I'm glad to see a foodie forum on here! My family owned a restaurant for about 20 years, and that's where I grew up and worked for about half my life, so I'm always happy to see other people that love good food and share thoughts and recipes.
Recently, my brother introduced me to the idea of grilling pizzas. My wife and I were at a friend's this past weekend and decided to give it a whirl and grilled up 4 pizzas. Grilled chicken, broccoli, roma tomatoes, feta, mozz & provolone with alfredo sauce instead of pizza sauce was the first. A traditional pizza sauce, pepperoni, mushrooms, green peppers, onions, mozz & and provolone was next. An all veggie with pizza sauce, then finally a BBQ chicken with red onions and sharp cheddar. My mouth is still watering just thinking about it! I never would have thought of grilling them, but now I really can't see making pizzas at home any other way! You get a great crispy, thin crust pizza that will taste better than any delivery!
If you have all your ingredients prepped before you get the dough out and grill hot, it goes by much faster. Here's a quick breakdown:
You can use either homemade pizza dough, or you can use the premade dough in a tube just the same
Your sauce and toppings of choice. You want to keep the toppings and sauce pretty light, otherwise you'll end up with a soggy pizza. Quick cooking veggies work well.
Get your grill to between 400-450.
Once you have all your ingredients prepped and ready to put on, unroll or roll out your pizza dough.
Using a folded over paper towel, or grill brush, put a light coating of veggie oil on the grates to keep the dough from sticking.
The trickiest part is getting the pizza dough onto the grill evenly to where it doesn't get stretched and deformed in the process. If you're lucky enough to have a pizza peel, you can lay out your dough on some cornmeal and slide it off, or just do a quick flip and slap it down on the grill. I wasn't so lucky the first few times, and got some rather irregular shaped pizzas, but they still tasted just fine.
Now your dough is on, close the lid and give it just a minute or two. Take your peel, or a couple spatulas and give your dough a quarter turn and take a peek to see how the bottom is doing. It's all personal preference on how done you want it, so timing is really up to you.
Once the bottom is done to your liking, pull the dough off and flip it uncooked side down on your peel or a cookie sheet. Dress it up with all your toppings. Don't use too much sauce, or as I said before, you'll most likely end up with a soggy pizza. You also don't want to load it down with toppings, so they get cooked enough, since they'll only be in the grill for a few minutes at most. If you want to use any uncooked meats, pre-cook them before topping your pizza.
Now you've got your topped pizza, just take it back out to the grill, slide it on and close the lid and give it a minute or two. A quarter turn and maybe another minute or two after that and you're done! It's a little trickier on charcoal if you're not used to maintaining a steady temperature with a charcoal grill, but practice makes perfect! And now I'm hungry!
Let me know if anyone gives it a shot and tell me what you think! I think next time I'm going to try making a greek pizza with gyro meat, feta, onions, and tzatziki for the sauce!
