Sheet Pan Chicken Dinner

Keto Sheet Pan Chicken Recipe

Sheet pan dinners, like this chicken sheet pan dinner, are an easy way to get dinner on the table for the whole family, even more so when you’re having a busy day! Since everything is made in one pan, cleaning up afterwards is easy – especially if you line the baking pan with foil before you start baking. If you’re trying to eat healthy while on a Keto diet, this is the meal for you! This whole meal of chicken and roasted vegetables is delicious, simple and full of flavor! You can even make this keto chicken recipe as part of your meal prep. This recipe for chicken sheet pan would make for great weekday work lunches. Due to the tasty garlic butter sauce in this recipe, this will not be your average bland baked chicken and vegetables dinner. You will have perfectly juicy chicken and pleasantly baked vegetables prepped and cooked in less than an hour! All you would need to make sure of is that the chicken and vegetables are evenly spread out in a single layer to ensure that everything cooks evenly so you’ll get crispy chicken!

You can mix up your sheet pan dinner with different keto friendly vegetables every time you make this meal. This sheet pan chicken and vegetables recipe is also perfect for picky eaters as you can add in any preferred vegetables on the sheet pan. This meal will easily become a staple for your healthy weeknight dinners! Squeeze a little bit of lemon over your sheet pan meal to finish the dish.

How To Tell if Chicken is Done

To know that your chicken legs are done, you should check the temperature by inserting a meat thermometer into the chicken legs, alongside the bone. The internal temperature should be that of 165 degrees. You should not just check the color of the chicken as the color may vary and thus, it is not an accurate way of checking proper doneness of the chicken. The chicken will still remain juicy at this temperature.

Garlic Butter Sauce

Due to the garlic butter marinade being high in fats (thanks to the butter and mayonnaise) and the chicken being high in protein, this dish is very satisfying and will keep you fuller for longer! Since all of the ingredients are low in carbs, you can still have a generous serving of this sheet pan dinner and you will still be within your daily macro limit.

For the garlic butter sauce, we use avocado mayo to add moisture to the chicken. It is a great way to make the chicken juicy while also adding extra flavor. If you don’t want to use avocado mayonnaise in your marinade, you can use regular mayo if you prefer. You can add your favorite herbs to the sauce. In this recipe, we use parsley, but rosemary, thyme or oregano would also pair well. If you have enough time, you can marinate the chicken for up to 12 hours in the garlic butter mixture before baking, but you can also just bake it right away. Marinating it for long just allows those flavors to pernitrate into your roasted chicken better.

If you don’t want to use mayonnaise or butter, you can substitute with olive oil. Olive oil in your marinade will still help keep the chicken juicy.

Roasted Vegetables on the Sheet Pan

A typical sheet pan chicken dinner would include potatoes. However, potatoes are not a keto friendly veggie since they are high in carbs. In this keto chicken sheet pan recipe we use turnips instead of potatoes. Turnips are a low carb alternative to potatoes. They look and taste like roasted potatoes when baked. You can also use radishes as they taste exactly like potatoes and are very low in carbs! We also added mushrooms and broccoli, but other keto friendly veggies can be used instead. We recommend using asparagus, red onion, bell pepper, cauliflower, brussels sprouts or green beans. You can make the sheet pan chicken dish as colorful as you want with all these low carb vegetables. Some people add sweet potato but that is higher in carbs so you may not want to use them.

Benefits of Cooking in One Pan

Sheet pan dinners are super quick and easy to throw together. The preparation for this sheet pan chicken dinner is very simple as all you would need to do is add your ingredients on a sheet pan and brush them with the sauce! Moreover, they don’t require a lot of pots, pans and kitchen utensils, so the process of cleaning up afterwards is a lot faster. Even if you are not very confident when it comes to cooking, this recipe is very easy to follow and you really don’t need to do much apart from put everything on one baking tray and then let the oven do the rest!

Cuts of Chicken

For this recipe, we are using chicken legs but you can substitute with chicken thighs, chicken breast or chicken tenders if you prefer. The key thing to keep in mind is to choose cuts of chicken and vegetables which will need around the same amount of time to cook. Chicken breast takes less time to cook to the correct temperature and thus, your vegetables might come out less crispy. If you use cuts which are bone-in, such as thighs, longer cooking time is required so either cut up vegetables into bigger pieces instead of dicing or include vegetables which require a longer cooking time. For this sheet pan recipe, we would not recommend using a whole chicken as it would take too much time to roast and the vegetables will be drained of flavor by the time the whole chicken is done roasting.

Storage

If you have any leftovers, these baked chicken legs, along with the roasted vegetables can be stored in the refrigerator for up to 3 to 5 days. Both the chicken and vegetables reheat well, so you can easily eat the leftovers within the next few days. To reheat them, you can either use the oven again or for a quicker option, microwave the meal until it is heated. You can also freeze them, but they are so quick and easy to make, we suggest refrigerating them or eating them as soon as they’re out of the oven!