This Sheet Pan Salmon Is Officially No. 1 in My Dinnertime Rotation

I always roll my eyes at New Year's resolutions. "They'll be forgotten by February," I think. They're usually too ambitious and have no real accountability attached. This January 1, though, I reframed that mindset. Instead, I made a list of goals. For this writer, sometimes swapping out a word is all it takes to make a sentence work. The same goes for the way my brain processes "resolutions" vs. "goals." New year, new vocab?

Each goal is attainable (for example, I want to read one book per month, and if I read more, hooray!) and good for me (no delivery food for future me on lazy Sundays). None of these goals are too restrictive, and there are only four of them. I made a list in my phone with a spot to check off each month as I go. So far, I'm hitting all of them, and it feels great. But when the Lenten season came around, I was stumped. As friends gave up bread, cussing, and sweets for the 40-day period, I knew I didn't want to ruin the goals I had going with some constraining rule (I for one, could not give up bread, cussing, or sweets). So while sticking to my original four goals for the year, I decided to tack another good-for-me thing onto my list instead of giving up anything else.

Every week of Lent, I'd make at least one new recipe. To experienced cooks, this might sound infantile. But to anyone like me who gets in a rut with the same reliable recipes over and over again, you get it.

My husband and I try to eat salmon at least one night a week, and we've fallen into the routine of making a honey-mustard sheet pan salmon recipe. It's of course delightful, but on my Lenten promise to make one new meal per week, I was on the hunt for a new, equally easy and delicious sheet pan salmon recipe. Enter: Honey-Soy-Glazed Salmon with Veggies and Oranges.

What I loved first about this recipe is that aside from buying the fresh salmon and veggies, I already had the other ingredients on hand. The next things to fall for with this one? It needs a single sheet pan and only 25 minutes. Amen.

For taking less than 30 minutes, this sheet pan salmon recipe has so much payoff in the taste bud department. The honey-soy glaze is lovely and has a surprise (to me at least) ingredient. Most recipes I've made with similar sauces have soy, honey, garlic, and maybe some sesame oil. This one had a sneaky flavor booster—Dijon mustard. I know Dijon sounds like it would be out of place here but trust me: It adds just the right amount of tang to the sauce and sets it apart from others. One thing about this recipe that I could not get over was the roasted oranges, though. I wasn't sure how I was going to feel about them, but they offer up some beautiful acidity and sweetness that's like a companion plant, helping everything else on the plate shine. We served this meal over quinoa, but it can stand on its own or be plated over plain white or brown rice.

Apologies to our go-to honey-mustard salmon, but this 25-minute sheet pan recipe just took the top spot on our weekly rotation. Don't worry: I'll keep my Lenten promise to try new recipes, but this one will soon make an encore appearance.

Recipe: Honey-Soy-Glazed Salmon with Veggies and Oranges

Looking for more one-pan dinner inspiration? Reserve your spot for dish duty with our tasty collection of sheet pan suppers.