Recipe: Sheet Pan Chicken and Broccoli with Drizzle Sauce

Feast your eyes on the impossibly easy three-ingredient dinner that my kids asked for seconds of the last time I served it. While some might say that it’s totally unnecessary to share a “recipe” for oven-baked frozen nuggets and bagged broccoli, I say that if it inspires you to cook at home instead of grabbing takeout, that’s a win in my book.

This sheet pan recipe is, after all, the idea that launched our Miracle Meal series. And true to the ethos of Miracle Meals, it has just three cheap, easy-to-find ingredients (plus olive oil and salt), uses only one pan, and is on the table in 30 minutes. Here’s how to make a super-easy sheet pan dinner everyone will love.

I’m a big believer that you can have a favorite homemade chicken bite recipe (this is mine) and a favorite brand of store-bought frozen nugget, too. Homemade is often cheaper, and lets you customize them exactly how you like them, while frozen nuggets are there for you when you’re too busy to cook.

It only takes a few more seconds to throw some veggies onto the sheet pan to roast alongside those nuggets, which turns everything into a full meal. Here, pre-chopped broccoli and a bag of baby carrots will get nice and brown in the same time it takes the chicken to cook. The drizzle sauce (or dip, if you keep it thick) is optional — but it really does make the whole thing feel even more like a miracle.

Yes, we are using frozen chicken nuggets and pre-cut broccoli, and we feel great about doing so. This super-fast family dinner kept us out of the drive thru — and the drizzle sauce is still giving us the satisfaction of a certain chicken chain.

Miracle meals are the meals we pull off despite the failure of our best-laid plans; the dinners we can get on the table in 10 minutes; the meals made from pantry staples. Miracle meals are just as much about the cooks as they are about the eaters. At Kitchn, a Miracle Meal recipe only uses basic kitchen equipment and no more than five ingredients, with just 40 minutes (or less) of hands-on cooking time.