Grilled Pizza

My 3 day Egg-stravaganza ended tonight with some more grilled pizza. I thought I was alone for supper and had picked out my favorite pizza topping. My wife got home 3 hours early and fortunately I had one last extra dough ball and enough toppings to make not one, but two of my favorite pizzas: Pepperoni & Ham. The dough recipe and cooking method was from The Big Green Egg Cookbook.

I decided tonight that I like the BGE/Hi Temp/Pizza Stone Method better than the Gas Grill/ Low Temp/Direct/Indirect Method. The pizza stone method is faster, easier and gives a nice crisp crust. I think the flavor of the crust is a toss up. Now I could do this on my gas grill which can get up to 600 degrees, but the difference in insulation value between the metal top of the gas grill vs the ceramic top of the BGE give the BGE an advantage. The BGE will recover faster when the lid is opened and is tighter and will lose less moisture in the process. Interestingly enough the moisture helps make for a crispier crust.

I did have a little trouble getting the egg up to 600 degrees tonight. I think I will need to remove the charcoal and clean out the vent holes. I imagine one or more of them may be clogged with ash. To get up to 600 tonight I had to run with the bottom vent screen open and I had to leave the top dual vent off the chimney. This was a good news, bad news deal. With the top vent off, I could look in through the chimney and see how the pizzas were doing, which was handy.



Time to roll oit the dough and make the pizza. The sauce was a tomato basil sauce, the cheese was a 7 cheese Italian cheese blend. The toppings were pepperoni and ham.





First is the tomato basil sauce.





Next comes the 7 cheese Italian cheese blend. It was very finely grated.





Next is the pepperoni.





Last topping is the ham. Time to grill the pizza.





I had trouble reaching 600 degrees tonight. The only way to do it was to open the vent screen and not use the top two way damper.





The good news about this setup is I could peek down the chimney & keep an eye on the pizza as it cooked.





The pizza is done after 6 minutes at 600 degrees.





Time to eat!





The crust was amazingly crispy.





I decided tonight I like this method of grilling pizza best of all.

Jim

Nice job Jim. I love the crust that the Egg and a pizza stone provide as well. I know you've splurged already, but if you have an incling to spend just a little more money, I highly recommend replacing the default BGE fire grate with the following: http://www.high-que.com/Stainless-Charc ... B004XU1FES

I've never had any issues with getting the BGE well over 600 using this.

Boy smokin' gal you're good at spending my money I must say!! First you recommended some weygu beef yesterday and now just in case I have any money left after buying weygu beef, now this.

Seriously though, thanks for the recommendation. I'm on my way to check that link out now. And for future reference, if there's anything else you think I need for the Egg, please feel free to suggest it. I may have to wait a while to do some more egg- cessorising, but I plan to have this grill for a long time. So there is plenty of time.

Jim

Jfm,

I agree with Smokingal on the High Que grate. Made a big difference in my ability to quickly get up to temp.

And yes, there is no shortage of things to spend your money on.

Buckeye Bob

Thanks Bob and smokin' gal. It's ordered and is on its way to me. I could tell just from looking at the picture it would make a big difference. Do either of you (or anyone else) have any experience with their high temperature Nomex replacement gasket? It looks like it has some benefits over the one that the BGE folks sell.

Jim

Nice job on the pizza, Jim. Just a word of warning, and I'm not sure how they could tell, but using the High Que grate voids your warranty on the Egg. its been talked about over and over again on the greenegger and egghead forum. But like I said, how would they know. For me, I use that ash tool to stir my lump to know any ash off the lump and if I am having problems reaching a high temp, I use an old skewer that i bent 90Degrees so about an inch and a half sticks up and go in through the bottom vent to dislodge any holes that maybe clogged.

Can't help you with the gasket issue. Burned mine off a long time ago and never looked back. I got a free one that Kamado Joe was handing out awhile back, but it's never been installed. Someday.....maybe when its not 100+ out....but then again it didn't get installed in the spring either....

Thanks Griffin! And thanks for the heads up on the High-Que grate. I wasn't aware it voided the warranty, but you are right how can you tell? I will make sure to keep the other one around. My BGE was originally scheduled to arrive Monday (today) And I was planning on burying myself in the various BGE forums this past weekend to learn more about my new egg. Instead I learned more about my new Egg by cooking on it all weekend. I'm certainly not disappointed it came early- you often learn the most from hands-on experience versus book learning. Thanks again for the heads up.

Jim

I've wondered about how much lump you end up losing falling through the High Que. Nobody seems to ever talk about that. I did notice last time I took everything out of my Egg to clean it out, that my grate is starting to crack.

Griffin wrote:

I've wondered about how much lump you end up losing falling through the High Que. Nobody seems to ever talk about that. I did notice last time I took everything out of my Egg to clean it out, that my grate is starting to crack.

Probably not the smartest idea to talk about owning a High Que right on BGE's own forums. I'm buying mine for a fried of a friend. I wondered the same thing about lump falling through the cracks. But my attitude was if it worked well for smokin' gal that was good enough for me. Bob liked it too.

Jim

The pizza looks great! You got some nice browning of the cheese and crust.

jfm0830 wrote:

I may have to wait a while to do some more egg- cessorising, but I plan to have this grill for a long time.

Watch it with the wordplay, pal. If it gets eggcessive I'll be forced to make an eggsample out of you.

Another eggs-emplary pizza, Jim! Thanks for letting us know your comparison of your two methods. I have two methods as well. Whenever I go with the CI griddles for a pan pizza, I need to cook the dough some before I top it, since the iron takes a while to get up to heat. When I use my Graniteware pan, I can cook it all topped because the graniteware heats up instantly. I like the Graniteware even more than a stone.

Boy howdy, does that look tasty!

You could cut a piece of expanded metal to fit on top of the charcoal grate. It will stop the small lumps from falling through, and it wouldn’t prevent air from getting through.
I’ve done that on all my grills because I mainly use lump charcoal now.

Even my chimney has that

That is a clever solution Z. I can't believe you did your chimney too.

I cleaned out my grill before tonight's cook and it was indeed clogged both at the bottom grate and 3/4 of the holes on the side of the firebox.

Jim

Great looking pie Jim.