These Are the Best Sheet Pan Recipes, According to Eater Editors

On weeknights, or in advance of spontaneous dinner parties, or during those times when cooking just feels like a slog, there is nothing quite like a sheet pan. The flattened versions of one-pot recipes, sheet pan recipes are often as easy as they are quick, and though no one likes to scrub a sheet pan after dinner, tin foil and parchment make that task a little easier. Here are six Eater editors’ recipes for broiler-friendly, oven-dependent, delicious sheet pan recipes for any occasion.

Sheet-Pan Gnocchi With Mushrooms and Spinach

Ali Slagle, NYT Cooking

Sure, everyone got into sheet pan cooking earlier in the pandemic, but call me a late bloomer: Over the last few months, a lack of time, combined with a complete lack of will to do lots of dishes at the end of the night and a reinvestment in home cooking over takeout, has compelled me to seek out weekly sheet pan recipes. This sheet pan gnocchi recipe hits all the right notes for me. They key is to not overthink it. Roasting shelf-stable gnocchi (one of the ultimate premade ingredients) seems like it shouldn’t work, and New York Times commenters have noted this with some skepticism, questioning whether it should be boiled first. But rest assured, the gnocchi comes out of the package as stuck-together pellets of flavorless, dry dough and emerges like magic from the oven toothsomely crisp on the outside and warm and pillowy on the inside. The recipe also avoids another common sheet-pan recipe pitfall: It doesn’t treat all the ingredients with the same cook times and temperatures. Instead, the gnocchi and mushrooms go in first, with the spinach added in the last few minutes. That means that the fungi come out caramelized under piles of wilted-to-slightly-baked spinach topped with a zingy horseradish and honey mustard. — Brenna Houck, cities manager

Sheet Pan Chicken Meatballs with Tomatoes and Chickpeas

Claire Saffitz, Bon Appétit

I keep returning to this recipe because — as a single person — it doubles as my ideal batch-cooking scenario for the week. If a dish calls for a few chicken breasts or salmon fillets, I end up bored of eating dried poultry by the end of the week, or grossed out by the thought of keeping cooked seafood in the fridge for a few days. These harissa-spiked meatballs, which never get too dry, offer the versatility I’m looking for in a throw-it-in-the-oven recipe. They go as well with a bowl of whichever grains I decide to cook up as they do a pita I’ll warm up over my gas stove. They’re a time-saver that offers plenty of flavor (thanks to the salty feta and juicy tomatoes), which seems like the point of any great sheet pan recipe. — Bao Ong, Eater New York editor

Green Goddess Salmon With Potatoes and Snap Peas

Sarah Copeland, NYT Cooking

Listen. I love green goddess dressing and any excuse to use it. It’s just the way I am. The combination of fresh herbs, tangy yogurt, salty anchovies, and so much garlic (like most home cooks, I throw in a few more bulbs than recommended) makes for one of the world’s best dressings for just about anything. In this recipe for sheet pan salmon, potatoes, snap peas, and cucumbers, green goddess is right at home. This is one of those preparations that is remarkably fast, easy, and worth it, not only for the crispy salmon and the dressing on top, but for the combination of warm potatoes and snappy green vegetables that make up a slightly unconventional salad. These particular ingredients are best in spring and summer, but don’t doubt the power of green goddess to liven up winter root vegetable substitutes, if snap peas and new potatoes are out of season. — Dayna Evans, staff writer and Eater Philly editor

Baked Crispy Chicken Thighs

The Modern Proper

Making crispy chicken in an oven typically involves some kind of short-cut crust and suspending disbelief — panko, crushed cereal flakes, or a cakey layer of flour are all par for the course. But the Modern Proper’s crispy oven-baked chicken thighs require none of the magical thinking or imitation fried skin; instead, you need a frothy egg wash. I tried this recipe on a night I wanted nothing but sheet pan simplicity. It calls for the oven to be cranked to 450, which warms the kitchen as you dust bone-in, skin-on thighs with flaky kosher salt, black pepper (I use Trader Joe’s rainbow peppercorns for flair), and paprika. After lining a sheet pan with a piece of foil and propping a cooling rack over it, you lay the thighs skin-side-up and brush them with whipped egg whites. That’s kind of it — lower the oven’s temperature to a still-balmy 425 and bake the chicken for 30 minutes. The proof of concept is scraping a knife against skin so crispy it could have been starch-battered and deep-fried. I ate the batch in one night. — Nicole Adlman, cities manager

Maple and Miso Sheet-Pan Salmon With Green Beans

Colu Henry, NYT Cooking

This is the recipe that converted me from frying to baking fish, meeting my requirements for both flavor and ease. I had assumed baked fish would be blander than fried, but that’s not a problem when you coat the fish with the power couple of miso and maple. Piling the green beans and the salmon together on the sheet pan also makes this recipe as quick as frying, without that aftertaste of existential fear I get when fish threatens to stick to a frying pan. I appreciate that the recipe is flexible for brown or white miso. My only note would be to scale back the maple syrup; even with my sweet tooth I found the flavor a bit heavy in the recipe as written. — Nick Mancall-Bitel, associate editor

Sheet-Pan Bibimbap

Eric Kim, NYT Cooking

Many are the nights when I’ve looked in the refrigerator, assessed the situation, and put whatever I can find on a sheet pan to be cooked all at once. This, along with a love of bibimbap and a frequent supply of leftover rice, made me naturally gravitate toward this recipe. Along with being an excellent vehicle for leftover rice (and sundry vegetables), it’s an object lesson in balance and simplicity. You just put some mushrooms, sliced sweet potato, and kale on a sheet pan, roast them up, and then break a few eggs onto another sheet pan with some cooked rice. By the time the eggs are cooked, the rice is nice and crispy. This is also one of those recipes that’s highly customizable — while the combination of kale, sweet potatoes, and mushrooms is a winner, you can swap them out for other vegetables you may have on hand (just adjust the cook times accordingly), and you can use various seasonings, too. While Kim recommends topping the bibimbap with a bit of gochujang, someone in the recipe’s comments section provided a quick recipe for a very delicious gochujang-based sauce that I use instead. Again: simple and customizable! As weeknight cooking should be. — Rebecca Flint Marx, senior editor