July 15, 2013 by Jenny

Funny thing – if I put a traditional pepperoni pizza and Grilled Margarita Pizza next to each other –  10 times out of 10 my Little Chefs would devour the Grilled Margarita Pizza! They love this pizza. What makes this pizza so delicious and fun for the Little Chefs – when they hear that we are having Grilled Pizza for dinner, they run outside to pick fresh Roma tomatoes and basil leaves from our garden! Oh so good. And… is it terrible that as I am writing this post, it made me hungry –  so I am eating left overs right now – as a late night snack!?

We love to make this pizza because –

  1. Most the ingredients we use come straight from our garden
  2. It is super fast to make
  3. You don’t have to heat your oven in the HOT summer to have a delicious pizza!

First the Little Chefs prepared the toppings for our Margarita Pizza by running out to the garden to pick some fresh basil and Roma tomatoes. Then they sliced the tomatoes and also lightly chopped the basil (the Little Chefs do not like the big leafs when eating the pizza).

 

Then Little Chefs prepared our pizza dough by rolling it out (we like a thin crust) and brushing a little olive oil on BOTH sides of the dough. I have used a couple of our favorite pizza doughs – one even being a store-bought frozen pizza dough, thawed and at room temperature (makes preparation even simpler) – and they have all worked out just fine.  You can check out my favorite homemade pizza dough here.

Then Chef Dad helps out on the grill. He carefully places the dough directly onto the grill, on about medium heat. Don’t be afraid if the dough sags slightly between the grates, it will cook up just fine.  You will want the bottom to get crispy, but flip it just before done, because it will continue to cook when you add the ingredients to grill the other side.

 

Once the one side of the dough is cooked, which only takes a few minutes – he carefully flips the dough, we tried to find the widest grill flipper out there, and that works the best!! Then adds the ingredients to the cooked side of the pizza, closes the grill and cooks for another few minutes. If the crust is cooking faster than the cheese is melting, we just turn the heat to low.  Most of the time, we will use sliced, fresh mozzarella cheese to our pizzas – but we only had the shredded mozzarella cheese on hand this time around, still tasted GREAT!!

 

After the Margarita Grilled Pizzas are all cooked, most of the time the Little Chefs just sit at the patio table and eat it as it comes off the grill, the LOVE it! And what a better way to just sit outside and enjoy the summer weather with Margarita Grilled Pizza!!

Grilled Margarita Pizza

Ingredients

  • 1 lb favorite pizza dough
  • 7-8 Roma tomatoes, sliced
  • 2 c fresh basil, lightly chopped
  • 3 c mozzarella cheese, fresh sliced, or shredded
  • olive oil

Instructions

  1. Roll out dough (thin) and lightly brush both sides with olive oil.
  2. Place on medium heat grill and cook till almost done, will take 3-4 minutes
  3. Flip dough to cook other side, add ingredients, lowering heat if needed.
  4. Remove from grill and enjoy!

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Grilled Margarita Pizza