Guest Post: BBQ chicken pizza: $2.30 each

Note: Welcome to another biannual “weekly” installment of my husband, B.’s, guest posting and helping out in the kitchen. He notes below, in his defense, that he does do quite a bit of laundry and other cleaning-related chores. I have to concede this is true, because I don’t think I’ve done a load of laundry since 2010, and yet somehow I’m still employed and wearing clean socks.

By my estimation, it’s been…oh…about a week since I last cooked and helped out, so I guess it’s high time I do what I do best: Poach remnants of stuff K. cooked and make a stab at something close to edible. In truth, I’m a little intimidated by the actual cooking that occurs on this blog, so I try to overcompensate around the house to pick up my end of the bargain—do dishes, laundry, and clean up. During one of these chores (I wish I could remember which), I found two leftover balls of pizza dough in the freezer and told K. I’d like to make something with them.

Here’s what you’ll need:

• 2 pizza dough balls (frozen, left over from earlier dough making): 34 cents
• 1 cup Texas-style barbecue sauce (frozen, left over from this project): $1.46
• 2 boneless, skinless chicken thighs (I also found these in the freezer. I Googled how to poach them. Then I asked K. how to poach them): $1.69
• 4 oz. mozzarella cheese (this was the cheapest cheese Fred Meyer had when went): $1
• A handful of cilantro leaves: 10 cents
TOTAL: $4.59/2 = $2.30

-Pizza peel
-Pizza stone

Preheat your oven as high as it will go; usually this is around 500-550 F. Make sure to include the pizza stone as you’re doing this, as it needs to heat up with the oven.

While the oven is warming up:
-Poach the chicken
-Put the dough balls out and flatten to about ¼-inch thick and let them sit.
-Grate cheese
-Prepare pizza peel with a little flour and cornmeal

When the chicken is done:
-Shred on a plate with two forks
-Place a little barbecue sauce in the shredded chicken and mix around. Start with a little sauce; you can always add more.

Once the oven is warmed up, stretch one dough ball into the shape of the crust until it is as big as you’d like, keeping it thick enough that it won’t tear.

Place the crust on the peel (generously sprinkled with flour and cornmeal to keep it from sticking) and add a swirl of barbecue sauce. I like to keep it about ¾ inch from the edges. Add shredded chicken as evenly as you’d like (about half the chicken per pizza). Sprinkle on some cilantro. Doing this before the cheese makes the pizza a little less photogenic, but it prevents the cilantro from burning. (Yes, K. told me that. My first unsupervised pizza, the one in the photos, had the cilantro on top.) Sprinkle cheese until it covers the other toppings.

Place the pizza in the oven and watch until it’s done. (About 8-10 minutes.)

When it is, pull it out, eat it, write about it for your wife’s blog. Take credit.

Until next week…