Sheet Pan Sausages & Vegetables with Mustard Sauce

 

Are you tired of making the same ol' things for dinner? Do you desperately feel the need to make something new? But you really don't want to spend much time in the kitchen? That is how I feel much of the time. I figured this recipe was worth trying after I saw it on Instagram a couple of weeks ago. But I was NOT prepared for how good it would be. And how crazy easy it was. I did not have the exact ingredients of the original. So I used what I had on hand, following the author's cooking directions. This summer has been all about cooking with what you have in your kitchen.

The recipe I'm posting here is my version. And we loved it just like this Please take a minute and read the original. It will give you some ideas to tweak it to suit you. (Follow "thewholecook" on IG for more good ideas.)

The recipe called for fully cooked chicken sausages sliced into circles. I'm sure it meant big sausages. I had a box of fully cooked chicken sausage breakfast links in the freezer. They are so small that I added them to the pan whole—and still frozen.  I actually went back and pulled the box out of the trash after we ate to make a picture of this so I would remember what I used. This was the first time I had tried these sausages. It was another item of an online grocery order that was an experiment. A successful experiment!

For my version of this recipe, I used potatoes. I had a bag of tiny red potatoes in the pantry...so tiny that I didn't even cut them. Except for a couple of the larger ones. (I could have cut regular potatoes into small chunks.) This was delicious. So delicious that I've already made it again. I'm happy that I didn't have the exact ingredients. It could not have tasted better! The sauce was so good that Daddy-O wants to make more to put on other things. 

Mid-afternoon I washed the broccoli, trimmed the florets and left them to dry until it was time to cook. I roast a lot of vegetables. They need to be dry to get that good brown color that is the hallmark of roasting. If there is much water left on them from washing, they will steam.

Then about a half hour before we wanted to eat, I turned the oven on the preheat. While that was heating, I got out the baking sheet, lined it with parchment paper (I like the precut sheets). Then I proceeded with the recipe. Twenty to twenty-five minutes in the oven and everything on the sheet perfectly cooked. If you use different vegetables, you need to think about whether they will all cook at the same time. Or adjust accordingly.

For my gluten-free friends, this meal fits the bill made just as I did it. Here is how I made this:

SHEET PAN SAUSAGES & VEGETABLES with MUSTARD SAUCE

        adapted from The Whole Cook

1 box (10 links) fully cooked chicken maple breakfast sausages

1 or 2 broccoli crowns, cut into florets

1/2 (1.5 lb) bag of tiny red potatoes (or cut larger ones into small chunks)

Olive oil for drizzling

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon black pepper

1/4 teaspoon garlic powder

1/4 teaspoon dried oregano

1/4 teaspoon dried basil

Easy Mustard Sauce

1/4 cup mayonnaise

1 tablespoon dijon mustard

1 tablespoon water

1/2 teaspoon fresh lemon juice

1/2 teaspoon minced garlic (from a jar)

Pinch of salt

Preheat oven to 425º. Line a large baking sheet with parchment paper. Mix together salt, pepper, garlic, oregano and basil in a small cup.

Spread sausages and vegetables in a single layer on baking sheet. (There is no need to measure veggies. Just make them fit the pan.) Drizzle vegetables with oil and use hands to toss to coat them. (I did not put oil on the sausages.) Sprinkle with seasoning mix. 

Put pan in oven and bake for 20-25 minutes, until everything is done. (I didn't stir or turn anything.) While sheet pan is in the oven, stir together the mustard sauce ingredients. 

Divide sausages and vegetables in individual bowls and drizzle mustard sauce over all and serve.

This recipe probably should feed three people—if one of them is not Daddy-O. But there were two of us here and the only thing left from what you see in the pan was a little bit of broccoli. I did not have any kind of side dish with this and maybe I should have. For us, it was truly a one pan meal.

Remember, you do not want to overcrowd the vegetables in the pan or they will not properly roast. Maybe I could have squeezed a little more on the pan, but not much. I'm adding the chicken breakfast links to my next online grocery order. I might even get two boxes this time. 

My friend Jane asked me ages ago why I use minced garlic from a jar so much. I told her it was because it was easy. Now I can give her another reason. I made this mustard sauce two days after I made tzatziki sauce with fresh minced garlic. The taste of the raw garlic was a bit much...as in the taste lingered in my mouth all day. 

Jane is right. It's not hard to mince fresh garlic. And for cooking, it does give you more flavor. But when it's stirred into something that doesn't need cooking, the jarred kind takes the edge off of it. No tasting garlic for hours. Everything has it's best use.