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A broiler pan has one job: hold the food up and let the fat fall away. The catch is that the rack doing the draining is also the rack you’ll be scrubbing ten minutes after dinner, and the pan that came with your oven is often the flimsiest piece of metal in the kitchen. I’ve ruined my share of them. So my team spent six months cooking under the broiler with 16 different pans to see which ones actually earn their cabinet space.
A couple of things I learned along the way. Porcelain enamel takes high heat better than most nonstick coatings, but it chips if you drop it in the sink, and thin stamped racks hide sharp edges at the corners until you’re washing them bare-handed. Fit matters more than any spec on the box, too — measure your oven’s interior and the rack you plan to use, because a pan that sits too close to the element will scorch dinner and smoke out the kitchen.
The picks below cover the whole spread: two-piece sets that go from broiler to roasting pan, replacements sized for specific oven makes, and disposable foil trays for nights you don’t want to wash anything at all. A few are handsome enough to carry to the table; all of them are built for work, not display.
Best for Everyday Oven Broiling
GE WB48X10056 Broiler Pan
Key Features
- Material: Porcelain-coated carbon steel
- Dimensions: 16.75" x 12.63" x 1.38"
- Dishwasher safe: Yes
- Maximum temperature: 500 °F
- Price: Midrange
New ranges keep arriving without one, which is how a stamped-steel pan became one of the most-replaced parts in a kitchen. The GE WB48X10056 is the one we point most people to: 16.75 by 12.63 by 1.38 inches, sized for the broiler drawer on a standard 30-inch range, and the same part GE fitted to a long run of its own ovens and to Hotpoint. Two pieces, a slotted rack and a shallow drip pan, both porcelain-coated and rated to 500°F.
What it gets right is the whole job. The rack sits low, leaving real clearance between the food and the element, and the pan underneath is shallow enough to slide in and out without a wrestling match. We ran bacon across it on a Sunday and chicken thighs on a weeknight; both times the fat ended up in the pan instead of smoking around the meat, and both times the whole thing went in the dishwasher afterward.
The coating is the part to handle with some care. Porcelain isn’t nonstick, and a scouring pad on a blackened corner takes the finish with it, so we soak instead of scrub and we stopped stacking the rack on top of the pan in the drawer. Treat it that way and the finish stays intact much longer.
Pros
- Fits most standard 30-inch range broiler drawers
- Slotted rack keeps food clear of drippings
- Dishwasher safe for fast cleanup
Cons
- Sharp edges on the pan rim and rack
This is the broiler pan we recommend to most people: it fits a standard range, drains fat into a shallow pan, and goes in the dishwasher.
Best for High-Heat Broiling
Range Kleen BP102X Broiler Pan
Key Features
- Pieces: 2
- Material: Porcelain-coated steel
- Dimensions: 16" x 12.5" x 1.75"
- Maximum temperature: 1,025 °F
1,025°F is the number that sets the Range Kleen BP102X apart, and it’s not marketing arithmetic: that’s roughly double the rating of the 500°F pans in this group, which is why this is the one we take out to the grill. Under a hard broiler it doesn’t scorch or shed its coating, and set on a gas grate it behaves like any other piece of cookware.
The rest of the design is plain in a way that works. At 16 by 12.5 by 1.75 inches it’s the deepest of the full-size pans here, so it holds more fat before you have to deal with it, and the porcelain-on-steel rack drops in flush instead of rocking. It’s made in the USA, it’s dishwasher safe, and the finish has stayed glossy through a couple of months of steady use in our oven.
Release is where it asks for help. Porcelain isn’t a nonstick surface, and anything sticky, glazed ribs or a lean fish fillet, bonds to the rack if it goes on dry. A few seconds with a spray bottle saves the scrubbing later.
Pros
- Rated to 1,025°F for broiler and grill duty
- Deepest full-size pan here holds more fat
- Dishwasher safe porcelain-on-steel construction
Cons
- Rack can warp under high heat
We keep this one for the hottest work, since it is the only reusable pan here rated far past 1,000°F and the one that can go on a grill grate.
Best for Whirlpool-Family Ranges
Whirlpool 4396923 Broiler Pan
Key Features
- Capacity: 320 cubic inches
- Material: Porcelain
- Dimensions: 16.75" x 12.75" x 1.5"
- Maximum temperature: 500 °F
When the badge on your range says Whirlpool, Maytag, KitchenAid, or JennAir, the safest broiling pan is the one whose part number is printed in the manual. This is 4396923, the genuine OEM set: porcelain on steel, 16.75 by 12.75 by 1.5 inches, rated to 500°F, and a stand-in for a long string of superseded numbers.
It’s built around drainage. The grid holds the food up, the pan catches what comes off, and the result is fewer flare-ups and less smoke than a flat sheet pan produces. The pan measures 320 cubic inches, enough for four to six pieces of chicken or a couple of steaks, and it rinses out easily if you get to it while the fat is still warm.
The case for paying OEM money is fit, and fit is the thing to check. The grid can sit a touch proud of the pan, and the set is happiest in the ovens it was built for. Ours dropped into a Whirlpool range without complaint; if your badge isn’t on that list, measure the drawer before you order and treat this as a 16¾-inch pan rather than a universal one.
Pros
- Genuine OEM fit for Whirlpool-family ranges
- Porcelain grid drains fat and reduces splatter
- 320-cubic-inch pan fits four to six pieces
Cons
- Grid can sit slightly proud of the pan
Buy this if your range wears a Whirlpool-family badge; we have not found a safer way to guarantee a factory fit than the OEM part number.
Best for Small Ovens, Rvs
Certified Appliance Broiler Pan Set
Key Features
- Material: Porcelain-on-steel
- Dimensions: 13" x 8.75" x 1.38"
- Dishwasher safe: Yes
- Maximum temperature: 1,050 °F
- Price: Midrange
Thirteen inches by 8¾ is small for a broiler pan, and that’s exactly the reason to buy this one. It’s sized for the ovens a full-size pan won’t fit: RV and camper ranges, apartment stoves, toaster ovens, and the narrow slot above a countertop oven’s element. Porcelain on steel, two pieces, rated to 1,050°F, and free of PFOA and PTFE.
For one or two people it’s the pan we reach for most. Two pork chops or a small chicken fit with room for the fat to fall away, and it’s light enough to pull out one-handed with a mitt on. It’s also the pan that made broiling worth doing in a toaster oven, where a full-size tray simply doesn’t go.
The boundary is capacity. Four people and a whole bird is more than it wants, and a big Sunday broil means two batches. Given how often a household of two actually broils, that trade makes sense to us: a small pan that lives in the drawer beats a big one that doesn’t fit.
Pros
- Fits RV, apartment, and toaster ovens
- Rated to 1,050°F with no PFOA or PTFE
- Light enough to handle one-handed
Cons
- Coating can peel or scuff with use
Our pick for small ovens: it is the pan we reach for when cooking for one or two, and it still handles everything a full broiler throws at it.
Best for Full-Size Ovens
Stock Your Home Foil Broiler Pans
Foil doesn’t broil better than porcelain. What it does is disappear at the end of the night, and that’s the trade these pans are selling. This is a 25-pack of ribbed aluminum trays, 13.4 by 9.6 by 0.85 inches, oven safe, freezer safe, and sized to sit on a standard oven rack or across a gas grill.
The ribbing does more than decorate. It lifts a burger or a chicken breast just clear of the fat, which is the difference between roasting and frying, and it leaves faint grill marks on whatever you run under the element. Grease collects in the grooves as the food cooks, so the pan stays reasonably tidy while dinner finishes.
Where these earn their place in our kitchen is the messy work: bacon on a Sunday, fish on a weeknight, kebabs on the grill when nobody wants to scrub skewers. Twenty-five trays covers a couple of months of that, and because they’re freezer safe, you can prep a marinade batch on Sunday and stack the trays until Wednesday.
Pros
- Ribbed bottom lifts food out of the fat
- No scrubbing; toss the tray after use
- Oven safe and freezer safe
Cons
- Foil flexes under a loaded tray
Buy these for the nights you refuse to scrub: the foil catches the fat, the ribbing gives you a broiled surface, and cleanup is the trash can.
Best for Toaster Ovens
DCS Deals Mini Foil Pans
Key Features
- Surface: Ribbed
- Material: Aluminum
- Safe for: Oven and freezer
- Pack count: 25 pans
- Price: Budget
A salmon fillet, four shrimp, one chicken breast: the kind of cooking that doesn’t justify heating a whole oven, and doesn’t justify a full-size pan either. These DCS Deals mini broiler pans are built for exactly that, a small ribbed tray that fits a toaster oven, 25 to a pack, oven safe and freezer safe.
We keep a stack next to the toaster oven, and two of them sit side by side on the rack when there’s a vegetable to go with the protein. That’s the useful part of the small footprint: a portion of fish in one tray and asparagus in the other, and neither needs washing afterward.
Be clear about what this is. It’s a disposable tray, not a pan: thin, bendy when you lift it loaded, and no help at all for a family-sized broil. For solo cooking the size is the feature, and a stack of 25 lasts us a long while.
Pros
- Fits toaster ovens, two side by side
- Ribbed surface catches drippings
- Nothing to wash afterward
Cons
- Too small for anything beyond two portions
Our toaster-oven pick: the trays are small enough to run two at once, and each one goes straight into the trash when dinner is over.
Best for Full-Size Replacements
Bagean 4396923 Broiler Pan
Key Features
- Material: Glossy porcelain
- Dimensions: 16.75" x 12.75" x 2"
- Dishwasher safe: Yes
- Maximum temperature: 525 °F
- Price: Midrange
Bagean builds this pan to the same 4396923 part number Whirlpool uses, but it isn’t the same object. The coating is a glossier porcelain, the walls are half an inch deeper at 2 inches, and it carries a 525°F rating instead of 500°F. If you’re replacing a rusted-out factory tray and want more room for drippings, that depth is the reason to look here.
Otherwise the shape is familiar: 16.75 by 12.75 inches, a slotted rack that drops in, a bottom pan that catches everything. It’s dishwasher safe, and it spreads heat evenly enough that a London broil browns across the surface rather than at one end.
It’s heavier than the OEM pan, close to four pounds, with the solid feel that goes with the weight, and the glossy finish wipes down more easily than a matte one. The catch is that porcelain gloss still isn’t nonstick: a piece of fish will grip the rack if you put it on bare, so oil the rack first.
Where it lands for us is as the second pan, the one you buy when the factory tray is shot but you want a spare that’s a little deeper and rated a little hotter, without chasing a discontinued part number. If a guaranteed factory fit is the whole point, the Whirlpool is the safer buy; if you want headroom, this is the better pan.
Pros
- Deeper 2-inch pan holds more drippings
- Rated to 525°F, hotter than the OEM part
- Glossy porcelain wipes down easily
Cons
We recommend it as a second full-size pan: it runs deeper than the factory tray and is rated a little hotter, at about the same money.
Best for Drip Catching
PLASTICPRO Foil Grill Pans
Key Features
- Material: Aluminum
- Dimensions: 13" x 9" x 2"
- Disposable: Yes
- Pack count: 50 pans
- Price: Midrange
Fifty pans for roughly the price of a couple of reusable ones is a different kind of purchase, and it only makes sense once you stop thinking of them as broiler pans. These are 9-by-13 foil trays, two inches deep, and the point is what they catch, not what they cook.
The bottom is nearly flat. There are shallow ribs, but nothing that lifts food out of its own fat the way a slotted rack does. As a liner under a roast, under a grill grate, or in the bottom of a smoker, that’s fine: the pan holds a good volume of drippings and protects the surface underneath.
The two-inch walls are the useful part. A pile of vegetables or a baste-heavy roast stays contained, and the tray doubles as a drip pan under a grill grate or a pellet smoker. What you give up is drainage and any hope of grill marks.
We keep them for smoke duty and big-batch prep: a brisket on the pellet grill, a tray of portions headed for the freezer, a campfire breakfast. As a broiler pan they’re a compromise. As a liner that keeps the real pan clean, they’re the cheapest thing here per use.
Pros
- Two-inch walls contain spills and drips
- Works as a grill or smoker drip pan
- Freezer safe for make-ahead portions
Cons
- No drainage ridges; food sits in fat
- Fifty trays take real cabinet space
Fifty trays that earn their keep under a grill grate or beneath a roast; we do not broil in them, and we do not miss the scrubbing.
How We Tested: Six Months Under the Broiler
I started by pulling together the replacement pans sold for the major oven makes, universal two-piece sets, and the disposable foil trays people buy for barbecue season. Anything without listed dimensions or a stated coating was cut, which left 16 pans spanning bare steel, porcelain-coated steel, nonstick, and foil.
Each pan went into a real oven, not a test rig. I set the rack to the position I actually cook on at home, slid every pan in empty first to check clearance and whether the door shut cleanly, then loaded it with skin-on chicken thighs, steaks, and oiled vegetables. I watched whether fat pooled in the corners or drained through the perforations, whether the holes were wide enough to pass drippings but tight enough to keep a asparagus spear from slipping through, and whether the rack flexed under a heavy roast. I ran a dish towel along the rack ends to catch burrs, and checked for warping by rocking each pan on the counter after every few high-heat sessions.
Cleaning was its own round. I soaked each pan in hot soapy water for 20 minutes, went at it with a nonabrasive sponge, and noted whether residue lifted or had to be scraped — the nonstick pans released easily at first but scratched within weeks, while the porcelain needed more soaking but came back looking the same. I ran every pan that claimed to be dishwasher safe through a full cycle and checked the coating afterward.
By the end I was judging each one on how it looked after six months of weekly use, how it fit a packed oven rack, and whether it could pull double duty as a roasting or air-fry pan — the same money spent on a pan that only broils is money poorly spent.
How to Choose a Broiler Pan
The pan is the easy part; the rack and the fit are where broiler pans succeed or fail, and a pan that doesn’t sit right in your oven is one you’ll stop using.
Measure Before You Trust the Word Standard
Pans sold as standard run from roughly 13 to 17 inches long, which is a wide enough spread to matter. Measure the rack the pan will sit on and the height of the broiler drawer or the clearance under the element, then subtract an inch at each side so the pan slides rather than wedges.
Our full-size picks run 16 to 16.75 inches and suit most 30-inch ranges. Smaller ovens, campers, and toaster ovens need something in the 13-inch range, and a two-inch-deep pan may not clear a tight drawer even when the footprint fits. Get the footprint right first, everything else second.
The Rack Is the Whole Point
A two-piece pan works because the slotted top holds food above the bottom, so fat drips away and hot air moves under the meat instead of steaming it. Depth matters as much as slots: a 1.5- to 2-inch pan catches a useful volume of drippings without pushing the food far from the heat.
A flat pan is a different tool. It roasts food in its own fat rather than broiling above it, which is fine for catching drips under a roast or a grill grate and wrong for a steak you want browned.
Match the Coating to the Heat
Most porcelain-on-steel pans top out at 500°F, roughly where a hot broiler sits, so there is no margin. The stronger picks here reach 525°F and beyond, and two go past 1,000°F for grill duty. PTFE nonstick is the wrong coating for this job; it degrades well below broiler temperatures.
Porcelain chips when it is scoured or shocked with cold water, and a chipped spot sticks and rusts. Buy a rating with headroom and treat the finish gently: soak instead of scrub, and hand wash the pan when something burns on.
Reusable or Disposable?
A porcelain pan costs about what a 25-pack of foil trays does, then keeps working for years. Foil costs pennies per use and asks nothing of you at cleanup. If you broil weekly and want fat lifted away from the food, buy the reusable pan; if you broil occasionally, cook on a grill, or want to serve straight off the tray, buy foil.
Foil also wins in a toaster oven, where a metal rack pan may not fit at all, and for anyone feeding one or two people. Reusable pans pay off in a household that broils often enough to notice the difference between crisp and steamed.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I use my broiler pan as a roasting pan?
Yes, within limits. The bottom pan works under a small chicken or a pork loin, and leaving the rack in lets the fat drain as the meat roasts. What a broiler pan can’t do is hold liquid for a braise or a big bird, since the pan is only 1.5 to 2 inches deep.
If a recipe calls for an inch of liquid or a turkey, use a roasting pan. If it calls for dry heat and a rack, the broiler pan is already the right shape.
Why did my broiler pan warp?
Thermal shock. The pan goes from a broiler at 500°F or more to a cold sink in a couple of minutes, and thin steel moves faster than its coating can follow. Let it cool on the stovetop or a trivet first, and don’t preheat an empty pan under the element.
Hand washing in warm water once the pan is cool is the habit that prevents most of it. Skip the dishwasher cycle while the pan is still hot.
Can I line my broiler pan with foil?
In the bottom pan, yes: foil catches drippings and turns cleanup into a rinse. On the slotted rack, no. Foil seals the openings that let fat drain away, so the food sits in grease and the pooled fat can scorch and smoke under the element.
If cleanup is what you want to avoid, buy a disposable ribbed tray instead of wrapping the rack.
Final Verdict
Most kitchens should buy the GE WB48X10056 and stop thinking about it. It fits a standard range, the rack keeps food out of the fat, and it goes in the dishwasher, which is everything a broiling pan has to do.
Grill with your pan or broil at maximum heat and the Range Kleen’s 1,025°F rating earns the step up. And if scrubbing a rack is what stands between you and a weeknight broiled dinner, a pack of ribbed foil trays is money well spent.