Sheet-pan suppers. You’ve seen the cookbooks, the blogs, the artfully arranged Instagram snapshots. It can be easy to roll your eyes at the ubiquity of the concept, but there’s a reason — quite a few actually — why these all-in-one dinners are so popular.

Cookbook author Molly Gilbert found the concept so appealing she wrote one of those cookbooks dedicated to the topic. In “Sheet Pan Suppers: 120 Recipes for Simple, Surprising, Hands-Off Meals Straight from the Oven,” she covers such well-known territory as fajitas and roasted whole fish along with creative takes that include “lasagna’d” Hasselback potatoes and Thai green curry eggplant boats. I recently talked to Gilbert for some tips on how you, too, can master or widen your sheet pan repertoire.

[The sheet pan is the most versatile item in your kitchen]

Why a sheet pan? More like, why not? “Sheet pans make a lot of food at once,” and often enough for leftovers, Gilbert says. That real estate also means your dinner can all fit on a single piece of cookware and you’ll have fewer dishes to wash. Popping a sheet pan in the oven is a relatively fuss-free, hands-off strategy, too. Sheet-pan suppers tend to cook quickly, making them an ideal option for busy people, even on a weeknight.

Part of the reason sheet-pan suppers don’t usually need a ton of time in the oven is that a lot of recipes call for smaller cuts of meat and vegetables. The pan’s low sides allow hot air to freely circulate around all sides of the food, which, when combined with the size of the ingredients, speeds up the cook time.

The right sheet the right way. Go for something that is aluminum or stainless steel so it’s sturdy and easy to clean. A 13-by-18-inch pan, or half sheet (not a jellyroll pan), is big enough to accommodate a wide variety of meals and give you enough room between your ingredients (more on that below). If you’re worried about sticking or discoloration on your sheet pan — I call this “character” — line it with parchment or foil. Gilbert suggests using olive oil spray in conjunction with foil since she finds that roasted meat and vegetables can still stick to it.

Picking the best foods. Gilbert says most foods do well on a sheet pan, especially if what you’re after is something roasted and sporting an appealing crust. At the top of her list: Vegetables, which she says “particularly do awesome” on sheet pans. You’ll develop flavors you might not get from raw vegetables, and they’ll come out crispy on the outside but tender on the inside. Meat is another obvious candidate, from meatballs and thin-sliced fajitas all the way up to a whole chicken and leg of lamb. “I feel like a lot of meats are a little intimidating in general,” Gilbert says, but there’s something approachable about cooking them on a sheet pan. Especially with a trusty instant-read thermometer in hand, you can be confident in properly cooked meat.

[Take the guesswork out of cooking with an instant-read thermometer]

What doesn’t work? Gilbert struggles to think of an answer, but volunteers that pasta and rice can be tricky, although she likes to deploy frozen rice in her recipes since it is precooked and will thaw on the sheet pan without burning. Keep an eye on anything particularly sugary, as it can burn quickly. As with all cooking, vigilance is key with sheet-pan suppers. “It’s so easy that you can forget something’s in the oven,” Gilbert says.

Give your food room to breathe. Some sheet-pan suppers, such as Gilbert’s ratatouille of tightly packed sliced vegetables on a bed of tomato sauce, rely on moist heat to cook through. But if you’re going with the more obvious roasting or broiling, she says it’s important not to pack your ingredients too close together. If you do, your food might steam rather than brown, and as I’ve said here before, browning equals flavor. Air circulation is important if you’re cooking something that might render a lot of fat, such as burgers, in which case you’ll want to place the food on a wire rack set inside the pan. Even if you’re not worried about food steaming in fat, you can still pull out that wire rack so that you can cook two foods at once, as Gilbert does in her broiled steak with asparagus recipe.



(Tom McCorkle for The Washington Post; food styling by Lisa Cherkasky for The Washington Post)

Think about size and timing. Don’t just throw your ingredients onto a sheet pan and hope for the best. “The essence of a sheet-pan meal is that it is, indeed, a meal, and the key to making the meal great is that everything you put on the pan has to cook in the same amount of time as its neighbors,” cookbook author Dorie Greenspan wrote in The Washington Post in 2015 about her sheet-pan chicken you see at the top of this page. “It’s a bit of a juggling act to find foods that go together and have the same cooking times, but you can usually make the dish work by paying attention to how you cut things. Chunks cook faster than wholes; chicken and fish cook faster than beef, depending on how you slice, dice and chop; and seafood cooks super fast.”

You can also account for foods that cook at different rates by adding them to the sheet pan in stages. That’s what my colleague Bonnie Benwick does with her Brown Sugar and Chili-Rubbed Salmon Sheet Pan Dinner (in the photo above). She first cooks Yukon Gold potatoes for about 10 minutes and then adds the quicker-cooking scallions and salmon. The result: Everything is finished at the same time.

[How to use the broiler to fire up your home cooking]

Have fun with it and create your own riffs. The sheet-pan supper “lends itself to so many different flavor combinations,” Gilbert says. “In general, I’m sort of like a toss-pinch kind of cook,” and sheet-pan suppers are ideal for improvising with whatever you have on hand. No matter what you want to make, “You can usually find a way on a sheet pan.”

Not ready to improvise quite yet? Try one of these recipes from our archives:



(Stacy Zarin Goldberg for The Washington Post)

One-Pan Roast Chicken and Potatoes. A whole bird with a built-in side of potatoes.



(Goran Kosanovic for The Washington Post)

Sheet Pan Sausage Dinner With Roasted Grapes + Broccoli Rabe. Not a combination you might come up with on your own, but it works.



(Dixie D. Vereen for The Washington Post)

Sheet Pan Chicken Fajitas. The only things not on the pan: Tortillas and sour cream.



(Goran Kosanovic for The Washington Post; food styling by Bonnie S. Benwick/The Washington Post)

Poblano, Sweet Potato and Mushroom Fajitas. A substantial option for the meatless crowd.

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How to nail the ultimate homemade pizza, from crust to toppings

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