Looking for a simple all-in-one meal? Try Sheet Pan Chicken with Citrus and Fennel
You can always count on your trusty baking sheet for around-the-clock cooking. Use it to make everything from easy weeknight meals to fancy dinners, crispy breakfast bacon, golden focaccia, or chocolate chip cookies. It’s a no-brainer with easy prep, short cooking time, and almost no clean-up.
One of the best parts about making a sheet pan dinner is that all the ingredients are cooked together on one baking sheet in a hot oven reducing the time spent prepping, cooking and cleaning up.
Baking sheets made of sturdy aluminum will withstand high temperatures without warping. Nordic Ware and Volrath (available from Amazon) are excellent choices. They are often called half-sheet pans because they are half the size of commercial sheet pans (18-by-13 inches with a 1-inch rim). Cleaning is effortless if you line your pans with parchment, aluminum foil, or silicone liners. I have several sheet pans in my kitchen along with quarter-sheet pans that fit nicely in my toaster oven.
Preheat the oven to 425-450 degrees and start with the protein of your choice — poultry, beef, fish, seafood, or tofu — surrounded by vegetables (or omit the protein and just use vegetables), then coat everything with extra-virgin olive oil, melted butter, or coconut oil and add hard herbs (rosemary, thyme, bay leaves) and spices. Soft herbs like parsley, mint, cilantro, and chives can burn in high heat, so add these at the end of cooking.
Make sure the proteins and vegetables are cut approximately the same size. Place them in one layer to allow room for browning. A second sheet pan may be necessary to achieve this.
Solid vegetables like potatoes and winter squash take longer to cook, so place them on the baking sheet first. Vegetables with a higher moisture content like zucchini, chard, kale, broccoli rabe or tomatoes can be added to the pan toward the end of cooking. Toss whole smashed garlic cloves and thin slices of lemons into the mix for additional flavor.
Sheet Pan Chicken with Fennel and Citrus
This recipe is adapted from The Secret of Cooking: Recipes for an Easier Life in the Kitchen, by Bee Wilson, published by W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. ($40.00)
Chardonnay is a classic match here, and Robert Mondavi 2021 Chardonnay from Napa Valley ($35.00) with its notes of green apple, citrus blossom with good acidity make it a harmonious pairing option with this dish.
Wilson writes, “This, adapted from Bitter Honey by Letitia Clark is one of my most made roasting-dish meals. I find it comforting and uplifting at the same time. Crispy skin-on chicken thighs cook in a dish with fennel (both seeds and vegetable), white wine, citrus, and Dijon. The fennel becomes impregnated with the wine and the chicken fat until it is meaty and sweet and sour. If you decide to scale this up when cooking for more people, which is a great idea, don’t scale up the liquid too much or the chicken will drown in it. If you triple the amount of chicken, only double the liquid.”
Zest and juice of 1 unwaxed lemon and 1 unwaxed orange
2 teaspoons Dijon mustard
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1 teaspoon fennel seeds
1 cup white wine
4 bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs
2 small fennel bulbs, fronds reserved, bulbs cut into wedges
A handful of fat green olives
Cooked rice or bread for serving
If you are feeling organized, start the day before or a few hours ahead. Whisk together the citrus juice and zest, Dijon, olive oil, fennel seeds, wine and 1 teaspoon of salt and put into a zip-top bag along with the chicken. Chill for a couple of hours or up to 12 hours. This will help to tenderize the chicken. But in all honesty, I’ve often forgotten to do this and it still tastes great. Either way, put the chicken and all the marinade ingredients onto a sheet pan. Add the fennel bulb wedges and the olives. Put into the oven and turn the oven on to 425°F for 1 hour, or until the fennel is meltingly soft and the chicken is bronzed (check after 45 minutes). Taste the sauce for seasoning. If the wine has all evaporated away, splash some water into the pan to make a simple gravy. Taste for seasoning. It shouldn’t need much, because of all that citrus and wine. Eat with some crunchy green fennel fronds on top with rice or good bread for mopping.
Yield: Serves 2
