Wednesday, August 18, 2010

All About Meatza! General instructions, and my Spicy BBQ Meatza.

I debated with myself about posting this at first, because to me, a meatza is sort of a boring/basic food.  But then I remembered it's really not a typical food, and I've just been too immersed in the primal/paleo culture for too long.  =]

A meatza is just a pizza with meat for a crust.  As you can imagine, there are endless variations.  You can make a traditional pizza analog to crush a pizza craving, with your favorite pizza sauce, melty mozzarella, and your favorite pizza toppings.  Or you can load it up with more toppings than usual since you'll probably wind up eating it with a fork anyway.  You can even get really creative - I've seen Mexican meatzas, curry meatzas, and Batty just made a Shawarma Meatza that looks awesome.

1. Choose your meat.
You've got lots of options when it comes to meat.  Just about any ground meat can work, regardless of how lean or fatty it is.  Beef, pork, venison, veal, turkey, chicken.  You could even use sausage!

2. Prepare your crust.
Now that you've chosen a meat, you've gotta turn it into a crust.  The simplest way to do this would be to just take that plain meat and smush it into a thin layer on a large baking dish, baking sheet, or pizza pan.  Or you can add fresh or dried herbs and/or spices, finely diced onion, minced garlic, whatever you think you want your meatza to taste like.  Or you can use a meatloaf or meatball recipe, complete with egg and whatnot.  My preference?  To just add some dried spices and dried minced onion to the meat.  How thin you make it is up to you - I think anywhere from 1/4" to 1" would work.  Adjust your cooking time accordingly.

3. Bake your crust.
At about 400 F, until it's done.  Probably 10 minutes or so on average.  After it's cooked, pour off as much of the fat as you can.

4. Add toppings.
Add sauce, cheese, veggies, meats, etc., in whatever order you please.

5. Melt cheese/cook toppings.
Throw the meatza back in the oven long enough to heat or cook your toppings, and melt the cheese if you used it.  I like to broil it for a minute or so at the end to brown the cheese (especially when  I know I'll be photographing it).

Click below to see pictures of my "Spicy BBQ Meatza"!




 I call it "spicy BBQ meatza" but it' would be more accurate to call it "throw together things that I'm craving" meatza.  Also, the pictures are a little blurry because I used my phone.  I had misplaced my camera last night, but don't worry, I found it this morning.

I used a ground beef-pork-veal mixture for this one, and spread it about 1/2" to 3/4" thick.  This is a little less than 2 lbs of meat, in a 9x13" baking dish.  I added dried minced onion, garlic powder, chili powder, ground mustard, and black pepper.  It took about 15 minutes to cook.

Of course the only time I've ever cracked a meatza is when I'd be taking pictures of it.  *sigh*  This happened when I was draining the fat.
Slathered with barbecue sauce.  Store-bought stuff.  Stop judging me.
Topped with 5 or 6 ounces of pepper jack cheese.
Baked until the cheese was melted, then broiled for about a minute.

Needed something light to go with this, so I threw together salads from some CSA veggies.
This is exactly what I needed for a sweet/spicy/smokey craving.  I'm not sure if everyone would like it or not.  Husband ate a lot of it, so I think he liked it.  But the point of a meatza is to get creative and do whatever YOU are in the mood for.

1 comment:

  1. Yum! Looks like I found a fellow cooking geek! Thanks for the reply on MDA. I've added you to my blog role.

    ReplyDelete