Preparing dinner every night can be time consuming and sometimes even overwhelming, but choosing to eat out quickly adds up, especially when compared to cook at home. If you’re looking for a happy medium to tide you over with weekly dinners, meal kits can become your best friend.
During my testing at CNET, I became a fan of services like Blue apron, Marley spoon And HelloFresh. And lately, as I’ve been preparing for the holidays and an upcoming move, a lot of my free time (and maybe even my brain power) has been claimed, so I’ve found myself gravitating toward a specific type of meal lately. No, I’m not talking about a preference for protein; I’m talking about sheet pan meals. Here’s why I love them.
Sheet Pan Meals Make Cooking Simple
Lately, as I’ve been browsing meal kit service websites, I’ve noticed more and more skillet recipes popping up. These are dishes that cook in one go in the oven on one or two baking sheets and require very little preparation.
This sheet pan dish – roasted salmon and vegetables – is from Blue Apron and took just 30 minutes to prepare.
In my experience, these types of meals shorten the overall cooking time. While the whole meal (including sides) is cooking, I have time to clean up the little mess I made while preparing the meal, and even end up with a little relaxation time. With sheet pan meals, I can still enjoy a home-cooked meal in a fraction of the time it usually takes to prepare dinner. It’s a win-win situation in my opinion.
Some sheet pan meals require just five minutes of active work
While some meals still require a little prep work, like chopping or dicing vegetables, others, like the one above, require almost none. For my salmon dish, all I had to do was season the salmon with salt and pepper, rinse the produce, and break off the tips of the green beans. The whole process took me less than five minutes. Some recipes even come with pre-cut vegetables to save more time.
Sheet pan meals are often baked in the oven, but I recently tried making a few in the oven. Oven Wonder Proand they turned out just as well. If you have a toaster oven large enough for your meal, you can definitely use that instead of your traditional wall oven, if you prefer.
I made this Blue Apron Honey Mustard Chicken in the Wonder Oven Pro. While it was cooking, I prepared the salad.
One-pot or one-skillet meals are just as easy
You may also see some meals labeled as one-pan meals instead of one-plate meals, but there is only a slight difference between them. Sheet pan dishes are often cooked in the oven, while single skillet (or single pot) dishes are cooked on the stovetop. However, both types provide essentially the same thing: a complete meal cooked in a single cookware set rather than several. You can look at these types of meals as a way to have less mess, less cooking stress – while still having a home-cooked dinner.
Do all meal delivery services offer plated meals?
It is difficult to say with certainty that each One service offers griddle meals because there are so many available, but most services we’ve tested do this.
Some recent recipes we’ve seen include plate of pork and hoisin glazed persimmon Since Blue apron, One-Pan Cantina Shrimpfajitas HelloFresh And Low Carb Skillet Cabbage Parm Since Marley spoon.
Home Chef also offers plated meals. Many recipes also recommend laying down foil for easy cleanup.
Besides making weeknight dinners easier, my favorite thing about these types of recipes is that they’re usually very easy to recreate, with or without the meal kit. The salmon dish above, for example, has become part of my weekly dinner rotation, even when a meal kit doesn’t help me stay nourished.
Another new trend worth mentioning…
You may already know how having an air fryer can beand it looks like meal kit companies are also taking off.
On many recipes, Blue Apron now offers alternative air fryer instructions for specific steps. So instead of turning on your oven for a side dish of potatoes or vegetables, the service explains how you can prepare them in the air fryer.
I used the air fryer instructions to cook the broccoli in this meal.
While there are currently no recipes that cook fully in the air fryer in the same way that sheet pan meals are prepared, there are many that can help reduce cooking time. We believe other meal kit companies will soon respond to this trend as well.
