Kitchen Guide: Sheet Pan Meals

Our Guide: 6 Steps to  Fabulous Sheet Pan Meals

Step 1: PREPARE THE PAN
Choose a rimmed baking sheet pan and line it with foil or parchment paper. Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Place empty sheet pan in the oven to preheat for 10 minutes.

Step 2: CHOOSE YOUR VEGETABLES
Choose hearty vegetables that can stand up to high heat. Options: potatoes, sweet potatoes, onions, zucchini, summer squash, beets, carrots, cabbage, kale, bell peppers, broccoli and green beans.
Other Veggie Options: More tender vegetables like cherry tomatoes, eggplant, mushrooms and asparagus, can also be used, but just be sure to add them later in the process so they don't overcook. 

Step 3: CHOOSE YOUR PROTEIN
Add your meat to the pan. You may want to separate the meat to one side of the pan or on a separate piece of foil to keep the juices from running together. If you're not a meat eater you can try experimenting with a larger variety of vegetables, cooked beans, tofu or tempeh
Good Protein Options: boneless chicken breasts or thighs, chicken drumsticks, pork chops, smaller cuts of beef, salmon or other fish, shrimp, and kielbasa/sausage.

Step 4: CHOOSE YOUR SEASONINGS 
Use spices, oil, or glaze. Ideally, season everything before it goes onto the sheet pan. Use kosher salt and freshly ground pepper as a basic start. Drizzle with olive oil or other glaze and toss in a large bowl before arranging on the sheet pan. Be creative! Seasoning options: extra virgin olive oil, thyme, oregano, basil, balsamic vinegar, lemon juice, maple syrup, Cajun seasoning, Dijon mustard sauce, barbecue sauce, teriyaki sauce, garlic, ginger, cumin, hoisin, soy sauce, chili powder.

Step 5: BAKE at 400°F FOR 35-45 MINUTES
Temperatures range from 400-450°F for sheet pan meals. Depending on the vegetables and protein you've chosen, it may take anywhere from 35-45 minutes to cook thoroughly. Remember if you've chosen something you know will overcook in that period, you want to add it in later on in the cooking time. Check the protein and heartier veggies at 35-40 minutes to see if they are done.

Step 6: ADD SOME CRUNCH FOR FLOURISH.
This is an optional step. Sprinkle something on top once your meal is cooked!
Think greens: arugula, spinach, micro-greens, pea shoots and sprouts are all good options. Toasted nuts like shaved almonds, cashews or pine nuts also work well.

PRO TIPS:
+ For easy clean up in a flash, line the pan with foil or parchment paper before coating with non-stick cooking spray. After cooking, simply lift off the foil/paper and discard.
+ Note: Sheet pans, baking sheets, and jelly roll pans are often confused with each other. Sheet pans are made from aluminum or stainless steel, have a deep rim, and measure 18x13 inches. Avoid nonstick sheet pans if you can. Although they're easier to clean up, they don't give a lot of colour to roasted chicken or vegetables.
+ Understanding the amount of time it takes for specific ingredients to cook is the key to a great sheet pan dinner. Either choose items with similar cooking times, or group your ingredients by their rate of cooking and add these groupings to the pan in stages. Also, take care to cut vegetables into similarly-sized pieces for more even cooking.
+ Don't overcrowd the pan, or you'll steam the veggies instead of roasting them. If necessary, use two pans.
+ Add any glazes before you cook, and again toward the end of cooking. Stir or flip food at least once during cooking.
+ Turn up the edges of a piece of foil to make a rectangular tray if you need to keep items separate from each other — especially if their juices may be overpowering.
+ Not every component of the meal has to be cooked on the pan. The majority of your meal may be cooked on one pan, but it may need another component. For example, you might make the fajita fixings all on one pan and then add them to the tortillas at the table. You could also create an Asian themed sheet meal that you may add on top of rice.
+ Preheat the pan. Placing the sheet pan into the oven as it preheats will give you that sizzling surface for your veggies and lead to a beautiful (and delicious) browned crust.
+ Position your food wisely. Try to put the meat in the centre of the sheet pan so it can absorb the most heat, and scatter the veggies around the sides.
+ Keep out the moisture. Excess water is the enemy for sheet pan meals! The oven has to work that much harder to evaporate it so it can brown your food. Pat your meat and veggies dry with a paper towel before roasting.

Regeneration Canada + Joyfully Organic Farm

As regenerative farmers, we are stewards of our land and believe that we can be a part of the climate change solution. That’s why we are so proud to have joined a community of like-minded producers. You can now find us in the company of other change makers on the map of @regenerationcan. Check us and the map out here!

Organic Farms are good for Communities

Eat Locally: Protect our health, our climate & our community

Local farmers care. We take the long way because shortcuts don’t sit well with us. Our practices take more time, more labor than many of our counterparts, but we’ve opted for organic practices because these practices contribute to the health of our customers, our community, and our climate, instead of detracting from them. And we care about that.

Organic practices contribute to the climate resiliency of our communities, too. We improve our soil, water, and air quality with practices like crop rotation, cover crops, and composting. By nourishing the soil, we sequester carbon, reduce harmful waste runoff, and help ensure that our farmland will continue to be fertile and productive into the future. Our farms are more resilient to the increased rain and flooding we expect to see as a result of climate change. All that to say: we’re in it for the long haul—come drought or high water, we’re better equipped to provide food for our communities, and our practices ensure they’ll be more resilient to the effects of climate change, too.

Lastly, the presence of local, resilient farms is at the heart of community self-sufficiency–a trait that is likely to prove critical in climate resilience. Towns and regions able to produce their own necessities (ahem…food!) will be far more resilient to the disruptions and losses of climate change than those reliant on faraway providers and producers. And in the meantime, organic farms create 21% more jobs than conventional farms, helping to sustain viable communities. Eating with our farm keeps money in the local economy.

When you eat with Joyfully Organic Farm you’re investing in local–local food, local communities, local resilience. And we are so grateful for that support, which makes it all possible. Now that’s a virtuous cycle!

Organically Farmed Soils Sequester Greenhouse Gasses

Organic Farmers are Climate Farmers!

As the foundation responsible for all our tasty, nourishing food, soils are of the utmost importance to us at Joyfully Organic Farm. We study, labor for, and replenish our soils. We know them by name, study their chemical composition, their structure, their strengths and weaknesses. Much of our work contributes to soil health in one way or another. That focus on the foundation of it all is one of the major reasons why Vermont organic farmers are, frankly, climate heroes. Soils are powerful matrices–complex ecosystems with the potential to fight climate change in a number of ways, namely by sequestering greenhouse gasses. 

Soils are the basis of food production not just because they are the substrate in which our food grows, but because they play an important role in the cycling of many things: water, nutrients, and life itself, to name a few. Greenhouse gasses like carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide, well-known for their role in climate change, move in and out of soils at varying rates depending on soil health. Robust soils sequester these gasses in biological processes. When gasses are captured in this way, these otherwise dangerous compounds actually serve as nutrients for a rich web of life present in healthy soils, further improving soil health.

How do you get robust soils? Organic practices like composting, avoiding disturbance, encouraging on-farm biodiversity, and cover cropping all invigorate soil health.

And nothing succeeds like success: once the soil’s capacity to sequester gasses is strengthened, it sets off a virtuous cycle of healthier soil→more sequestration→healthier soil→more sequestration, which raises the soil’s ability to sequester gasses at an exponential rate.

To boil it down: when greenhouse gasses are emitted into the atmosphere, they accelerate climate change; when they’re sequestered in healthy soil, they slow it. Now that’s climate-friendly farming!

Wendell Berry once famously wrote that “eating is an agricultural act”. When you eat with our farm, that very act supports the sequestration of greenhouse gasses, and in so doing, reduces climate change. As conscious stewards of Ontario soils, your local organic farmers take pride in sequestration, a feat we couldn’t perform without your support

Organic farms are more resilient to extreme weather events

Our climate-friendly farms use a range of practices to increase the organic matter in our soil, improve its structure, and foster biodiversity. These upgrades strengthen our soil’s capacity to capture and absorb water, which in turn bolsters the land’s resilience to flooding and drought.

You can picture it: it’s a lot easier to erode the riverbank of a continually plowed monoculture with weak soils than it is the bank of an organic farm’s robust ecosystem with deep, biologically rich soils, interplanted crops, and riparian buffers. It’s also harder to flood that organic field when the soil is able to absorb high volumes of water in a short period of time, effectively stopping and sinking rain and/or floodwater in its tracks.

Of course, when an organic farm is able to withstand an extreme weather event, it will also be able to continue providing food for its community in the wake of flooding, drought, or other natural disasters. And community food security is a major determinant of climate resilience. 

With climate change, we know the time to invest in systems that mitigate disasters and strengthen resilience is now. The practices we use to produce Joyfully Organic Farm food are strengthening climate resilience, both across the landscape and in our communities. And it’s thanks to our customers–whose support enables these impacts in the first place. By eating with our farm, you are investing in mitigating climate change damage and strengthening community food security in times of need. That’s one of the reasons buying locally organic means buying climate smart–it means investing in a resilient future!

Organically farmed soils release fewer greenhouse gases

Eat with local organic farms, like Joyfully Organic Farm : The climate-friendly choice for fewer greenhouse gasses

Looking for a way to reduce your greenhouse gas emissions? Eat locally + organically with Joyfully Organic Farm. Our climate-friendly farming practices do not use synthetic pesticides and fertilizers, which are some of the primary greenhouse gas generators–both in their production and application. Synthetic nitrogen fertilizers, for example, are known to create emissions 300 times more harmful than carbon dioxide (Nitrous Oxide I’m lookin’ at you). As a certified organic farm, we see a demonstrable reduction in these dangerous emissions.

We also invest deeply in our soils, which, when strengthened by organic practices, are a massive asset to mitigating climate change and achieving resilience in its midst. Healthy soils sequester carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus, methane, and other hazardous emissions, diverting them from the atmosphere, where they accelerate climate change. When sequestered by the soil’s biological processes, these compounds actually serve as nutrients, thus further boosting soil health, and reducing the need for synthetic fertilizers.

When you eat with our farm, you’re taking concrete action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. You’re voting with your dollar to fight climate change and facilitate a more resilient future for our children. And you’re joining others in a powerful communal effort.

We can mitigate climate change, and develop resilience to its effects, but to do so, we need to invest in the right systems, the right choices. Carbon-sequestering, emissions-diverting, soil-building organic farms are one of those right choices 💪 🌱