Don't attempt this at home without a partner!

This summer, my best friend Nicole couldn't stop raving about grilled pizza...that's pizza made on the grill. She made it sound so delicious and easy. I'm finding it to be a bit of a challenge and I don't recommend you try it unless you have a cooperative partner to help.



I'll try to explain how I've done it, but let me tell you, I feel like I'm far from perfecting this. Tonight, I made a pepperoni, onion, mushroom and sausage pizza. First things first, you'll want to get the grill going well in advance since you want to have the coals hot, but not too hot or else you'll burn the crust. This is where I'm still perfecting my technique. We do have a grill with an adjustable charcoal rack, but I still haven't mastered just the right temperature.


I started out by pre-cooking the mushrooms and onions in a little bit of olive oil, keeping it on low heat to give me time to prep the rest of the ingredients. For the sauce, I just used a can of pizza sauce mixed with half a can of fire roasted diced tomatoes and a bit of fresh garlic. I also added some thyme and parsley from the garden. In addition, I prepared an aioli using olive oil, some butter, fresh garlic, parsley and thyme. Once the sauce and ingredients were heated thoroughly, I spread out my pizza dough using a good amount of flour.

I've been stretching my dough to a rectangular shape. Handling the dough can prove to be quite difficult. I usually put mine on a cookie sheet to transport it to the grill. Now here's the tricky part...you have to have all your ingredients on-hand at the grill before you even start the dough. That includes your toppings, sauce, cheese, and dough. You'll also want an arsenal of tools on-hand, including something to slide under the pizza to flip it, and an oven mitt.


Once you think your charcoals are the right temperature (like I said, I'm not much help on this), spread them out evenly across the area of the grill that your dough is going to cover. Then you can put the dough on the grill. I actually put a little of the aioli on the side of the dough I put on the grill first, but you have to be careful about doing that because the oil can drip onto the charcoal and cause it to flame up. Watch the dough closely and you'll start to see bubbles forming, kind of like when you make pancakes. You'll want to kind of lift up the dough to peak at what it's doing. You want it to get grill marks, but not get too black. You may have to kind of spin it around to get it to cook evenly.

Once you flip the dough, the action begins and you's better be ready. I put the sauce on the pizza, then the cheese, then the toppings, all of which should already be heated up and cooked. The cheese is really the only thing left to melt. You want to top fast because as you are working, the dough is cooking.

Once you're done topping the pizza, you have to watch it closely while it grills for no more than 2-4 minutes, depending on how hot your fire is. Getting the pizza off the grill can be a challenge depending on what shape you made your dough. I use two metal spatulas, or my round, flat round metal pizza tray, which I slide under the pizza and try to slowly slide it off the grill onto an awaiting rectangluar cookie tray. This time I actually left the pizza on the grill for a bit longer after I got it onto the cookie sheet to give the cheese more time to melt.

I'm not sure if this is the best technique, but I do know the results are scrumptious and the closest I've ever had to a brick-fired pizza.