After the week of hellscape heat we just had, it’s hard to believe we’re ready to turn on our ovens again, so I thought I’d ease us into cooking with what many think is the easiest way to make a meal: the sheet pan dinner. I happen to love it because as a household of one, it’s so easy for me to scale down the volume. I just use a smaller sheet pan. Because the first rule of sheet pan cooking is that the way your ingredients sit atop the sheet dictates whether the result will be crisp and well-roasted or more moist and tender. The more crowded the sheet pan, the longer the ingredients will take to cook, which is not a bad thing, just a choice. In fact, one of my suggestions uses this to great effect.
Rather than reeling off several traditional sheet pan-based recipes, I am presenting three different ways of approaching easy meals made on a sheet or tray, baked in the oven. They are the traditional sheet pan dinner, where ingredients are somewhat sparsely set on the pan so that they cook quickly, driving off moisture; the savory tray bake from a Cypriot-Turkish tradition that packs well-seasoned or marinated ingredients closely together in a shallow tray for a longer bake that results in a nearly stew-like saucy result; and a wild card, where ingredients are layered on the sheet topped with either filo or puff pastry, then turned upside down to reveal a lovely sweet or savory tart-like meal.
The upside down dinners come from Dominic Franks in the U.K., who blogs at Dominic in the Kitchen, and posts on Instagram and TikTok, which was where I came upon him. All of his upside down dishes start with a standard sheet pan covered with a piece of parchment paper, which makes sense since you’re going to have to turn the sheet right side up at the end. His very first upside down post was for individual salmon-fennel puff pastry upside down tarts. Sounds complicated, but once you watch the video, it’s so easy to make that you don’t really need a recipe. Let’s say you’re making it for four people. You drizzle a bit of olive oil in four quadrants of your pan, then drizzle a bit of honey over the oil, then lay a few slices of thinly-sliced fennel atop the oil and honey, season with bit of salt and pepper, then lay out a few salmon chunks on each quadrant. Cut the store bought puff pastry into rectangular pieces, and slather each one with herbed cream cheese, again store bought. Then simply lay the pastry rectangles cream cheese side down onto the salmon. Fork the edges and score the top. Brush with egg wash and bake for 30 mins until the top puffs and is golden, by which time the salmon will be cooked. Just use a spatula to flip them over and serve. He has many ideas cooked this way, including an upside down spanakopita or spinach-feta filo pie that is so smart.
My next suggestion is from Meliz Berg. I interviewed her for Good Food when her book, Meliz’s Kitchen, came out. But she’s a powerhouse on Instagram, posting several times a week. One of my favorites is her Turkish-Cypriot yanyana tavasi. Here’s her recipe and a video of her making it on Instagram. I should say that this is not cooked in a traditional sheet pan, but rather in a large cake pan affair, so there's room for the juices that collect. Yanyana means “next to each other,” and in this dish, the vegetables are cut in ¾” pieces and set next to each other on a tray. Oonions, zucchini, eggplant, peppers, potatoes, and lamb are cut very small, in ½ inch pieces. The only thinking-ahead involves the lamb, which is marinated in milk and spices and for an hour before cooking, but that gives you time to prep the vegetables. The marinated lamb sits in the center of the dish, and the vegetables radiate like spokes out from it. It cooks first covered, then is uncovered and basted with the accumulated juices. It’s a beautiful and unfussy presentation.
I love Eric Kim’s recipes. He’s a food columnist for The New York Times Magazine, and a recipe developer and video host for NYT Cooking. He is very good at making creative dishes that are straightforward. His sheet pan bibimbap is on its way to becoming a classic. Bibimbap is a Korean comfort bowl of rice topped with veggies and a fried egg, and enlivened with gochujang and a drizzle of sesame oil. Kim uses two pans for the recipe. The first is like an artist’s palette, his choice of four vegetables, oyster mushrooms, sweet potatoes, red onion, and kale in quadrants on the pan. You can use you whatever you choose. He seasons them with olive oil, salt and pepper, then puts the pan into a hot oven. The second pan houses leftover rice and cracked eggs, which fry in the oven. It all comes together in the bowl with a dollop of the Korean savory, sweet, spicy chile paste — gochujang.
I also interviewed the authors of Hot Sheet, and we have an Indian-inspired recipe for chaat masala nachos.