Main Course
8665 recipes found
Easy Sheet-Pan Chicken
Crisp-skinned and very juicy, this is a more sophisticated version of the crumb-coated, oven-fried chicken dishes of childhood. In addition to bread crumbs, the chicken is slathered with two kinds of mustard plus fresh thyme and minced garlic, which makes it deeply flavored, bright and complex. And because it calls for only one pan, clean up is minimal. While the recipe calls for bone-in drumsticks and/or thighs, if you prefer boneless white meat, feel free to substitute it, reducing the cooking time by 5 to 10 minutes. Serve this with potatoes – either sweet or white – and your favorite green vegetable or salad. It’s weeknight cooking at its finest.
Sheet-Pan Crispy Pork Schnitzel
Schnitzel is a way of preparing thin slices of meat by breading and frying them until crisp. While the popular Viennese dish is traditionally made with thinly pounded veal, here, pounded pork cutlets are breaded and baked on a sheet pan — rather than fried in a skillet — until golden for an easy weeknight meal. The key to perfectly brown breadcrumbs is the addition of a few dollops of mayonnaise, which helps the coating crisp up during baking. A tangy salad offers fresh and bright notes that balance the rich pork. Look for whole hearts of palm (cylinders rather than sliced) for their firmer texture; the vegetable has a delicate flavor similar to artichokes, with a crunchy-creamy consistency.
Korean Cheeseburgers With Sesame-Cucumber Pickles
These double-stacked cheeseburgers bring all the savory-sweet flavors of grilled Korean barbecue. A garlicky scallion marinade helps build flavor three different ways: stirred into burger mix, brushed on the patties to form a glaze, and combined with mayonnaise to create a special sauce. The burgers are formed into thin patties, set on a baking sheet and broiled for maximum caramelization and weeknight ease. Roasted sesame oil rounds out tangy pickles and bolsters the burger with extra umami.
Sheet-Pan Chicken With Jammy Tomatoes and Pancetta
In this relatively speedy sheet-pan dinner, boneless, skinless chicken thighs are seasoned with a savory, cumin-scented spice mix and roasted with whole garlic cloves and cherry tomatoes, which turn soft and sweet in the oven’s heat. If you have ripe summer cherry tomatoes, you can skip the brown sugar. If you’d rather use boneless chicken breasts, reduce the cooking time by about 5 to 7 minutes. This makes a light meal on its own, but you can add rice or crusty bread, and maybe a salad, if you need something more substantial.
Sheet-Pan Ratatouille With Goat Cheese and Olives
Cooking ratatouille on a sheet pan in the oven isn’t just easier than cooking it in a pot on the stove, it’s also better: richer and more deeply caramelized in flavor. To make it, the vegetables are slicked with plenty of olive oil, then roasted until tender and browned, their juices mingling and condensing. Toward the end of the cooking time, goat cheese and olives are sprinkled on top. The cheese melts and becomes creamy, while the olives heat up and turn plump and tangy. Serve this as a meatless main dish, with crusty bread and more goat cheese, or as a hearty side dish to a simple roast chicken or fish.
Carne Asada
Nothing beats carne asada tacos, the smoky richness of charred sliced steak stuffed into tortillas. Carne asada translates to “grilled meat” and refers to the many variations on this dish, as well as parties that center around grilling the marinated meat. Esteban Castillo, the author of the cookbook and blog “Chicano Eats,” combines the intensity of a dry spice rub with a citrus juice marinade in his recipe. Sometimes, he pours some beer into the mix too, but this version, fresh with cilantro, garlic and scallions, already gives the steak big, aromatic flavors.
Sheet-Pan Italian Sub Dinner
The Italian sub, a deli sandwich that piles some combination of cheese, cured meats and preserved vegetables onto a soft roll, is an Italian-American classic. But toss those fillings onto a sheet pan and hit them with a little heat, and they caramelize and crisp into a complete dinner with loads of character — sweet and spicy, bitter and briny. In this recipe, salami, red onions, pepperoncini, tomatoes, radicchio and chickpeas get tossed with an oregano-garlic vinaigrette before roasting. The radicchio and red onion mellow, the tomatoes sweeten and the salami releases fat and seasonings that add even more flavor and richness. (You can swap in cauliflower florets, cubes of squash or halved red potatoes for the radicchio.) Serve with a plop of ricotta for creaminess (or provolone and Parmesan, for a more traditional take), more vinaigrette and crusty bread for sopping it all up or piling it into a sandwich.
Sheet-Pan Gochujang Shrimp and Green Beans
Say hello to your broiler, that super-intense direct heat source in your oven that, like a grill, crisps food fast. (It’s either in the top of your oven or in the pull-out drawer below.) While it heats, toss shrimp and green beans in a fiery sauce of gochujang (a Korean fermented chile paste), soy sauce and honey, then broil for mere minutes. Just five minutes! The shrimp and green beans emerge with blistered outsides and snappy insides, reminiscent of Sichuan dry-fried green beans, while the sauce and the caramelized char make quick work of building deep, addictive flavors. Serve with rice, noodles or lettuce leaves. To make it vegetarian, swap shrimp for quick-cooking vegetables, edamame or well-drained tofu.
Roasted Cauliflower With Pancetta, Olives and Crisp Parmesan
Studded with salty olives, pancetta and Parmesan that gets golden and crisp at the edges, this is roasted cauliflower at its brightest and most full-flavored. You can serve the caramelized florets either as a vegetable-based main dish or a hearty side to roasted meats or fish, or big bowls of pasta. The recipe calls for using a package of finely diced pancetta that practically melts into the sauce. But if you prefer a chunkier texture, you can dice it yourself into 1/2-inch cubes, and add them with the cauliflower. Or, to make this vegetarian, just leave the pancetta out.
Burger Plate
Inspired by German Hamburg steak and other patties of the world, including Danish frikadeller, Japanese hambagu and Korean hambak steak, this lunch-counter meal of ground beef is seasoned with Worcestershire sauce, nutmeg and grated onion. The rest is mere assembly, arraying fresh, crunchy accoutrements to accompany the tender burgers: Tomatoes lend juiciness, dill pickles provide zing and sweet raw onions cut through the richness of the meat. Though you could sandwich all of these ingredients between two slices of toasted bread, eating them as a casual plate lunch lets you appreciate each part separately. If you’d like, replace the ground beef with a plant-based ground meat substitute.
Lemony Chicken With Potatoes and Oregano
This might be the easiest roast chicken and potatoes recipe out there. Roasting lemon slices with the potatoes infuses them with a bright, zippy flavor. Then, you can eat the roasted lemon or not — the caramelized, intense flavor is for true lemon lovers only. Serve this with one or two of your favorite condiments on the side for dipping the potatoes.
Sheet-Pan Cumin Pork Chops and Brussels Sprouts
In this convenient sheet-pan supper, bone-in pork chops are coated in a spicy, garlicky cumin rub before being cooked alongside brussels sprouts and sage leaves. Roasted at high heat, the sprouts get golden at their edges and tender at their cores while the sage leaves turn brown and crisp all over, almost as if you’d fried them. Feel free to double this recipe. Just use large rimmed sheet pans instead of smaller ones.
Loaded Sweet Potatoes With Black Beans and Cheddar
To make a halved sweet potato into a more substantial side, load it with black beans and sharp Cheddar, then send it back into the oven until the cheese melts and sizzles. Pair it with something a bit lighter, like fish tacos or a green salad, or build it into its own meal by adding sliced avocado, torn cilantro, a squeeze of lime juice, or even a fried egg.
Tajín Grilled Chicken
Tajín is a Mexican seasoning made from dried, ground red chiles, sea salt and dehydrated lime juice. It is great sprinkled over fresh cut fruit like mango and pineapple, or rimmed on an ice cold margarita. But it is also an easy way to add chile and lime to your favorite grilled meats, rubs or sauces. In this dish, the lime in the Tajín balances out the sweetness from the agave syrup, while the red chiles complement the smoky flavor of the chipotles. Serve the chicken as is or on toasted hamburger buns with a schmear of mayonnaise, chopped grilled scallions, cilantro leaves and sliced pickled jalapeños. This Tajín sauce also would pair well with grilled bass, cod or salmon, or with shrimp skewers.
Sheet-Pan Chicken With Roasted Plums and Onions
Beautiful to behold and easy to make, this sheet-pan dinner combines sweet plums and soft red onions with crisp-skinned pieces of roasted chicken. Toasted fennel seeds, red-pepper flakes and a touch of allspice add complexity while a mound of fresh torn herbs crowns the top. If good ripe plums aren’t available, you can substitute another stone fruit including peaches, nectarines or pluots, though if your fruit is very sweet, you might want to add a squeeze of lemon at the end. Serve this with rice pilaf, polenta or warm flatbread for a festive meal.
Sheet-Pan Kielbasa With Cabbage and Beans
This sheet-pan dinner of roasted kielbasa, caramelized cabbage and white beans marinated in a dill-and-red wine vinaigrette comes together in about a half-hour. There are many different types of kielbasa, but the smoked version typically found at American grocery stores is horseshoe-shaped and, when roasted, tastes a little like pepperoni. Feel free to play around with substitutions: You can use green or red cabbage for the Savoy, though the leaves won’t get quite as frizzled and golden. Instead of dill, chives or parsley can bring freshness. Instead of shallot, use scallions, red-pepper flakes or grated garlic for sharp heat. Instead of mustard, you could use horseradish, chopped pickles or sauerkraut for briny acidity.
Spiced Chickpeas With Cauliflower and Roasted Lemon
In this hearty, meatless main course, chickpeas and potatoes are coated in a tomato-tinged spice paste and roasted until crunchy and browned. At the same time and in the same oven, cauliflower and tomatoes are cooked along with thinly sliced lemons until soft and caramelized. Just before serving, everything is tossed altogether and drizzled with an herbed, garlicky yogurt sauce. It’s a complete and satisfying meal that’s perfect for vegetable lovers. Meyer lemons work particularly well here because they are milder and sweeter than regular lemons. But use whichever you can find.
Caramelized Sheet-Pan French Toast
Caramelized and crunchy on the outside, soft and custardy on the inside, these almost comically thick sourdough slices taste like the love child of bread pudding and French toast. But instead of the usual brioche or challah, this calls for sturdier bread, preferably a not-too-tangy sourdough or country bread with a crust that’s neither chewy nor thick. You want a round or oblong loaf large enough for big pieces and soft enough to absorb the custard. It’s easy to caramelize the French toast in the oven, but the timing depends on your oven and pan, so check it frequently to ensure that it’s burnished but not burned.
Roast Chicken With Apricots and Olives
This festive dish is a fairly easy main course for the Seder meal — or anytime. Marinating overnight leaves very little work on the day of serving, but two hours is enough to infuse the chicken with tangy citrus and the sumac. Dried apricots, already more tart than sweet, are marinated along with the chicken and become almost savory in the oven. Using pitted Castelvetrano olives will save you a lot of elbow grease, and their meaty texture and mild flavor are perfect here. After roasting together, everything goes under the broiler to deeply brown and thicken the cooking juices into a tasty sauce.
Rosemary-Garlic Roasted Chicken and Gnocchi
The classic combination of chicken, potatoes, rosemary, garlic and lemon dazzles in this sheet-pan meal. Standing in for the potatoes are shelf-stable potato gnocchi, which offer many textures at once when roasted instead of boiled: pillowy-soft, crisp and chewy. Squeeze some lemon right onto the sheet pan, and as you scrape up the schmaltzy, garlicky bits, the juices and drippings glaze the gnocchi, leaving no drop of the chicken’s renderings wasted. It’s hard not to eat the gnocchi right from the pan, but if you can wait, serve everything alongside a green salad.
Broiled Turmeric Salmon With Corn and Green Beans
This meal marries charred flavors with bright summer vegetables, and no grill is required. Broiling salmon skin side up creates crispy skin without drying out the delicate flesh. Alongside your salmon, blister green beans and corn, then toss them with lime juice, raw corn and red onion for a balance of crunchy and tender, sweet and scorched. Turmeric and red-pepper flakes bring earthiness alongside the sweetness of the fish, corn and green beans, but garam masala, cumin or jerk seasoning would also work well.
Sheet-Pan Sausages and Mushrooms With Arugula and Croutons
If stuffed mushrooms grew up into a main course, it would be this one-pan dinner. To start, sausages and mushrooms roast on a sheet pan, leaving behind seasoned pan drippings. Next, in a move inspired by Judy Rodgers’s roast chicken with bread salad from Zuni Café in San Francisco, torn bread pieces are tossed with the drippings, then sent back to the oven to toast. The toasted bread is then tossed with arugula, red-wine vinaigrette and the roasted mushrooms, making a great mix of crispy, tangy and spicy bites. Crusty bread can be hard to tear from the loaf, but the rough edges make a more interesting final product: To ease the process, slice the bread 1/2-inch-thick, then slice crosswise 1/2-inch thick, then tear little pieces from there.
Sheet-Pan Pizza With Asparagus and Arugula
You might be tempted to call this a focaccia, not pizza, and you might be right, but it probably falls somewhere in between. Store-bought pizza dough can be a real time-saver, but if you can’t find it refrigerated, you’ll need to plan ahead to defrost frozen dough. Defrosting is best done for 24 hours or so in the fridge — or longer, as the dough will continue to ferment and improve in flavor after a day or two. The dough is easier to stretch if it’s not ice cold, so let it come to room temperature. The pancetta can be omitted for vegetarians, but the lemony herb and arugula salad on top is not to be missed.
Maple-Roasted Tofu With Butternut Squash and Bacon
A small amount of bacon adds a lot of smoky flavor to sweet maple-roasted vegetables and glazed tofu. It’s a colorful, cozy sheet-pan meal for tofu lovers who also eat meat, or bacon eaters who are trying to eat less meat. To make this dish vegan, skip the bacon, and add 1/2 teaspoon smoked paprika to the maple syrup mixture. Dicing the squash into small cubes helps it roast at the same rate as the brussels sprouts, so be sure to keep the pieces around 1/2 inch in size.