Pizza Week: Tangy BBQ Chicken Pizza

It’s Pizza Week and my favorite group of bloggers has come together to give you yet another week filled with delicious recipes.  I made Tangy BBQ Chicken Pizza!

Pizza Week (aka my favorite themed week thus far) could not have come at a more inopportune time.  I’m still on my elimination diet and cheese is still off-limits.  However, I’ve made this pizza enough times to know it is superb, and my handsome taste-tester agrees with me.

It’s based on one of my favorite pizzas of all time, The Wrangler, from Pizza Luce.  The tangy BBQ sauce plays nicely with the crunch of red onion and the zip of banana peppers.  This pizza has a lot of bold flavors that give it a POW!  ZAP!  BANG!

Now, pizza is an extremely subjective experience, so feel free to adjust the ingredients to your tastes.  I love cilantro, so I pile it on.  Banana peppers are very strong for me, so I only need a few to get the full effect.  You get the idea…

Tangy BBQ Chicken Pizza

For the chicken:

• 2 chicken breasts (you can always make extra and use it for salads and sandwiches the next day)
• 1/4 cup BBQ sauce
•  2 cloves garlic – minced
• Salt and pepper
• 2 tsp. olive oil

For the pizza:

• 1 pre-made pizza dough (feel free to make homemade crust, but since we’re marinating chicken, a pre-made dough will save time)
• 1/2 red onion – thinly sliced
• small handful banana peppers
• 3 Tbsp. cilantro – roughly chopped
• 4 oz. mozzarella cheese
• 4 oz. extra sharp cheddar cheese
• drizzle of BBQ sauce

Chop the chicken into bite-sized pieces and liberally salt and pepper the bits.  Toss with BBQ sauce and garlic in a ziplock bag.  Marinate the chicken in the fridge for at least 30 minutes.

While the chicken is marinating, you can prep all of the other ingredients.  I almost always use block cheeses when cooking because the pre-shredded cheese has added chemicals to keep it fresh, which funks up the taste and also causes problems when you want to melt it.

Put a skillet on medium heat with 2 tsp. olive oil.  Once the oil is just shimmering, add the chicken and cook until heated through (approx. 6 minutes).  Remove the chicken from heat and set aside.

Roll out the pizza dough, top with onions, banana peppers, chicken, cheese, and a drizzle of BBQ sauce.  Pop in the oven and bake according to the pizza crust package.

Once you pull it out of the oven, top with freshly chopped cilantro and enjoy!

-Mads

Check out these other Pizza Week recipes from these fabulous bloggers:

Monday: Carrie – My Favorite Pizza Crust

Tuesday: Kat – Taco Pizza / Kirsten – Cornmeal Pizza Crust

Wednesday: Mads – Tangy BBQ Chicken Pizza / Megan – Pork and Pear Pizza

Thursday: Beka – Clam and Bacon Pizza / Kirsten – Greek Pizza / Monica – Roasted Veggie Pizza on Gluten Free Crust 

Friday: Jeanne – Pepperoni Rolls-Two Ways / Lauren – Caramelized Onion, Sausage and Barbecue Pizza with Ranch Dressing

 

The Lazy Kitchen’s Pizza

I’ve been sick.  My meals have mostly consisted of plain noodles, soup, and pulpy orange juice.  However, last night I was feeling a little more perky and Jonathan was looking at me with hungry puppy dog eyes…so I decided to whip something up.

I was definitely not feeling well enough to whip up a crust recipe, but we had a giant french loaf of bread that needed to be taken down.

The Ingredients:

-2 halves of french bread

-3 cloves garlic chopped

-4 Tbsp melted butter

-salt…LOTS of it this time (thanks readers!)

-4 slices fresh mozzarella

-4 slices tomato

-sprinkle of shredded parmesan

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I put loads of butter, garlic, and salt on each slice of the bread.  Recipe for success people!

Topped each slice with mozzarella and tomato.

When I thought I had added enough salt, I added some more.  🙂

Then sprinkled the rest with parmesan cheese and baked at 400 degrees for 10-15 minutes.

SO TASTY!!!  Seriously, we could have eaten 6 loaves of this.  Delicious.

It took me about 10 minutes in prep time…the perfect dinner for my sickly little self.

-Mads

Internet, I need your help

With pizza.

This pizza I’m about to show you had all the promise in the world.  The ingredients were fresh and homemade.  The aroma was incredible.  The crust was baked to perfection.

The taste?  BOooooooriiiiiing!

This is where you come in.  What did I do wrong?  How does one make the perfect pizza?  Any tips?

The rolling pin featured in my giveaway. Yes, I really use it and yes, I love it.

The ingredient list:

-homemade pesto

-ricotta cheese (big clumps this time)

-fresh tomatoes

-chopped garlic

-salt and pepper

-a sprinkle of parmesan

I did a half whole wheat crust this time and it was delicious.

I wanted to keep the ingredient list short because that’s really been working for me lately.  Maybe that’s where I went wrong?

 

Parmesan in sepia 🙂

Even close up it looked awesome.

The smell from the oven was to-die-for.

*sigh*

Please help internet people.

-Mads

p.s. Life is too crazy to make pizza every Sunday for a series, but I will continue to post until I have perfected every pizza I can think of.

 

 

3 parts smokey 1 part PIZZA

I have been overwhelmed by pizza lately.  Like, the thought of letting dough rise, rolling it out to even thickness, slicing and chopping a million ingredients, and having 3 types of cheese on hand was too much!

Pizza should be the easiest and most fun thing in my repertoire.

So pizza and I took a break.

Then I thought to myself, “Mads, what’s the deal?  You don’t have to have a million steps to make a decent pizza.”

So this week I bought pre-made crust from Trader Joe’s (the whole wheat is kinda narly, but the garlic herb is fantastic) and cut the ingredient list down.

The list:

-Trader Joe’s crust

–Smokey garlic hot sauce

-ricotta cheese

–Smoked chicken sausage (this is a great substitute when trying to cut calories)

-sliced garlic

–Smoked mozzarella

-basil

The end result was delicious, but since I’m such a perfectionist…here’s what I would do differently next time:

1-Real big globs of ricotta. A thin layer wasn’t enough to satisfy that gooey craving.

2-Smaller chunks of chicken sausage. I take tiny freakish baby bites, so this is a necessary step.

3-Chop up the basil and incorporate it into the ‘za. If you look closely, the last picture is of crispy burnt nasty basil.  Yuck.  Whole leaves did not cut it.

Things that I absolutely loved about this pizza:

1-Smoked mozzarella! What a fun new addition to mix it up.

2-Pre-made crust saved my relationship with pizza…at least for this week 😉

 

What do you do to make meal prep easier for yourself?

-Mads

Steak and Onion Pizza

My stinky, but lovely roommate Jonathan loves nothing more than beef and onions.  Seriously, I think he would eat that at every meal if possible.

So, I indulged him.

In the form of a pizza.

(Sorry about the quality of the pictures.  We were rushing (read: HANGRY), it was dark, and did I mention we were HANGRY?)

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You will need:

1 batch of pizza dough (I liked this new recipe a.  It was sort of a medium thickness, but it was crunchy and easy to whip up)

1/2 pound steak

1/2 cup thinly sliced red onion

1 Tbsp olive oil

2 Tbsp. store bought onion dip (We used this as a sauce.  This was bomb-diggity, but you could easily skip it or use whatever sauce you see fit).

1 ball fresh mozzarella

salt and pepper to taste

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Sear the outside of the steak, but make sure that the inside is still raw.  We definitely don’t want to overcook the steak.

Lightly coat the crust with olive oil and the onion dip.

Then go topping crazy!  Mozzarella, onions, steak, salt and pepper!

Put it in the oven at 425 degrees until the cheese is light golden brown.

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I wanted to keep this week’s ingredient list to a minimum because last week was sort of a fail.  This needs to happen more often because this pizza was DELECTABLE!

Not to mention it was fast because there was relatively little prep work to be done.

Bubbly goodness

-Mads