3 Sheet Pan Dinners to Make Your Week Easier

Name: 3 Sheet Pan Dinners to Make Your Week Easier
Uploaded: 2026-09-08T18:51:45+00:00
Duration: 18 min 25 s
Channel: Bon Appétit

00:00I think we all know how an oven works for the most part, but ovens have these mechanics and

00:04these quirks and these different levels. Your oven has racks. The bottom rack is intense,

00:09high heat. It mimics frying almost. The middle one is more even heat. That's for your roasting.

00:15And the top one can either be super gentle or it can be really intense if you use that broiler.

00:21I'm Jesse Subjek, and today I'm going to be showing you how to make three sheet pan dinners,

00:25and each one shows you kind of a different trick to utilize the quirks of your oven.

00:30So the first recipe we're making today, I've dubbed One Big Chicken Parm. I was scrolling TikTok one

00:36night, as we all do, and someone named Chef Skylar came out. Chef Skylar, insert here. She made a giant

00:43chicken cutlet, and I thought that was genius. And I was working on this Frico recipe, which is like

00:49crispy parmesan. I'm like, oh, a chicken parm. Makes sense. So that's what we're making today.

00:54So unlike most chicken parm that use like whole mussel chickens, like a chicken breast, we're going

00:59to be using ground chicken today. If you were to make this giant chicken parm with chicken breast,

01:05first of all, you're going to have to pound them so thin. And then second of all, chicken

01:08breast can get dry versus the super thin ground chicken mixture. It like is overcooked to begin

01:13with, but that's fine. It's not a bad thing. So that's why I like using ground chicken.

01:18I'm going to roll this out. And you want to roll it out until it's about one to two inches

01:24from the sides. So if you don't have a rolling pin, you could use a wine bottle, you could

01:29use a vinegar bottle, you could use your hands and just smack them. So this looks good to

01:35me. Kind of like a sticker. You're going to very carefully peel this off. And then see,

01:39now you have one big cutlet. So then next, we're just going to season this. Salt, and then

01:45some pepper. I think the main perk of this recipe is that you're not actually frying anything.

01:52Chicken parm is great, but you know, if you're making, I don't know, six cutlets, you're going

01:56to be frying six times. I'm not doing that on a weeknight. So for this, you take out that

02:01whole cooking in batches. It's like one and done. I'm going to sprinkle some flour. At

02:05this point, you can use a brush or you can use your hands. And you're making just kind of

02:11a thin layer. And this is to help everything adhere. And this process is a bit of a mess. So

02:16just embrace it. So we're going to make our breadcrumb mixture. I like to use panko because

02:21I think the texture is really nice. It's like really nubbly. And then this is Parmesan. This

02:26is finely grated Parmesan. For this, I wouldn't recommend the shreddy kind, nor would I actually

02:33recommend grading it yourself. I mean, you can, but the shaky cheese, the kind of like starches or

02:38whatever they got going on in here, it's nice and it helps a crisp. Big food sometimes works.

02:43So the next step is we need glue to adhere the breadcrumbs. So with any standard breading,

02:49we have eggs. The cool lesson about this recipe is that since we're not frying, if you were

02:56to just put this in the oven, it would bake. But since we're doing it on the bottom rack

03:02at like a very high temperature, it's essentially frying the bottom. We're going to spray this with

03:08oil. The cheese is oily and it's going to be sizzling and frying and mimic that like browning

03:13effect that you get from frying. So the next step is we're just going to kind of brush the egg

03:18on

03:18and then I just kind of paint it. Now I'm just going to shower in this breadcrumb and cheese

03:23mixture. I think the fun thing about this cutlet is, you know, you just put the sheet pan out and

03:28that's dinner for, I was going to say four people, but I don't know, two people, maybe four regular

03:33people, two of me. So this is good. And we want some fat on this to help promote frying, to

03:39help

03:40promote browning, get it crispy. You could totally drizzle olive oil. That's fine. I just like spray.

03:45I feel like it's very even. You could do a light coating, not too heavy. So I just kind of

03:51spray paint

03:51it. We're going to put a piece of parchment on top and we're going to flip the whole thing in

03:55one

03:55stiff motion. There you go. And then you just peel it off like a sticker. Sometimes you just need to

04:01hold

04:01it down to get it started. Same thing on the side, same exact process. So this is not, you know,

04:07a 30 minute quick sheet pan meal, but it's not intended to be. This is fun. It's something

04:13that's supposed to enjoy the physicality and the steps and the quirks of it and the drama of bringing

04:19out a giant chicken parm. This is the joy of cooking part, not the indifference of cooking.

04:24So that's that. I'm going to pop this into the oven at 425 with a rack position at the very

04:29lowest position. And this is going to just mimic that really intense high heat as if the bottom

04:34is frying. So an oven for the most part, the heating element is on the bottom. So if you use

04:40the bottom

04:40rack, it is the closest to the direct intense heat. And you can kind of think of that as like

04:46cooking

04:46over high heat. So really keep in mind anything that you want that bottom to be crispy and brown,

04:52position the rack in the bottom. It's really going to pay off.

04:56So at this point, I'm going to flip the whole thing. So then both sides get the opportunity

05:02to benefit from that direct heat on the bottom. Like regular chicken parm, I'm going to go into

05:06my sauce. You can make your sauce, but you could also save yourself time, make this quick and easy,

05:11and just buy a jar of sauce. I do want to preserve a bit of crust, almost like you're making

05:15a pizza,

05:16just because I think it's really beautiful to see the cutlet underneath. So the second bake,

05:20we're really just aiming for the cheese to melt and the cheese to brown just a little bit. So much

05:25shorter bake time, about 15 minutes. Okay, this looks perfect. I feel like this is like a centerpiece.

05:32I don't need to put on a platter unless I want to. It's perfectly beautiful as is.

05:37Okay, you can feel how crispy it is. That's wonderful. Okay, this is the moment. Let's see.

05:43Yes. Perfect. You see how it's so thin and it's golden on both sides. This looks like a cutlet

05:50that's fried in a pan. And that's kind of the power of utilizing the bottom rack of the oven.

05:55It can give you this crispy on both sides texture. I'm going to eat this. I'm just going to eat

05:59it

05:59like pizza like a heathen. So that's good. It is crunchy. It is perfectly cheesy. If I ate this,

06:08I'd be like, this is chicken parm made in a skillet. This is a great recipe that really showcases the

06:14power of using that bottom rack. But the next recipe we're going to do in the middle rack. And

06:18this is maybe more of like a simple throw everything on sheet pan dinner. So let's get into that.

06:28So this is gnocchi and this is shelf stable gnocchi, not the fresh stuff. So the difference between

06:35a shelf stable gnocchi and say a fresh one is that the fresh ones, they have a lot more moisture.

06:40They're meant to be cooked in the prescribed fashion by boiling. And these you can tell they're

06:47like dry and they're very resilient. So for this kind of cooking, where you're cooking in the oven

06:53exposed to direct dry heat, this is what we want. We have olive oil. This is a third of a

06:59cup. The oil

06:59is doing a few things. First, it's coating everything. And then that's just going to make the heat

07:05of the oven kind of transfer easier and brown. If I were to roast this with not enough oil,

07:11they'll start to get leathery. They'll start to dry out a bit. But if you really kind of lubricate

07:16them in oil, you're going to get crispiness, not dryness. So I'm thinly slicing my onions and then

07:22kind of breaking them apart. I find when they're thinly sliced, they kind of fry in the oil into

07:28nothingness. They just like infuse the dish with these little frizzled onion bits, which is really nice.

07:33And then some garlic. And I honestly like to just microplane my garlic, primarily because I'm lazy.

07:39But second of all, I think that the small bits coat everything really beautifully. A microplane is

07:44definitely one of my favorite kitchen tools. That and an offset spatula, that's all you need really.

07:50Everything else you can use your hands. That's like definitely not true, but you might notice that I have

07:55not covered this or lined this with anything either. If you have a sheet tray that's clean enough, it's not

08:00completely banged up, you can utilize the metal because it transfers heat very easily. So see these

08:08bits of food that are touching the pan? Those are going to brown and kind of fry a bit. So

08:13you don't

08:14actually want to line this with a nonstick mat or a piece of parchment or anything. Next thing is I'm

08:19just

08:20going to zest two lemons. So the zest I'm adding now, the fat is infused with the oil from the

08:26lemon.

08:26The heat kind of unlocks all of its flavor. And the juice I'm going to bring in later,

08:32I'm going to cut those up. So don't throw them away. And then last thing is just salt and pepper,

08:38of course. I want everything to be evenly coated here. My main flag here is since you grated the garlic,

08:44it has a tendency to want to stay together in like little clumps. So just make sure you really break

08:50those up. And make sure the gnocchi is also thoroughly coated, because it's going to suck

08:54up all that oil. And you really want to help them get crispy and this just gives them the best

08:58chance

08:58to get there. So at this point, I'm going to bring in the last ingredient, which is spicy

09:03tawing sausage. And then I break it up and I just throw it on. This sausage is going to render

09:08its kind of

09:10red tinted fat. It's spice tinted fat all over everything. So it's actually going to fry in the

09:17sausage fat and infuse that flavor and everything, which is really beautiful. We're going to put this

09:21in the oven. And for this recipe, I positioned a rack in the middle of the oven. What that's going

09:27to do,

09:27it's going to be even consistent heat. It's not going to blast the bottom. It's not too gentle.

09:32It's not going to blast the top. And that's exactly what we want. And then the final ingredient,

09:38which I think is truly the star of the show is broccoli rabe. This is a very bitter ingredient.

09:43If I were to eat this now, it would taste vaguely poisonous. But I think people just don't know how

09:50to treat it or know what to do with it. Oftentimes, broccoli rabe is blanched.

09:56This application is just is roasting it. So it's really celebrating that bitterness.

10:00I think this just makes the dish so unique and so craveable.

10:03Okay, this looks lovely. You can look at the sausage and it's perfectly golden. It's sizzling.

10:10It has rendered its fat. The gnocchi has sucked up that fat. Now I'm going to add the broccoli rabe.

10:15I didn't want to add this in the beginning. If I added this in the beginning, with everything else,

10:20your broccoli rabe would turn out dry and leathery and just cook into nothingness. This is a trap that

10:25sheet tray dinners often guide readers to. And that's just not really the reality of cooking.

10:31Sometimes you do need to layer and stagger your ingredients. Cook something first,

10:35take the sheet tray out, put your more delicate things on. And if you work this way,

10:39you can kind of create your own recipes. So this is good to go. We're going to put those back

10:43in

10:44the oven just until the broccoli rabe is tender. It's wilted a little bit. So keep a close eye on

10:49it.

10:50Okay, I'm cutting it here. This is beautiful. If you look at the gnocchi, this is really fun because it's

10:56golden. It almost has this like crust on it as though it was pan fried, which is exactly what

11:02I want because I can tell, you know, it's nice and bouncy and soft on the inside, but crispy on

11:07the

11:07outside. So it's like a really fun texture you don't typically get with gnocchi. I'm just serving this

11:12on the tray. And then I do a shawarang and farm. I'm so excited to taste this. It's so good.

11:20This also

11:21is just perfectly rendered. The broccoli rabe is like the perfect bitterness. The gnocchi is so nice.

11:26It's like imagine a crouton meets a gnocchi. It has kind of this chewy bounciness like a rice cake

11:31does. This is like all the best qualities of sheet tray dinners distilled into one actually delicious

11:37recipe. If you thought this was easy, my next recipe is even easier and it's utilizing the top rack of

11:43the oven. It is my sheet pan shawarma spiced chicken. You can make a sheet tray dinner entirely using

11:50the broiler fast and aggressive mimicking direct flames or like a grill or in this case mimicking

11:57the outside char of shawarma. So we're going to do that. So shawarma is a popular street food in the

12:03Middle East. It's was originating from the Levant during the Ottoman Empire. So this is obviously in

12:10no way, shape or form a traditional shawarma, but it's utilizing some of those same warm spices and

12:17making it just a very quick dinner that has all that smoky charred flavors as if it was cooked on

12:23a

12:24spit, but it's cooked in your oven. We're just going to cut this into chunks. So the broiler is magic

12:30because it gives you enough direct heat to truly transform and burn your ingredients. So the sugars

12:38caramelize, it goes through the Maillard reaction. You've heard a million times how beautiful that is

12:42and it creates this flavor that does not exist outside of the Maillard reaction. It's like deeply

12:47smoky and charred and a deep savoriness that you can't get from anything else. Of course you can use

12:53like smoked paprika and things like that, but it's not the same. So onions done, throw it into a bowl.

12:59We're going to put some oil in. So for the spices, obviously this is not shawarma and my intention was

13:05to simply honor shawarma and capture, you know, that deliciousness, but you can kind of tweak them

13:12as you please. You can probably find a spice blend and use that if you wanted. And then the last

13:16thing,

13:17chicken thighs. These are boneless skinless chicken thighs. I would not recommend using chicken breasts

13:23here. Chicken breasts, first of all, they're really thick. The scary store-bought ones, you know, the giant

13:29ones. And a broiler is maybe not the best cooking method for those. I fear that the outside will be

13:35charred before the interior is fully cooked. Or if you have nice thin ones, I also fear that the chicken

13:43might overcook before you get the amount of char. For this recipe, you know, the char is the star. You

13:49can

13:49cook thighs and keep cooking thighs and cook them. And I honestly think they're delicious when overcooked.

13:54So use thighs. At this point, I recommend fan them out because you want to expose the chicken to as

14:02much

14:02surface area as you can to promote browning. So that's the recipe. We're going to go in the oven.

14:08I have the broiler set to high and I have the oven rack on the top position. Some broilers you

14:14can do

14:14high or low. Frankly, I don't know what the purpose of low is. If I'm broiling, I want it to

14:20be intense.

14:20I want slamming heat. I really want to hammer it hard. I want it to burn. So I just cranked

14:26everything

14:26up to the most intense positions that I could. It's going to go in. And as soon as that top

14:31is

14:32nice and beautifully burnt, I'm going to flip them. I think people think of sheet tray dinners as slow,

14:37leisurely roasts, but using the broiler mimics the direct intense heat that shawarma used on that

14:42rotating spit. So it gets nice and burnt and charred and you get those smoky flavors.

14:47So I pop the chicken in and I have just enough time to prep everything else for the recipe. The

14:53chicken cooks so fast, so I have just enough time to get this ready. And you can essentially serve

14:58this with whatever you want, but I like making this very quick yogurt sauce. And I'll just give

15:02this a stir. I would say use a whisk for this because I look like a fool. And I'm going

15:09to go ahead

15:09and plate a little bit of this up. And then I'm going to go in and prep my veggies. Before

15:14we cut

15:15these tomatoes, I'm going to check on the chicken. I think it might be time to flip it.

15:19Okay. This is exactly what we want. We're picking up beautiful char on the chicken and you see over

15:26here, these onions are getting dark. There you go. Now it's protected. Just kind of tuck them in,

15:30cover them up by the chicken and it's going to be fine. And burning, you know, burning is the goal

15:35here. Burning is the primary flavor source. Obviously we have the spices, we have the chicken and the salt,

15:41that's all great things. And the onions, but the real flavor, the depth here, the kind of thing

15:47that you cannot define as so delicious is the burn. So let it burn. Be patient. We're going to go

15:52back

15:52in until this side burns, until the onions are like nice, deeply brown and jammy. So one more time.

15:59Okay. We're back. We're cutting tomatoes. I'm using heirloom tomatoes here because I was lucky that the

16:04culinary producer procured these for me and they're beautiful, but you can use any tomato you want.

16:08And I just kind of toss it on here. So the key to cooking entirely with a broiler is to

16:15really keep

16:16a close eye on it. Not quite. Okay. It's not ready. You lied. The moment you stop watching it is

16:28the

16:29moment that your food goes from perfectly charred to absolute charcoal. I would say check it every

16:34minute or so. Don't walk away. Don't go to the bathroom. Your smoke alarms will be going off.

16:39Baby it. Keep a close eye, but also be fearless. Sounds great. So I know what you might be thinking.

16:45This is burnt. And you're right. It is burnt. But this is the protein that you should burn. And that

16:50goes back to the resilience of the ingredients. Knowing where to position things in the oven and

16:54how to cook them really relates to that. But onions and chicken thighs, even when they're burnt,

17:00they're delicious. In fact, that's more delicious. So just keeping in mind, how far can I push certain

17:06ingredients and how gentle do I have to be with other ones? So at this point, I'm going to slice

17:11this and I'm going to plate it. I think this is a proper family meal. I mean, this is a

17:15pile of meat

17:16with vegetables. Like this is generous. I would be so happy. So when it comes to eating this, it's a

17:21bit

17:21of a choose your own adventure at this point. This would be delicious over rice. I like to kind of

17:25make

17:26little sandwiches, little pitas with it. I'm so excited to eat this. This is really lovely. I love

17:32like the warm chicken, the warm pita against the cold tomatoes, the cold yogurt. It's kind of just

17:38a beautiful collection of contrasting things in this perfect sandwich. I think that this recipe

17:43is a great example of kind of like recontextualizing what a sheet pan dinner is. It's really showcasing

17:51that if you know how to use your oven and like you think of the nuances of the mechanics behind

17:55it, you can make some really fun stuff. Sheet pan dinners are simple, but they don't have to be

18:02simplistic. They can be fun and delicious and have texture. And learning how to utilize your oven and

18:08these different racks and keeping all these tips in mind, you can remix these recipes, take things from

18:13them and learn how to make sheet pan dinners that are just as good as your million pots and pan

18:18dinners

18:18at home and a fraction of the effort.

3 Sheet Pan Dinners to Make Your Week Easier

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