By James Coope Contributing Editor
People have been cooking with fire for hundreds of thousands of years. Early cooking involved the use of fire and hot rocks, evolved to clay pots about 20,000 years ago and, as humans became less nomadic and settled down, there is evidence of early ovens about 10,000 years ago. The ovens of Pompeii – frozen in time after the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in 79 A.D. – are perhaps the most famous in the world. Similar to Pompeii, the simplicity of these cooking methods has been largely lost to history.
Today, cooking with fire is generally reserved for meats; however, a grill can be used to cook almost anything that would otherwise be prepared in an indoor oven. Casseroles, desserts and even pizza can be easily prepared on a patio grill!
Summer is a great time to try out new ideas and, this summer, we finally cooked a BBQ steak pizza entirely on the grill, while reconnecting with our ancestral roots.
The key ingredient was, of course, a delicious steak from Ramey’s Meats, Brawley, Calif. After seasoning the steak with salt, pepper and garlic powder in advance, I used a cast iron pan over medium-high heat. Cooking on a cast iron skillet vs. directly on the grill is really a matter of taste, but it does produce a slightly different result. The iron skillet holds the heat very well and provides a consistent cooking temperature. It can also provide a different but equally delicious version than cooking directly on the grill. The skillet allows the steak to cook longer in its own juices, providing a very flavorful product. Cooking on the grill will produce a smokier tasting steak.
After flipping the steak every 30 seconds for about 8 to 10 minutes, I pulled the steak to let it cool. That’s when I transitioned to pizza-making mode. The rest of the ingredients were straightforward – fire-roasted tomatoes, green and white onions, mozzarella and pecorino romano cheeses, sliced jalapenos and olive oil. The pizza crust needs to cook at 500 degrees, so I cranked up the grill temperature. I split the pizza dough in half to create two personal-size pizzas, which turned out to be easier to handle when I moved the pizzas on and off the grill. After cooking the crust on its own for about 4 minutes, I pulled the crusts to add all of the ingredients, including the steak, which I had thinly sliced.
Once back on the grill, the pizzas cooked for about 10 minutes, allowing the cheese to melt and turn the crust golden brown. After pulling the pizzas off the grill one last time, we garnished them with fresh cilantro and let them cool for a few minutes before slicing them up to serve.
How does grill pizza compare to oven pizza? For one, the steak was absolutely delicious and added flavors that you don’t get on your standard pizza. The pizzas also had a slightly smoky taste to them, which is hard to replicate in a standard oven. Here’s another thing – they were quite filling! Each pizza had one half of a steak on it and, when you add in all of the other ingredients, these were healthy portions! That being said, they did not last long!
Like any great meal, the BBQ steak pizzas take a bit of preparation. The steak was straightforward and the crust took the most time to get ready. Building the pizzas themselves was easy. All in, after seasoning the steak and preparing the ingredients, the steak and pizzas took about 30 minutes to cook, so this can be a fun and delicious year-round recipe for the grill.
Cooking with fire produces flavors and experiences that are unique to the grill. While modern appliances provide conveniences that allow us to cook faster and cater to our busy lives, there is no substitute for the tried-and-true methods that our ancestors perfected over the course of thousands of years. In many ways these ancestral ways of cooking create the flavors and meals we’re supposed to be eating, and perhaps that’s the most important reason why we should try a few more recipes on the grill. Perhaps next time I’ll add something for dessert!
