This Easy Sheet-Pan Dinner Has Everything You Want in a Weeknight Meal

I love any recipe that can be made in just one cooking vessel. My partner and I started cooking sheet-pan dinners in the wintertime a few years ago, and this spice-rubbed pork tenderloin, sweet potato, and broccoli recipe is one of our favorite sheet-pan meals to prepare together. We often choose to cook pork tenderloin at home since it’s affordable, juicy, delicious, and filling. 

For a quick weeknight dinner, roasting everything on the same sheet pan is an easy and convenient way to achieve a complete, balanced meal that still delivers incredible flavor. To get juicy pork, lightly browned sweet potatoes, and tender broccoli, you only need 30 minutes total cooking time, but there are a few key steps to ensure great results every time. Here are my tips to perfect this meal.

4 Simple Tips for a Sheet-Pan Pork Tenderloin Dinner That’s Anything But Basic

1. Use a medley of spices for the best flavor. As a chef of Indian origin, I have always enjoyed using my favorite spices even when I’m not making Indian food. So I am always experimenting with spices I think will pair well with different ingredients—in this dish I love the complex warm flavor of garam masala with the sweet potatoes and earthy cumin and coriander with the savory pork and broccoli. Adding a liberal amount of spices to each component of the one-pan dish is an easy way to build complex and exciting flavors in such an otherwise simple meal.

Make sure to use fresh ground spices for this recipe: Spices lose their flavor quickly and you will not get the same intense flavor from store-bought powders that have been in your pantry for more than a few months. I grind my favorite spices–coriander seed, cumin seed, and my own garam masala blend–often so they are fresh, aromatic, and intensely flavorful when I need them. If you don't grind your spices just be sure to buy pre-ground spices frequently and use them up quickly. 

2. Stud the pork with garlic. One of my favorite ways to ensure incredibly savory and aromatic pork tenderloin is to stud it with garlic, which infuses the meat with flavor while it roasts. Adding the garlic is relatively easy; I recommend using a paring knife to cut small slices—about 1/2-inch wide, and 1/4-inch deep—evenly spaced down the length of the tenderloin. The garlic slices should be pushed completely into the slits, so the slices are flush with the top of the loin and not exposed, ensuring the top of each garlic piece won’t burn while cooking. 

Once roasted, the garlic–infused pork is juicy and aromatic and pairs beautifully with the sweet tubers and earthy broccoli. When slicing to serve, you can simply remove the garlic and discard, or enjoy the tender slices of garlic with the pork, which is what I like to do.

3. Add the pork, sweet potatoes, and broccoli in stages. The problem with many sheet-pan dinner recipes is that everything just gets tossed on the same pan at the same time, then chucked in the oven to roast. This often leads to uneven cooking, withone element undercooked while another is overcooked—you could end up with mushy or crunchy underdone sweet potatoes and broccoli and charred or undercooked pork. To avoid this, I start by preheating the rimmed baking sheet—this jumpstarts browning—then add the sweet potatoes and roast briefly at 425°F before nestling the pork into the center of the pan to partially roast, and finally I add the broccoli, which cooks the fastest. When added at these staggered stages, all three elements will finish cooking properly at the same time.

To further ensure browning and to keep the dish from being soggy, center the tenderloin on the pan and be sure to spread the vegetables out on each side of the pork rather than piling them up or placing them underneath the pork.

Another perk to adding ingredients at different times is that you can multi-task and save on overall prep time: While the sweet potatoes are initially cooking, you can get the pork ready, and while the pork and sweet potatoes cook together, you have time to prepare the broccoli. Using your time wisely by overlapping prep and roasting time means less overall time spent in the kitchen, which is exactly what I want on a busy weeknight.

4. Keep the vegetables warm while resting the pork before slicing. Once everything is roasted, the pork will need to rest for five to ten minutes before slicing to ensure it retains its juices. But you don’t want the vegetables to get cold while the pork rests. To avoid this, my trick is turning off the oven and keeping the sheet pan with the vegetables on it warm in the now-off oven for just a few minutes while the pork rests and is being sliced. This way the entire meal is nice and hot when ready to serve.

This meal serves two to three people, and is often more than plenty for my partner and me. The leftover pork slices make a great lunch sandwich the next day with mayo or cranberry chutney, Dijon mustard, tomatoes, and lettuce.