Grilling pizza has never been easier! The raised rail design of GrillGrates provides the perfect platform to grill pizza and the GrateTool makes it easy to handle and rotate for perfect searing and crispy crust. Here are a couple of tips to grilling great pizza with GrillGrates:
Keep your grill temperature under control at or below 400F. This allows you to grill pizza long enough (10 minutes +) to thoroughly cook the the toppings and melt the cheese without blackening or charring the crust. The key is how long you can grill pizza, not how hot and fast- unless you like black bottom crust.
Use Olive Oil on the bottom side of the pizza crust. The olive oil helps the crust get super crispy. Even add a bit of seasoning to the oiled crust for more flavor!
Quarter turn the pizza after 3-5 minutes. Using the GrateTool slightly lift and peek at the crust and see the crust is searing and browning. Rotate 45 degrees when the sear marks are golden brown.
Watch Searing on Bottom of the Crust. If sear marks are black- you are grilling too hot and at risk of blackening the crust. Reduce heat. The sear marks are a great guide to determine your grill's best temperature for grilling great pizza. My gas charbroil is set on LOW, but the GrillGrate temperature is still 450F when the dome says 350F.
Lower and Slower is Better with Grilled Pizza because it gives you time to fully cook toppings to a golden brown too. Think bubbly brown cheese!
Use MamaMary's Gourmet Pizza Crusts. They are partially baked, find them in the deli section of your supermarket or at Walmart. They are fabulous on GrillGrates!
America is heading to their backyard grills this weekend, now more than ever. Backyard grilling is one of the positives coming out of this challenging economy. More time around the grill with friends and family is never a bad thing. Are you grilling more these days? Here are a few tips to take your grilling up a few notches and stretch the food budget too.
Start with Appetizers- Extend grilling and chilling time and give everyone a little nosh. Delight your guests with Grilled Ravioli, Quesadillas or Pizzas. Now for the best part- they are all simple on the grill- especially with GrillGrates.
Do a Grilled Vegetable Plater- part 2 of extending grilling and chilling time. Fill the grill with a medley of vegetables- whole and sliced: zuchinni, squash, peppers, carrots, and peeled wedges of beets, sweet potatoes and more. Coat or spritz with olive oil, cracked pepper and salt. Grill ahead of the main course and plate all together and keep warm under foil while you tend to the main course. Grilled vegetables will compliment every grilled meal.
I could not resist entering this grilling challenge! Produce a 2 minute video and incorporate hot trends in restaurant fare as reported in the 2009 research from the other NRA- the National Restaurant Association. I focused on #2 top trend (#1 was local organic) which was bite size mini desserts. Winners get a trip to Chicago to attend the National Restaurant Show and do a demo on the main stage. Nice prize, nice contest.
Our raspberry chocolate yummy is a tasty dessert for the table but sticking to bite size pieces will be more difficult. To round out the video we grilled ravioli for appetizer- again a hot trend of appetizers for the table and salmon and asparagus for the main course. We grill appetizers often, it gets everybody noshing and cocktail hour gets a bit of an extension. This recipe fits into our Grill More, Eat Less mantra as long as you stick with the bite-size dessert trend!
Here is a link to all the entries and you can rate my video there but not from inside this blog. I used GrillGrates as the contest also called for new techniques, but I did not to make it a GrillGrate commercial-in fact I never even mentioned them- I was focused on the food! Win, lose or draw it was fun to enter, and I continue to be amazed at the power of YouTube and all this social media stuff!
While we were in Austin we visited Susan's Texas cousins and family. Laura saw us grilling qeusadillas at the NBBQA conference and got inspired with a great recipe that we dubbed Laura's Austin Quesadilla. She put pear slices and goat cheese in between the tortillas and got us thinking grilled desserts and we've had fun experimenting the last few weeks.
Two dessert quesadilla creations made the GrillGrate website this past week.(out of several mis-fires including a pie crust wrapped fruit calzone)
GrillGrates makes grilling pizza a snap! Pizza is a super platform for all types of grilled pies- even fruit, dessert pizzas and breakfast pizzas! And don't forget left-over pizzas, BBQ pizzas, white pizzas. The GrillGrate website has dozens of grilled pizza recipes- let us hear yours! 
