Sheet Pan Dinners
Everything goes into the oven on a single sheet pan, and comes out as a complete dinner - the same basic concept as a casserole.
In 2017, the food recipe blogosphere was abuzz with something “new” called a Sheet Pan Dinner. The basic idea of a Sheet Pan Dinner is that everything goes onto one pan in the oven, and comes out at the same time. In order for this to happen, a bit of food chemistry comes into play by considering the size to density ratio. Foods that are dense need to be smaller in size than foods that are less dense in order for them to cook at the same rate.
In some cases, where size and density cannot be brought into balance, a third element, time, becomes a factor and in such cases, one ingredient might have to be put onto the sheet pan after the other ingredients have already been in the oven for awhile.
Two questions to consider here, which may influence your decision to cook with this method or not:
Question Number One: Do You Have Enough Time?
This method of preparing dinner may or may not save you a lot of time. While it generally will save you time on the clean-up side of things since you have only one cooking vessel to wash, some recipes may not save you a lot of time if you're spending an hour chopping things to account for the right density-to-size ratio. A way around this is to buy the pre-cut veggies generally available in grocery stores these days.
Question Number Two: Do You Have the Right Equipment?
Invest in the right kind of sheet pan. If you don't, you'll have a pan that warps suddenly while cooking, and wind up with half of your dinner all over the walls of your oven. There is a difference between a commercial grade sheet pan and a common baking sheet.
You want a sheet pan manufactured from cast aluminum alloy, heat treated, then machined to a thickness of 13-gauge. Baking pans are just stamped out of rolled aluminum and they frequently and suddenly warp at high temperatures. Baking pans are usually available at the grocery store. Commercial grade sheet pans are less frequently available and may have to be purchased at a restaurant supply store or online. You want what is technically called a half sheet pan, measuring roundly 18” x 13”. Full sheet pans will not fit in a typical residential oven.
All that said, this is still a pretty good methodology for fixing a relatively easy, delicious and healthful dinner.
My Number One Fan took it upon herself to test drive several recipes from the damn delicious, chelseys messy apron, blonde cook, shockingly delicious and a spicy perspective websites. As usual in our kitchen, she modified all of the recipes to better suit our tastes and in some cases, what we had or didn't have on hand at the time. In fact, I think most of the authors of these recipes tend to over-complicate their manner of preparation just to make their recipes look more complex, which is mystifying to me since the idea of a one-dish dinner is simplicity.
Here then are few favorite, tested Kitchen Tapestry Sheet Pan Dinner recipes:
