The Kitchen Staple Ree Drummond 'Can't Live Without' And Feels 'Nervous' When She's Missing

It's no surprise that Food Network star Ree Drummond, otherwise known as The Pioneer Woman, keeps an impressive number of kitchen tools on hand. Not only is her cooking show filmed on her property in Oklahoma, but she often prepares food for an army of people — including her large family, and the cowboys that work on her and her husband's cattle ranch. Needless to say, she often finds herself with leftovers after filming. She counts flat whisks, her Wusthof knife, and stainless steel bowls as some of her favorite tools, but if there's something she can't live without, it's sheet pans.

"I love a sheet pan," Drummond told Mashed. "I get nervous if I have fewer than 12, 13 sheet pans ready to go, just they're so versatile. I could go on and on." Indeed, a dozen sheet pans seems excessive, but when you consider the plethora of jobs they can do, it doesn't seem so unreasonable. Drummond has written at least 30 recipes for sheet pan dinners and mentioned on her website, "Once I discovered that you could throw everything on a sheet pan and cook the whole meal together, I was hooked for life." Sheet pans are also useful for breakfast, desserts, salads, and dips. And let's not forget Giada De Laurentiis' viral sheet pan lasagna that produces coveted crispy edges — no layering required.

While cooking on a sheet pan is the most obvious task you can do with these flat pans, they can help you with so much more in the kitchen. I find them super useful whenever I make food on skewers. To prevent wood skewers from splintering when grilling, they need to soak in water, and a sheet pan offers enough room to lay several skewers flat and fully submerged at the same time. To prevent them from burning on the grill, freeze your wooden skewers after you soak them. After parties, if I have a lot of flatware covered in dried gunk, I'll use the pan similarly, as a soaking location.

Sheet pans are also excellent drip catchers for things like pies, lasagna, or any other dish that might bubble over in the oven. Place the dish holding your food on top of a sheet pan, or place the pan on the rack underneath. I've used mine as a lid for my largest stockpot, to flatten out chicken, and as a tray to hold plates and napkins at parties. When my husband uses his smoker or grill, we load up all the ingredients and tools he needs on a sheet pan and carry everything outside at once.

You might even find sheet pans useful in making layer cakes. When you bake a large, flat cake in a sheet pan, not only will the cake cool faster than in traditional cake pans (because it's more shallow), but you can use cake rings to punch out perfectly even layers.

Static Media owns and operates Mashed and The Takeout.