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I’m the father of two small children—a three-year-old and an 11-month-old. I love my kids, but I’m the editor of a cooking site, and the older one in particular breaks my heart on a regular basis by, well, eating like a three-year-old. I remember proudly proclaiming to his mom just before he was born: “He will eat whatever we’re eating.” Unfortunately for that aspirational version of myself, my son had some ideas of his own, most of which involve chicken tenders.
And so I’ve found myself often making two and sometimes even three dinners a night in recent months. The saving grace in all of this? The unassuming quarter-sheet pan. If you have only one sheet pan, it’s likely a half-sheet pan, or an 18-by-13" pan. They’re the most common and are big enough to fit something like a whole turkey. A quarter-sheet pan is, as you might guess, half the area of a half-sheet, or 13-by-9". That little pan has saved my sanity in two ways. The first, is that it is the perfect size if I’m making those aforementioned chicken tenders or roasting broccoli or potatoes in portions appropriate for tiny people. I don’t need to wrestle a big pan out of my cabinet and it doesn’t clog up the counter space I need when I’m prepping a more complicated “grown-up” dinner. The second, and more important, benefit to me of the quarter-sheet is that I can cover it completely with a single piece of aluminum foil, essentially eliminating the need to clean up. Unlike on a half-sheet pan, which, even when covered, suffers leaks of oil or fat over the sides of an ill-fitting piece of foil, the quarter-sheet pan comes out of the oven pretty pristine. A quick rinse and towel dry and I can then put it away, ready for the next day’s toddler demands.
But as with Pixar movies and cozy blankets, quarter-sheet pans aren’t just for kids. Assistant editor Genevieve Yam swears by a quarter-sheet when she wants to take some cookie dough from the freezer and bake a single cookie for herself before bed (one of the great pre-bedtime activities I’ve ever heard of). And when it comes time to reheat leftovers for lunch, which is always better done in the oven than the microwave, a quarter-sheet pan provides the same easy, clean experience for adults that it does for kids.
I’m still sure that some day my kids will eat the kinds of meals I love to make, but until then I’ve got a trusty friend in a small pan.
