Soft melt in the mouth sweet potatoes, peppers and tomatoes combine with roasted chickpeas, lemon and feta to make a delicious side dish which comes together easily in one pan! You can easily adapt this to suit your preferences and the contents of your fridge. Serve this as part of a bowl meal, in a wrap or as a simple meal with some bread and hummus.
Where are my simple food lovers? This one is for you! As you already know, sometimes the right ingredients can get together and create something much greater than the sum of its parts, and that is what I think this recipe achieves. Sweet, soft, melt in the mouth roasted veggies combine with sturdier chickpeas plus a little seasoning, a little feta, a little lemon… and it is just right.
This recipe is a spin off of one from How Sweet Eats (via The New York Times), but I’ve bulked out the ingredients to include sweet potato. I felt this would be the perfect addition here to round it out and take it a step closer to “complete sheet pan meal” status. In my mind, an accompanying scoop of hummus and some bread is all you need to make a full meal from it. But I have plenty of other suggestions coming your way if you want to do a little more than that, or it makes a pretty amazing side dish if that’s what you’re after.
Ingredients & Substitutions: What to Know
- Be sure to cut your sweet potato into fairly small pieces so the cook time aligns with the other ingredients. Take a look at my photo – each piece of sweet potato is a little smaller than a cherry tomato.
- If you want to swap in butternut squash for the sweet potato, feel free!
- If you want to swap in strips of bell pepper for the sweet peppers, go right ahead!
- Pay less attention to the quantities written in the recipe and more attention to how things look on your sheet pan – you want your ingredients to be in a single layer, but it is OK if it’s a little on the crowded side. It isn’t all going to roast perfectly evenly, it will be a mix of softer and crispier bits, and it’s kind of great that way.
- I’ve added parsley to this, but you can use any fresh green herb. Cilantro (fresh coriander), chives or basil would all be delicious.
- Similarly, feel free to adjust quantities based on what you have. If you have more tomatoes and less pepper, that’s fine. If you have no sweet potato, use a second can of chickpeas instead. Just fill up your sheet pan and all will be well.
- Be mindful when adding extra veggies in. Personally, I think this recipe works so well because we stick to very sweet veggies that melt in the mouth when they’re roasted. So adding in anything more bitter like eggplant or zucchini wouldn’t occur to me. But if you want to play around, feel free. You just want to be sure anything you add will a) align with the cook time of these ingredients and b) not leach any extra liquid in the pan.
The best cookware for this recipe is a half sheet pan
A half sheet pan is an American term for a metal roasting tin with low sides, and measures 18×13 in or 46x33cm.
If you’re in the UK, this size is available but less common and some built-in ovens aren’t quite wide enough (my Smeg oven is, but my previous Zanussi was not). So if you don’t have a half sheet pan available, just use your largest roasting tin or roasting dish and put as much as you can fit comfortably on it. You’re fine to squeeze the ingredients fairly tight, but you need them in a single layer.
You definitely want a metal pan if possible – a ceramic or glass dish will take longer to cook.
Make a meal out of it…
This is such a well rounded dish that I am generally pretty happy to eat it from a bowl, scoop some hummus on top, and call it a light dinner! But to bulk it out a little…
- Pair with a grain based dish; something like a pilaf or a grain salad, which brings its own flavor, is ideal.
- An oyster mushroom steak would also be a great centerpiece to pair with this dish, or just a whole roasted portobello mushroom.
- It would make a great side dish for an easy crustless quiche or puff pastry tart, though you will need a double oven to pull this off because of the different cooking temperatures.
- It would work well as a filling for warm wraps, piadinas or pitas.
Sheet Pan Sweet Potato, Chickpeas & Peppers with Feta
Ingredients
- 4-6 tbsp (80 ml) extra virgin olive oil
- 14 oz (400 g) can of chickpeas, drained
- 2 large sweet peppers, sliced into rings
- 1 cup (150 g) cherry tomatoes
- 1 small sweet potato, cut into small cubes – or use 1/2 or a large one
- 1.5 tsp garlic powder
- 1 tsp smoked paprika
- ½ cup (100 g) feta cheese, crumbled
- salt and pepper, to taste
- ½ lemon, cut into wedges for serving
- 1 handful parsley, cilantro, chives, basil, or any other fresh green herb
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 425F / 220C / 200C fan.
- Line your sheet pan with parchment paper (baking paper). Add the veggies and chickpeas to the pan, drizzle with 4 tablespoons of olive oil, sprinkle with the garlic powder and smoked paprika and toss together to get everything well coated. Add lots of salt and pepper. If it doesn't feel well coated enough in oil, another couple of tablespoons if you need to. Place in the oven for 15 minutes.
- Remove from the oven and use a spatula to mix, flip and shuffle all of the ingredients around a little. This will help ensure they cook evenly.Place in the oven for another 10 minutes.
- Check in on the veggies. You're looking for the sweet potatoes to be cooked through, and for the peppers, shallots and tomatoes to be browning around the edges. If you need to cook it for a little longer, go ahead, until it fits this description.
- Sprinkle with crumbled feta and place back in the oven for another 5 minutes, to get the feta nice and soft.
- Add to a serving dish. Top with herbs and add lemon wedges for squeezing. Add a scoop of hummus if you wish.
Made this for lunch today – divine!
So happy to hear this! 🙂