Try a sheet pan dinner

Make dinner easier some night next week

In a lot of narratives of home chaos, “doing the dishes” is where it all falls apart. They’re stacked all over the kitchen, or they linger, still dirty on the stove, with no place on the counters to cook or do anything else.

I’m not sure exactly what is going on in these circumstances. But I do know one way to make doing the dishes easier: make fewer of them. Certain sorts of cooking make far fewer dirty dishes than others. If you’re the sort who plans your meals for the upcoming week as you plan your week, why not give yourself the gift of planning a sheet pan dinner some night?

All in one place

A sheet pan dinner is just a dinner with all the ingredients cooked on a single cooking sheet. There are all sorts of brilliant things going on with this concept. First, roasting just about anything at 400 degrees with some olive oil and salt (or a marinade) is going to make it taste good. In particular, vegetables taste good when they are roasted. Mushy steamed vegetables are no fun. Roasted ones are often excellent.

A sheet pan also makes it easy to have a balanced meal. Put a protein (chicken thighs, sausage, salmon) on a cooking sheet and put some veggies around it. Maybe some tiny cut up potatoes too. It’s a full dinner and it’s all cooking in the same place! The meat will likely make the veggies and potatoes even better if some of the juice from that spreads around.

Here’s another win: if you have selective eaters (as I do) you can always just fill a second cooking sheet with chicken nuggets and fries. They also cook at around 400 degrees for about the same amount of time. Or you could stick a frozen pizza in the oven and get the same outcome.

Simple is best

If dinner is all cooked on a sheet pan, then really all you need to wash is the sheet pan. Maybe there’s a cutting board somewhere in there for chopping veggies or the protein — but that can go in the dishwasher. Or you can buy veggies pre-chopped. It will be OK. The goal is to make this as simple and easy as possible. Choose some night when you want to eat at home but you won’t want to put a lot of effort into it. Figure out what you’ll stick on your sheet pan, make sure you have those ingredients, and Wednesday is all figured out!

People can put a lot of time and effort into thinking about dinner. Then the dishes stack up and it can become a whole production. But it doesn’t have to be one. For many things in life, simpler is better, and if everything can be cooked on one sheet pan, life can be pretty good.