Cooking dinner every night can be time-consuming and sometimes even overwhelming, but opting to eat out instead adds up quickly, especially when compared to cooking at home. If you're looking for a happy medium to help you out with weekly dinners, meal kits may become your very best friend.
During my testing at CNET, I've become a fan of services like Blue Apron, Marley Spoon and HelloFresh. And lately, while preparing for the holidays and an upcoming move, a large chunk of my free time (and maybe even brain power) has been claimed, so I've found myself leaning toward a specific type of meal lately. No, I'm not talking about a protein preference; I'm talking about sheet-pan meals. Here's why I love them.
Sheet-pan meals simplify cooking
Lately, as I'm scouring meal kit service websites, I've noticed that more and more sheet-pan recipes are appearing. These are meals that cook all at once in the oven on one or two sheet pans and require very little preparation.
This sheet-pan meal -- roasted salmon and veggies -- is from Blue Apron and took only 30 minutes to make. Corin Cesaric/CNET
In my experience, these types of meals shorten overall cooking time. While the entire meal (sides included) is baking, I have time to clean up the little mess I made while preparing the meal, and even end up with a bit of relaxation time. With sheet-pan meals, I can still enjoy a home-cooked meal in a fraction of the time it usually takes to cook dinner. It's a win-win situation in my book.
Some sheet-pan meals take only five minutes of active work
While some meals still require a little bit of prep work, like chopping or dicing vegetables, others, like the one above, need almost none. For my salmon dish, all I had to do was season the salmon with salt and pepper, rinse the produce and snap 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 cooked in the oven, but I recently experimented with making a couple in the Wonder Oven Pro, and they turned out just as well. If you have a toaster oven that's large enough for your meal, you can absolutely use it instead of using your traditional wall oven, if you prefer.
I made this honey mustard chicken from Blue Apron in the Wonder Oven Pro. While it was cooking, I prepared the salad. Corin Cesaric/CNET
... continue reading