The Art of Sheet-Pan Dinners
Tips for easy sheet-pan dinners without a recipe
Happy Thursday!
This week has flown by in a blur of school drop-offs and pick-ups, work, catching up on laundry and grocery shopping, feeding the people, and on and on.
We took a short road trip over the weekend, which always makes Mondays feel like a scramble. It’s worth it - we had a fun weekend playing at the beach, eating good food in Santa Barbara wine country and feeding emus (of course).
Sheet-Pan Dinners
As the feeling of summer is slowly starting to wane, I’ve been making more sheet-pan dinners again.
I have quite a few recipes for sheet-pan meals on my blog, but the truth is, you don’t always need a recipe to make a sheet-pan dinner. Following a recipe, especially if it’s a new recipe, is always going to slow you down in the kitchen.
If you keep a few “rules” in mind, you can throw together an easy sheet-pan dinner with any combination of protein and vegetables.
What I love about sheet-pan dinners is that the entire meal cooks at the same time in the oven. If I add anything on the side, it’s usually pasta or rice.
Rule #1: Don’t try to cram everything on one sheet-pan. Use at least 2 or maybe 3 sheet-pans so you can spread the food out a little bit. It will roast better this way. Using multiple sheet-pans also lets you combine proteins and veggies that cook for the same amount of time.
An example would be putting chicken thighs (or breasts) and potatoes on one sheet-pan and then combining zucchini + bell peppers on a separate sheet-pan. This lets you take the zucchini and bell peppers out of the oven earlier if you want.
If you don’t want to cook meat, then add a can of drained chickpeas to one of the sheet-pans for protein.
Rule #2: Cut your veggies about the same size. This increases the odds that they’ll cook evenly and be done at the same time.
Rule #3: Don’t worry about creating the perfect combination of vegetables. All vegetables go well together. Just chop up several different types of vegetables and throw them on a sheet-pan together.
Rule #4: Toss everything in olive oil and season generously with salt. For more flavor, find a spice blend at the grocery store that you really like.
Rule #5: No matter what you have on the sheet-pan*, roast it at 425F for at least 25 minutes, often closer to 45 minutes. Mix the veggies once or twice while they roast.
*the exceptions are shrimp and salmon, which will roast in 12 to 15 minutes.
Rule #6: Line sheet-pans with parchment or foil. This is simply for easier clean-up and who doesn’t want that?
Take a peek at the photo below, which is a sheet-pan meal I made recently. On one sheet-pan, I spread out boneless, skinless chicken thighs. On another sheet-pan, I combined summer squash, cherry tomatoes and a can of garbanzo beans.
Everything was tossed in olive oil, salt and pepper and roasted at 425F until done. In this case, the chicken cooked in about the same time as the veggies, but just in case, I kept them on separate pans.
When everything was done, I sliced the cooked chicken and added it to the veggies. I scattered slices of cool cucumber and fresh parsley over the top, then put the entire sheet-pan on the table for dinner.
About Sheet-Pans: These Vollrath sheet-pans are my favorite sheet-pans for roasting and they last for years. There is a less expensive version of this Vollrath sheet-pan that is also sold on Amazon, but if you read closely you’ll see that it’s 18-gauge instead of 13-gauge. Sheet pans come in various gauges, which refer to the thickness of the metal. Gauges run inversely, so the smaller the gauge (13 gauge) the thicker and more durable your pan will be. Higher-gauged sheet pans (18 gauge) are more economical but are not as durable and don’t cook as evenly.
Dinner Last Week
I’m always curious about what other families are eating. Aren’t you? Here’s what my crew ate last week.
Monday: It was Labor Day and we were laboring around our house getting stuff done. Dinner snuck up on me, so we mostly just ate guacamole and chips. There was also a rotisserie chicken in the fridge that Sorin and I ate and the kids skipped. At bedtime, Josie had a banana and a glass a milk after reminding me that I had forgotten to feed her dinner. Whoops.
Tuesday: I took frozen pizza dough out of the freezer and we made homemade pizza. It was okay, but I’ve found that if I don’t make pizza regularly my pizza-making skills suffer. It was a bit doughy and bland.
Wednesday: Salmon, white rice and a salad. I tried roasting the salmon at a lower temperature for a longer amount of time and liked the results (325F for 20 minutes) The salmon stayed moist and tender.
Thursday: Instant Pot beef stew. The weather was a little bit hot for beef stew, but I’m posting more autumn recipes on my blog and that means beef stew. I love cooking stew in a pressure cooker and will share the recipe next week.
Friday: I had leftover homemade veggie burgers in the freezer, so I grilled those and put Trader Joe’s French fries in the oven. We had sliced cucumbers and carrots as well.
Cookbooks
Melissa Clark’s Dinner in One* has 100 recipes that are all made in one pot (or pan, or dish). She includes one-pot pastas and soups, baked casseroles, sheet-pan dinners and skillet meals. There is a really wide variety of choices, all sorts of meat, seafood and vegetarian options.
In typical Melissa Clark style, most of the recipes have a little something extra that gives the meal more flavor. Ingredients like capers, sherry vinegar, a wide variety of spices, harissa paste, chopped nuts and herbs are all pretty typical. Her recipes aren’t hard to follow, but they’re best suited for people with a well-stocked pantry.
*affiliate link
That’s it! Our busy week will be rolling right into a busy weekend, with Rosh Hashanah celebrations, kids activities and a quick girl’s weekend getaway that I’ll be jetting out of town for on Sunday.
Hope you all have a good weekend!
Jenny