One of the things I love most about Australia is that we have bbqs all the time. This was the sort of lifestyle that we dreamed of having in the UK – having the weather to be outdoors and cook outdoors whenever we felt like it.
We have at least one bbq a week, often more. If you follow my migration Instagram account, you’ll see that I love nothing more than firing up our Weber while watching the kids splash around in the pool. And I’ve been secretly lusting after a pizza oven/pizza grill since doing a copywriting project last year that involved me writing about them for a garden centre. Unfortunately, having spent lots of money moving to Australia and with me setting up a new business, we aren’t in a position to invest $$$ in a luxury item like that. But that doesn’t mean it hasn’t been on my lust-list since we got here.
One day when I was pottering around Bunnings in the bbq section, I saw a rack of pizza stones. I Googled it while I was in the shop and was so excited to find out that you can actually cook pizzas on your bbq! How cool is that? I looked at the range of stones on offer and I bought a pizza making kit. What I liked most about this kit was that it came with the large pizza paddle as I’d read that having one of those was essential – you need a way to get your bbq pizza off the pizza stone and on your plate!
So I dashed to the supermarket, bought some ingredients and toppings and went home to make our first dinner of bbq pizza. If you’re wondering how it works, here’s how you do it.
How to cook pizza on your barbecue
- First, put the pizza stone into your cold bbq, right on the grills. Turn the heat on and close the lid.
- Build your pizzas. I like to use a sauce made with a tin of chopped tomatoes, half a tea spoon of lazy garlic, a good squirt of ketchup and tomato puree and a good pinch of dried mixed herbs. Then add anything you like to the top!
- When the pizza stone is hot, scatter some flour on to the stone to stop your pizza from sticking. Slide your pizza on the stone (if you’re making your pizza with a ready-made base you can assemble the topping and then slide it on to the stone easily. If you’re making it with fresh dough, stretch the dough onto a floured board as I did in the video and keep your pizzas small so it’s easy enough to slide them off using the pizza shovel).
- Throw a garlic baguette (a baguette spread generously with garlic butter and herbs and stuffed with cheese) wrapped in foil on to the grills, along with some corn on the cobs. With the corn you can par boil them and then either finish on the grills to get the chargrilled flavour, or you can wrap a bunch of them in foil with whatever flavour of butter you like – paprika and herb butter is my favourite. Tip: I use frozen corn cobs as it means I always have some to hand in the freezer, and they cook much faster and softer than fresh.
- Cook with the lid down for 10 to 15 minutes, opening occasionally to flip the corn and garlic bread over to heat evenly.
- Using the pizza shovel (this really is an essential piece of kit if you plan on trying this), slide the pizza off the stone and onto a plate. I have some great wooden boards I was given for Christmas and these make great serving platters.
- Pop another pizza on to cook while you enjoy the first one.
Boom. You have just cooked a wood-fired-style pizza in your own home on your bbq. I’m guessing that if you have a charcoal barbie it would taste even more authentic, but either way this is THE best way to cook pizzas at home. I don’t even use the oven to cook shop bought ones now as it tastes way better cooked this way.
You can also do great toasties on it by putting your sandwich (buttered on the outside) on the hot stone and then flipping half way.
Here are a few different kits (tip: getting a pizza paddle that has a folding handle or a short handle makes it much easier to store as the paddles are pretty big!)
