Sweet Potato Broccolini Sheet Pan Hash

Wow, has it been a long time! Apologies for the break in my content here friends. I’ve had a lot of life changes! I turned 27, got a new job, and moved across the country to San Francisco. Then there was a large snafu with my moving company, a bunch of travel for work (hello, Vegas, Midwest, and Europe!), a family wedding (congrats mom and Tim!), and general new-city-exploring. And can I just say, those hills in SF are REAL. My calves are like double the size now, I swear.

But here I am! I’m back. Apologies for my silence here. Even when I had free days to contribute after settling in after the move, I found myself feeling a little lazy. I wanted to take the time to really make this place feel like home. Sometimes that meant wandering around or obsessively cleaning. Sometimes that meant binging a few episodes of Mad Men. I also constantly went into weekends thinking about anything else besides the blog or other freelance writing. It’s hard to find that groove, ya know?

I can now officially say that I am taking the time again to bake, cook, and meal prep in my new home. I feel totally refreshed! It’s a great feeling to listen to yourself and create what you want to create before you live somewhere long enough to get into a rut. Do you ever feel that?

However, I will say that one caveat to this freeing kitchen fun is my oven. Be forewarned that my new oven is teeny tiny. It fits a quarter sheet pan instead of a full sheet pan, and I can’t set a distinct digital temperature. It’s a dial with hardly any markings. I’ve pretty much worked out the kinks, but please let me know if temps/timings aren’t lining up to yours. I’ll double check! Smeg is very stylish, but it isn’t very useful in this context… At least I have a gas range!

Now let’s get to this delicious recipe.

This is an easy sheet pan hash that is a new favorite of mine. For several reasons.

It’s a sheet pan meal, which means it’s one of the easiest things to prepare. Period. What’s not to love?
It’s extremely versatile for veggies and seasonality. I used broccolini here, but cauliflower, brussels sprouts, kale, and squash would all work wonderfully! Also reducing the potatoes and adding more veggies makes it more nutritious. Bonus: springtime herb sauces would be amazing here as well.
It’s freaking delicious.

Need I say more?

For the science-y bit of this post, I figured I’d throw it back to one of my favorites. The science of alliums. This recipe does have both onions and garlic, so I figured it’s PERFECT. Arm yourself with these fun tid-bits about everyone’s favorite thing. Wait, onions, garlic, and leeks are everyone’s favorite thing, right?

There are sulfur-based compounds in the cells of plants that belong to the allium family that evolved as a defense mechanism. Onions, garlic, and chives of all varieties. In layman’s terms, when you damage the cells of the plant, the sulfur compounds are released and lay siege at the attacker. Particularly in garlic, as we’ve touched on before, the sulfur compound Allyl methyl sulfide (AMS) is designed to permeate through your skin cells and irritate them. Direct contact. It can even cause your skin to blister with enough contact. And wicked bad breath as it moves through your blood and lungs.

Kind of makes you think twice about the good old vampire legend. Garlic was one of their weaknesses…hmm that seems like it would be a legit defense. Those alliums sure do know how to defend themselves!

But then we’ve got onions. They have a totally different war tactic. Rather than depending on hand-to-hand contact, they employ a different sulfurous compound that permeates through the air and launches itself at your nose and eyes. Hello teary eyes and runny nose!

What differentiates very similar sulfur components from being chained to the land like in garlic while those in onion get to frolic in the air? (I realize that is the very worst personification I have ever attributed to molecules. My thesis advisor would be cringing so hard RN) Well the AMS in garlic is actually a rather large molecule which makes it really unlikely (kind of impossible) that it could fly up among the tiny air molecules. The sulfur-based molecule found in onions, however, is relatively tiny and free to catapult all the way to your eye sockets. This has a medieval sounding torture term or possibly an independent horror film title called the “lachrymatory factor.”

However, it gets more complicated because in this case, we are heating these onions in order to create all of those wonderful Maillard reaction notes. And heat actually disarms alliums and cuts out those sulfur weapons.

BINGO!