How to Make the Perfect Grilled Pizza
Today I’m sharing how to make the perfect Grilled Pizza! I make homemade pizza almost every week, and during the summers I love to take the pizza to the grill. Most of my favorite dinners during the summer involve the bbq. One recipe we love is making individual grilled pizzas. We love pizza, but during the summer I don’t want to turn our oven on if we don’t need to… it’s just too hot! So here’s how we make our Grilled Pizza… it’s easy, fun, and turns out perfect!
The Dough
I normally use my favorite homemade pizza dough recipe, but if you prefer you can purchase pizza dough at your grocery store. The dough for one large pizza will make 4 individual-sized pizzas. If you purchased pizza dough at your grocery store, follow the directions on the bag. A lot of doughs will have you pull the dough from the refrigerator 15-20 minutes before you start to work with it.
Prep the Grill
Get your gas grill heating up! I put our bbq on the medium-high heat setting. I usually let it go 5-10 minutes to get it nice and hot before I start the grilling. Every grill is different, so if your grill runs really hot you might want to put your temperature at medium. I like to grill my pizzas at around 500 degrees. Just before putting on the pizzas, I will clean the grates with my grill brush.
Prepping the Pizzas
Meanwhile, while the grill is heating up, I divide my dough into 4 pieces and rolled them out pretty thin, and place them on a sheet of aluminum foil that I brush with a little olive oil. This will help the pizza to not stick to the foil.
Then comes the fun. I’ll set up a pizza station and let the kiddos (and the adults) put on their own pizza sauce, cheese and toppings. You can put the various toppings in little bowls: pepperoni, sausage, olives, pineapple, bacon, ham, vegetables, peppers, cooked chicken, etc. You can also offer alternatives to the traditional red sauce by having pesto sauce and even an alfredo sauce option.
How to Grill a Pizza
You need to have everything ready because the pizza cooks quickly. You’ll want to have plates and tongs. I like using bbq tongs (with the long handle) so you can grab the pizza and move it around easily. A bbq spatula works too.
Place 2 pizzas at a time on the grill. Close the lid and peek after a minute. Keep checking every minute. Once the cheese starts melting keep the lid open and use the tongs to check the bottom pizza crust. If it’s browned slide the foil/pizza and all onto a plate. If it needs a little more time keep checking it every 20-30 seconds.
Normally the pizza will cook in about 3 minutes… so there’s no walking away… it’s quick!
Finishing the Grilled Pizza
You can offer fresh options like fresh basil or arugula for people to put on top of their pizzas if they like.
It really is a fun dinner to do with the family during summer and it’s ready nice and quick!
Don’t forget to check out my popular pizza dough recipe:
How to get the best pizza crust!
If you love pizza like us make sure to check out my Pizza Fries recipe too!
You can find all my pizza recipes here!
Thanks for stopping by friends!
Does this work with pillsbury pizza dough?
This looks delish! Can you premake the dough and freeze it?
YES!!! I’d pull into the fridge 1-2 days prior to needing it.
I use Cornmeal ( just sprinkle a small amount on foil before placing the dough down adds great texture & dough won’t stick! Great trick!
Great idea!
Prepared and separate each dough flat with waxed paper on both sides, get all you topping choices ready and fire up your Grill so all will be in readiness for your party. When ready peel one side of each flat and arrange on hot Grill, paper-side up. Grill. Place paper side down on a cookie sheet and top each (whether you or they is up to you). When ready to grill bottoms, and heat/melt toppings as desired, peel and place on Grill. This has the advantage of allowing you to grill crusts with other thicknesses, and also allows you to keep crust crispy, rather than bready.
Been grilling pizza for years. But this is the easiest and best method by far. Thank You for posting this grilled pizza.
This pizza looks awesome; I would have never thought of trying to make it on the grill. You are so right about summertime being too hot for the oven. I’m definetly going to give it a try. Thank you for sharing!!
I would rather use our grill every day during our short summers than ever turn on the overn. I can’t say I’ve ever grilled pizza, but now I want to! Thanks for sharing at Merry Monday!
That pizza looks great, we love grilling our pizza. Thanks for sharing on Delicious Dishes recipe party!
I am speechless. It is YUMMMYYYY
Sweet
Glad you enjoy it!
These look delicious and must give this a try. I had one question. Do you need to spray the foil with cooking spray to keep the dough from sticking?
Thanks for sharing,
Suzanne
Pieced Pastimes
Hi Suzanne, good question! It depends how sticky your dough is. My homemade dough isn’t very sticky once I’ve rolled it out with some flour, so I don’t spray mine.
Reynolds non-stick foil works great!