The trick to making a delicious BBQ chicken pizza is having smokey cheese (like gouda), thinly sliced marinated chicken, and a sweet pizza sauce that packs a little punch of spice. I love making this pizza for football games; it just seems to fit so well! But alas, smokey, barbecue goodness comes at a price: a little bit of good old fashioned time and planning.
Trust me guys, this pizza is worth it and will probably become a game day staple in your house as it has in mine. Usually my freezer meal instructions will save you time in the long run. Unfortunately, this pizza takes the same amount of prep work to make ahead as it does to make it the same day. You still have the benefit of being able to pop a frozen pizza into the oven on a busy evening, or even making a couple ahead of time in preparation for a big gathering; but the day you prepare the pizza you still need to marinade the chicken and make the sauce before assembling it, not to mention par-baking the crust and cooking the chicken. No skipping steps here folks. The trick is to make some extra dough and toppings the day you make a fresh pizza and use those ingredients to throw together a couple extras as you’re cleaning up. Use that dirty kitchen while it’s dirty, there’s no need to make two messes for two or more meals if you plan ahead. You could have an extra meal (or 4) in the freezer for the discount price of only one mess to clean up. I originally learned “How to Make Frozen Pizzas at Home” from Emma Christensen at the Kitchn. You can click on the link to see the original post for more in depth instructions with pictures!
It may be a little more work than plain old pepperoni, but the flavor is taken up to 11, and that barbecue loving man in your life will love you even more than ever before! And if you’re single, male or female, make this pizza and you’ll be proposed to by the end of dinner. You. Are. Welcome.
Pro tip: You can also put gouda on cheesy bread and it’s aaaaamaaaazing. Dunking warm smokey cheesy bread into cool, tangy, marinara sauce is too delicious for it’s own good. I usually make cheesy bread as an appetizer and follow it up with the barbecue pizza and I have yet to get a lack-luster response.
| Servings |
slices
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- 1 ball pizza dough $2.41
- corn meal for dusting the pizza stone/pan
- 1/4 cup balsamic vinegar $0.33
- 2 tbsp barbecue sauce of choice $0.07
- 2 tbsp steak sauce (can substitute with more BBQ sauce) $0.22
- 2 tbsp honey $0.32
- 1 tbsp low sodium soy sauce $0.06
- 1 tsp minced garlic $0.02
- 1/2 tsp black pepper $0.05
- 1/4 cups cold water free(ish)
- 2 tbsp corn starch $0.10
- 1-2 oz gouda cheese $0.56
- Italian blend shredded cheese, to taste $1.11
- thinly sliced red onion, to taste $0.03
- thinly sliced red bell pepper, to taste $0.22
- sliced black olives $0.24
- pineapple chunks, (fresh or canned) sliced thin $0.26
- 4-6 oz thin marinaded chicken chunks $.48
Ingredients
General
Chicken Marinade/Sauce
Pizza sauce
Toppings
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- About 45 minutes – 1 hour before baking the pizza, make the marinade by whisking all marinade ingredients together in a small bowl. Cut chicken into thin inch long slices and marinade in a medium sized bowl. Cover the bowl and put it in the fridge to marinate for around an hour. You can get away with doing a quick 20 minute marinade if you're in a rush, however, don't over prepare and marinate your chicken for more than 3 hours. There is such a thing as over marinating your meat. The salts in the marinade will start breaking down protein bonds and make the chicken more chewy and less tender. (I recommend using thin slices of chicken. So if the breast is thick, I would either cut it in half (fillet style), to make it thinner, or use a meat tenderizer to flatten it out.)
- When you’re ready to make the pizza, put the pizza stone (if using) in the oven and preheat it to 425 degrees. If you're not using a pizza stone, do not preheat the oven with the pan you're using inside.
- While the oven is preheating, pour the marinade into a small sauce pan (leaving the chicken in the bowl) and bring it to a boil over medium heat. Let it boil for a few minutes to make sure the "little bugs" (salmonella cough cough) from the raw chicken are boiled out and killed.
- Once the marinade has reached a boil, whisk the ¼ cup cold water and 2 tablespoons of cornstarch together and add the mixture to the boiling marinade, whisking consistently until thick. Remove from heat and set aside.
- To be completely sure that your chicken meat is cooked all the way through, now would be the time to sauté it on the stove top. However, I think the chicken gets dried out in the oven when I do this, so I just put it on my pizza raw. Because I slice my chicken thin, it cooks through and is safe to eat every time. You may follow this method at your own risk. Always make sure the inside of the chicken has reached 165 degrees (Fahrenheit) before consuming it.
- Roll out the pizza dough on a lightly floured surface and cut up the toppings for the pizza. I didn't put measurements with most of the pizza toppings because everybody prefers to make theirs a little differently.
- Once the oven is preheated you have two options: 1. Sprinkle a pizza peel (or cookie sheet that only has one lip) with corn meal and transfer your dough onto that surface to top with toppings. 2. If your pizza stone has handles like mine, remove the pizza stone from the oven (please be careful!) and sprinkle it with corn meal, then transfer your rolled out pizza dough from the counter to the pizza stone.
- Apply the marinade sauce to the dough to your liking, sprinkle on the cheese and break up the slices of gouda, and add the rest of the toppings according to your liking. TIP: Make sure you don’t add too many toppings to the pizza. It could make the pizza overly wet in the oven and make it hard for the center of the dough to bake all the way through. Just make things easier on yourself and add enough toppings to get all the flavor without overdoing it.
- Bake the pizza for 15 – 20 minutes at 425 degrees, until the cheese is bubbling and the crust is a nice golden brown color.
- Follow the first four instructions in the "To Serve Immediately" instruction group.
- When I make this pizza fresh, I usually just put the chicken on the pizza raw. This is a total no-no when you're freezing the pizza. No refreezing thawed raw meat! (Especially if you thawed it in the microwave.) If you have fresh chicken that was never frozen, you still should cook your chicken before freezing it to make sure it doesn't bake at a different rate than the frozen crust. It's safest to cook it before hand so you only have to depend on it being warmed through in the oven. So cook your marinated chicken in a skillet with a little bit of olive oil.
- Roll out the pizza dough on a lightly floured surface and cut up the toppings for the pizza. I didn't put measurements with most of the pizza toppings because everybody prefers to make theirs a little differently.
- Once the oven is preheated, par-bake your crust for 4-5 minutes. The crust should be puffy but still pale.
- Remove the crust from the oven and let it cool on a rack. In the mean time, top the pizza with the marinade sauce and other toppings. TIP: Make sure you don’t add too many toppings to the pizza. It could make the pizza overly wet in the oven.
- Move the pizza to a baking sheet and place it in the freezer. Leave it there until it is frozen solid. This should only take a few hours, you can start checking it after about 3.
- Once the pizza is frozen all the way through, wrap it in plastic wrap, and then wrap it again in tin foil. This will make sure the pizzas don't dry out.
- When you're ready to use the pizza, preheat your oven to 425 degrees with the pizza stone inside (if you're using a pizza stone). Once the oven is preheated, slide the pizza onto the pizza stone and bake for 8-10 minutes or until the crust is a dark golden color and the cheese is bubbly in the center.
Cost:
full pizza: $6.48
per slice: $1.08
Nutrition:
For an 8-10 inch pizza cut into 6 pieces (calculations include crust from my home-made freezer friendly dough.)
Calories: 308
Protein: 15.6 g
Carbs: 41 g
Fat: 7.9 g
Sodium: 725 mg
