Kitchen DIY: Cooking Pizza in a Pie Iron

Kitchen DIY: Cooking Pizza in a Pie Iron
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Pie IronThis is a fun “camping” recipe that kids of vast range of ages can make themselves with little adult supervision.

While being a easy favorite for kids, cooking with a pie iron is infinitely adaptable you can use it with eggs and sausage to make a breakfast meal, eat it for lunch or dinner, use pizza dough, biscuit dough, or sliced bread – or even use apples and sugar to make it a dessert.

As with many of my projects, once you learn the technique you can take it and make it your own special recipe.

Material:

  • 2 pieces of bread per pizza
  • Butter
  • Pizza Sauce
  • Shredded Cheese
  • Dried Italian Seasoning (Oregano)
  • Garlic Salt
  • Topping
    • pepperoni, pre-cooked sausage, hamburger, whatever you want – or just make a cheese pizza

Tools:

  • Pie iron
    • Unless it’s just for one or two people, one pie iron is never enough.
  • Campfire gloves
  • Knife
  • Spatula

Procedure:

  1. Heavily butter one side of each piece of bread
    • For biscuit dough and pizza crust dough – heavily butter the pie iron instead.
    • Pull biscuit dough until it is flattened out to fit the inside of the pie iron – use 1 biscuit for each side
    • For pizza crust: butter the pie iron, lay the dough inside one half of the pie iron, with an equal portion hanging over, then fold the back over the toppings before closing pie iron
  1. Generously spread pizza sauce on one side of bread/biscuit/dough – to suit your taste.
  2. Add shredded cheese, and toppings if used.
  3. Spread pizza sauce on the other piece of bread/biscuit, or flap of pizza crust.
  4. Season with oregano and garlic salt, then close pie iron.
  5. For pizza crust – fold flap in, over cheese and toppings first.
  6. Trim off any excess ingredients sticking out of the closed iron.
  1. Cook over medium coals, or low campfire flame.
    • For bread pizza: after three minutes, rotate pie iron and cook for four more minutes.
    • For biscuit and pizza dough: rotate after four minutes, and cook for five more minutes
    • These are only approximate times. Use your own judgment and keep in mind that pie irons can be closed and re-cooked if you want more them more well-done, but you cannot “un burn” pizza.
  2. Open pie irons and use a spatula to remove pizza.

CAUTION! Pie irons will be very hot. AND, the insides of the just-cooked pizza will be very hot! Do not let young kids try to handle them until they have time to cool – which should only be a few minutes.

Kitchen DIY:Best Way to Reheat Pizza

Kitchen DIY:Best Way to Reheat Pizza
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First of all, I must admit, I rarely have a need to reheat pizza.

I normally just eat it straight out of the refrigerator. If you have a little time and want to reheat your pizza without turning it all soggy and rubbery in a microwave here is a tip.

Get out your sandwich maker/foreman grill/waffle iron and heat it up. Once heated double up your pizza like a sandwich and reheat it.

The cheese melts and the crusts heats without turning soggy. Consequently, It turns ordinary cold pizza into a pannini like sandwich.

It is good without being gourmet. I find this a great way to reheat pizza.

Being an honest guy, I will admit that I only do this occasionally. Almost every time I do dig out the foreman grill and double up my pizza to reheat it I slather it with mayonnaise and extra cheese. Because of this, I have to wait until my wife is not around. Because she will give me that wife look that says volumes about my eating habits. Its amazing how this works without he saying a word.

I guess if I just stuck to heating the pizza up as it comes out of the box it would be okay with her. Seems like a smart guy would know that.

In conclusion, this tip works well, but don’t go overboard.

Kitchen DIY: How to Store Leftover Pizza

Kitchen DIY: How to Store Leftover Pizza
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Like reheating pizza, I don’t often have leftover pizza I need to store.  My son now scarfs up any pizza I did not eat.

However sometimes I do need to keep the leftovers around for breakfast and I really hate wasting food.

What I do when we have leftover takeout pizza is to take the box and separate the top and bottom of the cardboard box and make a new box out of the bottom.

Just come halfway downs and rip out two rectangles on the two sides of the box opposite to each other and in the middle of your box.

If you fold up the cardboard you will have a half sized pizza box to keep your pizza together in the fridge.

Or alternatively you can store your leftover pizza in the individual cases shown in the picture.

Recipe: Zucchini Fritters

52 Unique Techniques for Stocking Food for Prepper
52 Unique Techniques for Stocking Food for Prepper

Genny’s Zucchini fritters is functionally similar to her Chicken Zucchini Poppers and is adapted from the recipe she found at the food network.

This is one of her favorite “comfort foods” she makes now that she is serious about getting and staying healthy.

I’d rather just have a big bowl of chicken and rice, but our palettes disagree.

My wife has been working hard at eating healthy and has a bunch of these recipes.  I would like her to share more of them, but when her self image meets the trolls she gets upset.

Genny’s Zucchini Fritters:

Ingredients:

2 medium zucchini
2 teaspoons salt
1 small diced onion
2 beaten egg
1/4 cup grated parmesan
1/4 cup whole wheat flour
Salt and pepper

olive oil

Procedure:

  • Grate 2 small zucchini into a colander in the sink
  • Toss with 2 teaspoons salt and let sit 10 minutes
  • Squeeze out the liquid
  • Mix grated zucchini with onion, beaten egg, 3/4 cup grated Parmesan, 1/4 cup flour, and the salt and pepper
  • Pan-fry spoonfuls of the mixture in olive oil, flattening with a spatula, 3 to 4 minutes per side.
  • Drain on paper towels and season with salt.

How to Make a Healthy Vegetable Tian

 

52 Unique Techniques for Stocking Food for Prepper
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This is a “clean” french recipe.  Genny is very interested in clean eating.

Now when I was trying to grow organic in the front yard and buy grass fed beef direct from a local farmer she thought it all tasted funny, but now that she figured it out its a good idea….

LOL – I am just happy she converted….

So Genny found this recipe and cooked it a couple of times to decide she liked it and now she wants to share her recipe for basic vegetable Tian.

This is vegetable Tian recipe has some flexibility.  You can manipulate the vegetables a little bit if desires.

Genny told me I could not replace them with beef, chicken, and bacon so it is not THAT flexible.

Genny’s Vegetable Tian:

Ingredients:

  • 2 tablespoon Olive oil or Ghee
  • 1 large yellow onion
  • 2 garlic cloves
  • Zucchini
  • Yellow squash
  • Potato
  • 2 medium tomatoes
  • 1/2 teaspoon Italian seasoning
  • Salt and Pepper, to taste
  • 1/4 cup shredded mozzarella cheese (if desired Genny omits if its only for herself)
  • 2 Tablespoons freshly grated Parmesan (If desired)

Procedure:

  • Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.
  • Lightly grease a round casserole dish with olive oil
  • Mince Garlic, Dice Onions, and thinly slice all other vegetables
  • Heat half of the heat olive oil in a skillet.
  • Add chopped onion and garlic, cooking until soft and fragrant, 5-7 minutes.
  • Spread the onion and garlic mixture on the bottom of dish.
  • Evenly arrange the sliced vegetables on top, alternating as you go. Once you get all the way around, continue layering to fill the middle until no open space remains.
  • Drizzle all over with 1 Tablespoon olive oil and sprinkle with Italian seasoning, salt and pepper.
  • Cover with aluminum foil and bake covered for 30 minutes.
  • Remove aluminum foil and sprinkle with mozzarella and Parmesan.
  • Return to oven and bake uncovered for an additional 15 minutes, or until cheese is golden brown.