Here’s a dinner that I whipped up a few weeks ago. I bought raw sausage that my local co-op makes in the store and I chopped it up into 1-inch pieces. I then removed the meat from the casing and shaped the meat into meatballs. This is what i do when I’m too lazy to make meatballs from scratch, which is quite often, I might add. While the chicken sausage is great, the real star of the show are the potatoes! My word, I LOVE roasted potatoes. My mother-in-law makes the best ones—extra crispy on the outside and soft on the inside. However, they usually take about an hour to make, and I ain’t got time for that on a weekday! So here’s what I do for weeknight roasted potatoes. Start by roasting the potatoes in the oven first. They’ll need extra oven lovin’ to get them nice and crispy. The rest of the ingredients will come in later. This sheet pan dinner is constantly on repeat at my house now because my husband loves it so much! Meat and potatoes, what can you say? By the way, aren’t those baby carrots cute?
Price of the entire meal: $12.82
MASTERING MY MISTAKES / COOKING NOTES
Use 2 pans for roasting: I highly recommend using 2 pans for roasting this, even if you can fit everything into one pan. The extra room gives the vegetables space to breathe and caramelize. If you jam the vegetables too closely, the vegetables will start steaming instead of roasting.Finishing the meatballs with sauce: The meatballs looked quite naked once they were done cooking, so I brushed a bit of my enchilada sauce all over them. You can also use pasta, marinara or teriyaki sauce, too.Baking time for the potatoes: If you want really dark brown and crispy potatoes like the ones in my photos, roast them for 25 minutes before adding the other ingredients. Otherwise, stick to 20 minutes for golden brown potatoes.Save time on cleaning: Lining the sheet pans with parchment paper before roasting everything will help save clean-up time because the food won’t stick to the pan. For the purposes of taking better looking photos, I roasted everything directly on the sheet pans. I greased the pans so that the meat and vegetables won’t stick as much.
If you make this recipe, let me know! Take a photo of your creation and tag me on Instagram so that I can give you a fist bump!
