Optimizing Cooking Zones on Your Sheet Pan
Rimmed baking sheets (also called jelly roll pans, or half sheet pans in restaurant parlance) aren't just for baking or roasting vegetables. Their broad, flat surface proves perfect for preparing a full meal in one fell swoop, complete with side dishes, and the rimmed edges ensure food won't roll off in the oven. Because they lack the high sides of a skillet or the tight seal of a Dutch oven, sheet pan cooking relies on selecting strong, flavorful ingredients that can stand up to the oven's dry heat. It also relies on taking advantage of the different zones of the pan.
Perfect Placement
The oven's steady heat makes the sheet pan's perimeter hotter than the middle, so we quickly noted the importance of arranging hardy ingredients around the edges of the pan, keeping those at risk of overcooking protected in the center. We also use vegetables to prop up proteins, creating a buffer against the pan's heat and helping the dry air circulate and brown the meat more evenly.
Stagger, Don’t Settle
The ideal one-pan meal should satisfy on all fronts, and that means coordinating components so they all hit the table hot and perfectly cooked, but we didn't want to limit ourselves to ingredients with similar cooking times. By staggering when ingredients were added to or removed from the pan, we were able to give each component its due time in the oven for an ideal outcome.
Elevate Your Cooking
Even lean cuts of meat render fat and release juices as they cook. While we sometimes take advantage of those juices to moisten our vegetables in the pan, when we have our hearts set on crispness, we turn to our wire rack. Placing a rack snugly in a sheet pan to cook chicken thighs or breaded pork chops kept their surfaces crisp and golden.
Pack It In
Few cooking methods are more hands-off than baking chicken or fish in aluminum foil. These packets create a gentle, steamy environment for food to cook in its own juices. We found that leaving some headroom in the packet encouraged steam to circulate for even cooking, and arranging ingredients to protect the protein from the sheetpan’s direct heat helped every element reach ideal doneness at the same time.
