If you don’t know what a sheet pan dinner is, you must have been living in a broom cupboard. Without your phone. Instagram is full of them. They’re more visually arresting than the ‘one pot’ dish, the sheet pan dinner’s old-fashioned cousin.

When food goes into a pot, it disappears – and nobody wants to photograph a dark well – but with sheet pans everything lies on a flat plane and the simplest dish looks stunning. Think of slices of pumpkin and red onion, their edges caramelised, burnished chicken thighs and golden baby potatoes. That’s a good low-hassle supper but make a green sauce – salsa verde, chimichurri or chermoula – spoon it on top and it looks even better. 

‘Sheet pan dinner’ is an American term. Here they’re called ‘tray bakes’, a name I struggle with as to me ‘tray bakes’ are sweet. They’re what my mum makes, rectangular baking tins of millionaire’s shortbread or lemon slices. But ‘sheet pan dinners’ and ‘tray bakes’ are the same thing, a single dish which contains protein, starch and vegetables – a complete supper – all cooked together in the oven. 

Sheet pans are workhorses in professional kitchens, unglamorous, everyday baking tins. A half sheet  or quarter sheet pan are most often used in American domestic kitchens. Here, we generally use roasting tins.

Sheet pan dinners, or tray bakes, whatever you like to call them, aren’t just popular because they look good, they’re also low-effort; the oven does all the work while you just wait. I started making them in 1998, when my first child was born. Tray bakes created a small culinary revolution in my life; they were the only thing I had the energy to cook. 

The inspiration came from the late Antonio Carluccio. He had a recipe for chicken thighs, baby potatoes, wedges of onion, garlic, rosemary and olive oil that you put in a roasting tin, seasoned and stuck in the oven. Antonio’s recipe – a simple idea and a great dinner – became a blueprint. 

I went crazy for this approach because you didn’t have to think about technique, just flavours. I roasted chicken with sweet potatoes, onions and cayenne, finished off with green olives and feta. Then I did chicken with soy sauce, ginger, pumpkin and star anise. Eventually I used fish fillets – they cook quickly so you have to roast the vegetables first – and vegetarian dishes. I have never run out of ideas. All you need to remember is to arrange the ingredients in a single layer – so that the food roasts instead of steaming – and work out how long each component takes to cook. That way, you add the various elements at the right time. 

Eventually, as well as roasting tins, I started to use a 30cm shallow cast iron casserole. The principle is the same, but the casserole looked better on the table (although, when baby number two arrived, I really didn’t care what went on the table). 

I have a few of my own ‘rules’ for tray bakes. If I’m using chicken thighs, I trim the skin. You don’t want pale, flabby bits underneath each piece. I also sprinkle the skin with sea salt flakes, so that it becomes crisp.  If I’m making anything that’s been marinated in honey or maple syrup, I cook it on a lower heat or cover the dish with foil as soon as I see the sugars starting to burn. 

I also break some rules. I don’t always include a starch. I’m happy to serve it on the side sometimes, though it means I’m not serving a ‘one dish’ meal. 

Finally, I often add ‘extras’ – a sauce, relish, or flavoured butter – that I make while the dish is in the oven. Tray bakes are supposed to make life simpler; they’re not meant to limit your creativity. When dishes are this easy you have time to do a little upgrading.  

I used to make gnocchi by hand and wouldn’t eat the commercial ones (they tend to be a bit firmer). But we’re talking about simple Wednesday-night meals here.