Grilled Mediterranean Pizza
+ tip on how to turn your grill into an outdoor oven
While thoughts of burgers, steak and juicy BBQ chicken come to mind when you think about grilling recipes, my mind wanders to pizza. I hope to one day treat myself to an Ooni oven but until that day comes, my gas grill does a fine job at cooking pizza outdoors.
There’s two methods to keep in mind when it comes to grilling: indirect and direct cooking. Most of us use the direct cooking method, meaning the food is cooked over the open flame. Indirect cooking is a great way to prepare food that takes longer to cook through completely without it burning. Essentially, you’re turning your grill into an oven to roast the food (generally, indirect cooking works best with the grill top closed).
Take a large chicken breast or thigh for example. You want to start a thicker cut like that over the flame to get a nice char and seal in the juices. Once that’s attained, it’s best to move it over to an area of the grill without a direct flame so it can finish cooking through without drying out or burning.
To set up your grill for indirect cooking you’ll need a grill that has at least two knobs to control separate sections of the flames. Ideally a three-section grill is best. You start by turning on all the burners. Once it’s preheated, turn off the center burner. This is the area which you’ll place the food on for indirect cooking. The outer burners to the left and right will provide the heat source to keep the grill hot.
When it comes to making pizza, indirect cooking is the trick to turning your grill into an outdoor pizza oven. A pizza stone helps too, if you have one, to prevent the crust from burning before the cheese has melted.
This pizza recipe is less complicated, and uses a direct grilling method since we’re only cooking the dough, and then topping the grilled crust with feta cheese and a Greek-inspired salad. The photo below is of a grilled pizza recipe I wrote up 14 years ago for a now defunct magazine. I’m adding it to my list of recipes to revisit this summer, and hope to share it with you all soon. —xo, j.
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