restaurant industry seem to be internationally uncontroversial, which makes me wonder why can’t we do the same about a lot of other things such as the unit of measurement for reporting temperature in or whether we use the metric or Imperial system?
The ones I have at home are:
- 1/4 pans: rectangular; enough to hold about four servings of a dish. 1/3 pans are roughly the same shape but slightly longer and wider. I would find them a little too large. Perfect for leftovers of one big dish or two dishes put into one.
- 1/6 pans: square; enough to hold about two servings of a dish. Also a great size for storing prepped ingredients. Also perfect for smaller leftovers.
- 1/9 pans: small pans that can fit in the side of a fridge and which are great for storing small quantities of sauces, like pesto, that can survive in the fridge for a couple of weeks.
GN pans also come in a variety of standardized depths.
Typically, they can be the following depths (in mm):
- 20
- 40
- 66
- 100
- 150
- 200
This adds another dimension to their versatility.
A deep sixth (1/6 x 200mm) is perfect for ladelling soup out of into a bowl while a flat 40mm deep third would be a great size in which to store chips, for extraction with a pair of kitchen tongs.
5: You Buy Them in Catering Stores
Restaurant / catering supply stores are surely one of the most underrated shopping experiences on the planet.
If you can find one that isn’t trade-only (doesn’t sell to just restaurants) you can buy professional-grade cookware for often the same price as you can buy grossly inferior consumer stuff. Additionally, restaurant supply places stock:
- Things like chef spoons which aren’t typically found in consumer kitchen stores.
- Things like giant 40 liter aluminium pots for homebrewing which would also never be found in a store for general consumers.
These are also fortunately the home of Gastronorm pans!
You will feel like a kid in a candy store as you eagerly eye up new depths of pans to add to your collection. Perhaps you want a 2/3? Or even a 65mm deep 1/3. Your options are wide open.
6: They’re Transportable And Easily Stackable
I’ve frequently brought Gastronorm pans to Pot Luck meals.
The only negative is that the lids don’t seal fully, so a strip of sellotape can be required to make sure that nothing spills.
Otherwise, because they stack so well, you can easily bring a dish or a selection of them to your next meal, stick them right in the oven / on the hot plate to warm up, and then just put the pan on a trivet for serving.
You can comfortably fit a stack of three or four quarters (stocked vertically) into an IKEA bag containing everything you need for a successful Indian dinner party:
- A quarter full of curry
- A quarter full of rice
- A quarter full of popadoms
- A quarter full of fruit salad
You could also throw in a few 1/9s full of various dips along the side if you had room. You get the idea!
How more convenient could it be?
Additional Benefits of Gastronorm Life
Some other subtle ways in which adopting the Gastronorm Way has brought positive change into my life:
- I’m never missing a lid. I separate between meat / dairy / for-Passover-only in my kitchen and label each Gastronorm body and lid accordingly with dishwasher-proof stickers. Other than that, GN pans and lids are completely interchangeable — irrespective of the depth of the pan.
- My fridge storage is way more efficient: I have less random ingredients lying around as cooking — and actually eating what I cook (next point) — helps stuff get used up. Everything fits into well-organized blocks into my fridge and dry wipe markers help keep track of what is what (and when it might be expected to go off).
- I eat way more leftovers. Traditionally, I a terrible food waster and poor at eating leftovers. Since I’ve adopted the Gastronorm Way I, for some reason, am much better at eating leftoveres in the fridge. It’s also really easy to combine separate dishes.
