Grilling chicken is easy, but grilling pizza? Not so much! The team members in the Kitchens of Midamar fear nothing, we charge forth with gusto and esteem right into the heart of the beast.
Contrary to how hard the sentence was to write, this recipe was a lot easier than I had initially anticipated. Generally, when we approach a recipe video it's a culmination of various techniques that I have personally tried before either at home or here in our studio. This is one of the times in recent history that has required me to learn a new skill, which is always exciting!
The first note I have is on the actual grilling of the pizza dough. For our recipe, we used a pizza dough mix that just needed water, after that we rolled it out like regular dough but we did it on the back of sheet pan. We couldn't find a pizza peel locally, and rather than wait to have one delivered, we thought this would be the easiest solution. Not to mention, if we couldn't or don't have it, we tend to assume that most people don't have one either. After we had the pizza rolled out to our desired length, we ventured out to the grill, set up our cameras, hit record, and! Disaster struck.
Rather than the pizza gently sliding from the pan to the grill, it toppled off and bunched up on one end. I tried to salvage this crust and, much to my dismay, it was too late. We took it off the grill and started over. We don't waste any food here though, we set the ruined dough aside and used to make a second, less pretty, pizza. The lesson here was one of distance. After thinking about it more, and reviewing some footage, it was decided that I was too far away from the grill. that let the raw pizza dough have enough time fall straight down and bunch up. Putting the pan closer to the grill, and further towards the back of the grill, gave it enough time to fall correctly and cook in a much prettier way. You can see us do this correctly in the video below. As I write this now, it occurs to me that this is what makes a pizza peel such a useful tool in the grilling of pizza, but we made due.
Other than that, it's business as usual. Season your chicken to taste, today we were going with a sort of Alfredo style pizza and hit it with some garlic seasonings. Gave it a good grillin', sauced up the cooked crust, sliced up the chicken, placed our toppings, got back on the grill and boom! Pizza time.
When I tell you that this pizza incredible, I really mean it was incredible. The crust had a nice grilled flavor, crunchy on the outside while still preserving a nice bite on the inside. The richness from the alfredo sauce helped to compliment the zestiness of the chicken seasoning while not being overpowering. The spinach and red onion brought some texture and crunch to the top of the pizza. Needless to say, I will be making grilled pizzas again for my next family get together or hang out with friends.
