13 Easy Sheet Pan Recipes (2024)

FAQs

What is the basic of sheet pan dinners? ›

A sheet pan takes the concept of a one-pot meal and flips it onto a pan. It saves time, makes clean-up easier, and doesn't require expensive equipment or fancy ingredients. Just start with your protein of choice, then add vegetables, fat and flavorings, and roast at high heat until everything is golden brown.

Temperatures range from 375-400°F for sheet pan meals. Depending on the vegetables and protein you've chosen, it may take anywhere from 35-45 minutes to cook thoroughly. Remember if you've chosen something you know will overcook in that period, you want to add it in later on in the cooking time.

At their best, sheet-pan dinners are easy, convenient, and delicious. They key is to be smart about them. Here's how.

Buy a Commercial-Grade Half Sheet-Pan

The standard size for a half sheet-pan (or “rimmed baking sheet”) is 13"x18". All of the sheet-pan dinners we develop in the Test Kitchen are developed to fit perfectly on that size pan—try making one of those recipes on a smaller jelly roll pan or cookie sheet and it won't work.

Quarter sheet pans are typically 9 by 13 inches (a standard size for sheet cakes), half sheet pans are 18 by 13 inches (this is the size of most pans described simply as baking sheets) and full sheet pans are 26 by 18 inches (too big to fit in many home ovens, but the standard commercial size).

Lining the pan

Cleanup is a breeze when you line the baking sheet with parchment paper or foil.

Without preheating the baking sheet, ingredients that contain a lot of moisture will essentially start to steam in their own juices before they roast, softening and never quite developing that crispy exterior you want.

One cake mix yields 4 to 6 cups of batter. For the regular 11x15x2-inch pan, use 2 cake mixes. For the 12x18x2-inch pan, use 3 cake mixes.

The metal of your sheet pan is at a cooler temperature than your hot oven. Metal expands as it heats. The large surface of your sheet pan will heat and expand faster than the short rimmed sides. This creates stress right where the flat base meets the raised lip, causing some pans to buckle or twist.

To keep that crisp coating from getting soggy from the veg, use a wire rack to raise the breaded ingredients above the moisture in the pan. Use the same approach when you're roasting a cut of beef or pork so the juices baste the ingredients while the meats gets gloriously browned.

What does Ina Garten use sheet pans for? ›

Ina's Answer: I use aluminum sheet pans that you can buy at any cookware store. If any food is baked on after I use them, I put them in the sink with the hottest tap water and soap and let them soak overnight. The next morning they should come out perfectly clean, using a Brillo pad if necessary.

We recommend foil over parchment paper for sheet pan cooking. As it conducts heat, foil can help accelerate the cooking process and help browning.

A full-sized sheet cake pan will produce 117 2" x 2" pieces. Is your pan smaller? No worries — we did the math for you. A half-sized sheet pan will make 58 servings and a quarter-sized pan will make 30 servings.

A jelly roll pan has one-inch rims, which makes it ideal for working with liquid batter or food that releases juices as they cook. A cookie sheet only has one raised rim (for ease of handling), so it's not great for working with liquids like the Dutch Oven is.

Sheet pan cakes bake flat and even, with no unpredictable doming or cracking, and this allows for more uniform cake layers. Sheet pans also tend to be less tall than round pans, which means less baking and cooling time.

A sheet pan, also referred to as baking tray, baking sheet, or baking pan, is a flat, rectangular metal pan placed in an oven and used for baking pastries such as bread rolls, cookies, sheet cakes, Swiss rolls, and pizzas.

Larger Baking Sheets can be used to bake any savory dishes you can think of, such as roasted, baked chicken, and one-pan sheet meals. On the other hand, smaller-sized Baking Sheets are ideal for baking sweet treats, such as sheet cakes, brownies, and cookies.

A full-size sheet pan's dimensions are 18” x 26”. You can fit one full-size sheet pan on each of your commercial oven's shelves. Perfect for high-volume settings, full-size baking sheets are the most common sheet pan size in commercial settings.

A full-sheet pan measures 26-by-18 inches and typically has sides that are about one inch high. They're generally too large for practical home use—in fact they won't fit in many home ovens.