How To Cook Pizza On A Barbecue With Pictures

If your barbecue doesn’t have a lid, you can use an upturned roasting pan instead. Try and use a grill with a large, flat hot-plate. Slotted grills can still cook your pizza, but they’re much more likely to make a mess. For wood-fired barbecues or fire pits, you need a fixed frame made of bricks and a hot roasting pan filled with hot coals.

The pizza is cooked by placing it into the space inside the “walls” and placing the roasting pan on top to radiate heat down onto the pizza. Practice utmost care with this method to avoid burns. Remove the roasting pan when the pizza is cooked to access the pizza. If it’s browning too quickly on top, remove it from underneath the pan.

Your bricks should be free of any dirt that could burn and wrapped in tinfoil for maximum security.

If your barbecue has no flat plate (only slotted or bar grills), cook the pizza on a heavy cast iron skillet, a pizza stone, or other heavy-duty and flame-proof flat pieces of cookware. A high temperature is essential to making a really good thin crust.

Either purchase dough from a local grocery story or create your own. If you make your own dough, wholemeal flours or fine cornmeal make for a more protein-rich and chewier dough. However, they also take longer to cook through. Be sure to temper the dough if you make it yourself—this is when you let the dough come to room temperature so the gluten can settle a bit. [2] X Research source

Try and create a thin crust – most barbecue pizzas have thinner crusts and few raw ingredients because they cook from the base up. A barbecue with really good heat control can allow more variations to crust thickness and structure; you’ll need to experiment to learn what works best with your own barbecue. You can precook or pre-grill the base in advance and then freeze it. The bases do freeze very well, so try making a batch of them at a time.

If you want to keep it simple, make a barbecued pizza by briefly cooking your dough on both sides like a pancake. Afterwards, brush it with herb and garlic oil and either eat it as is or wrap it around other foods.

Use your cooked meat as soon as possible. If you have leftovers, store it in sealed, clean containers on a lower shelf in your fridge at 41 °F (5 °C) or lower. Keep all cooked meat separate from ready-to-eat food and raw meats.

A pair of tongs is also useful, but not necessary.

If you’re using a homemade dough and not a pre-cooked base, try not to allow the dough to rise too much or it will go soft and tear easily.

Lift the dough with your tongs every 30 seconds. Your pizza should be cooking enough that there are grill marks on it, but it shouldn’t be crispy.

Your pizza dough should come off easily without tearing. If it’s delicate enough that it tears or looks like it might, keep it on for another 30 seconds and then check it again. If your crust is getting browned on just one side, rotate it 90-degrees with your spatula or tongs and cook it for another 1 minute.

You can use more than 1 ladle if you like extra sauce, but you risk the pizza getting soggy.

Cheese caramelizes quickly and melts, so too much may cause the toppings to ooze. [10] X Research source Too much cheese can also be a flame risk and smoke the pizza beyond eating.

If your pizza keeps burning even after moving the pizza or removing the barbeque lid, decrease the temperature to around 500 to 550 °F (260 to 288 °C).

Remove the pizza when the cheese looks sufficiency melted.

You add another 1 or 2 diagonal cuts if you want smaller pieces, but 4 pieces is the ideal amount for this size of pizza. If there are various people eating with you, ask for several helpers to keep tending the pizza cooking so that you can share the duties and enjoy eating when your own pizza is ready.