We love summer - especially firing up the grill & enjoying the beautiful weather with our family and friends. Some of my favorite benefits to using your grill during the summer in Florida: you can get a great tan while cooking AND (most importantly) you can cook quickly without heating the entire house from using your oven. With our utilities bill already through the roof from running our air conditioner on high blast, finding ways to keep the house cool is always welcome.
We have found a way to grill just about anything in our house - including pizza! I thought it would be fun to share how you can grill pizza straight from the freezer, since it's something most people don't think about or maybe don't know is possible. It is actually SO easy and also adds great flavor to any oven ready pizza.
We headed to Walmart to find three pizzas to grill over the weekend. We wanted to have my family over on Sunday to relax before the work week started. We chose a DiGiorno Design A Pizza Kit, a DiGiorno Supreme Rising Crust Pizza, and a Four Cheese Pizzeria! from Digiorno. This was a great assortment of pizzas that would match anyone's food preferences. I especially liked the DiGiorno Design A Pizza Kit. We got the Chicken, Green Peppers & Red Onions with Pepperoni and the pizza comes with all the toppings in individual bags. This allows you to create your own pizza and tailor certain parts of the pizza to certain guests!
When my family arrived on Sunday, we preheated our charcoal grill to 400 degrees. The key is to cook the pizza over indirect heat (that means the coals are not directly below the pizzas). Then we took the pizzas out of the freezer and designed the one pizza.
You just spray the grill grates with cooking spray and place the pizzas directly on to the grates.
Close the lid and wait about 7 minutes and then rotate the pizza slightly to make sure all parts of the pizza are getting a chance to be closest to the charcoal (so it cooks evenly). Repeat this 3 times or until your pizza is cooked completely. Depending on the thickness of crust, the total cook time will be anywhere from 18-30 minutes.
When your pizza is finished, just slice it up and enjoy!
We did our pizzas at three overlapping times. Once the first was cooked, we added the third to the second that had already been grilling for awhile. While we waited for the other pizzas to be done, we just snacked on the first and hung out outside around the grill. It was a lot of fun and the grill added such a great flavor to the pizzas!
If you're looking for something fun to try this summer on the grill, grab an oven ready pizza next time you are at the store. It's a great way to enjoy the weather, keep your house cool, and spend time with family and friends outdoors (:
