Tortilla Pizza

This is more of a technique than a recipe, but it's one of my favorites and I'd like to share. It's an easy way to make pizzas with ingredients you may have in your pantry already.

You will need tortillas of any size, cheese of any type, your favorite sauce, toppings of your choice, and some oil. You will also need an oven safe pan. I prefer to use a cast iron skillet. For today's pizzas I used thinly sliced kielbasa and onion.

Turn on your broiler to the highest setting and put the pan on high heat and warm some oil in the bottom. I used spray olive oil, you can use a little dribble of whatever is on hand. When hot, add the tortilla. The goal here is to crisp the bottom of what will be your crust. 

After a minute or two, add toppings of your choice. This first one was just sauce and cheese with various spices: red pepper flakes, garlic powder, oregano, basil, Parmesan cheese, and topped with the cheese blend.

Place the pan under the broiler as close as it goes. Let this cook for 2-3 minutes. I'm not a big recipe follower here, just broil until done. You're looking for melted cheese, cooked toppings, and crispy but not burned tortilla shell.

When done to your liking, remove from oven and put the pizza on a cutting board to cool slightly while you start your next one. Put the pan back over high heat, add a dab more oil, and repeat until the amount of pizza matches your level of hunger.

The next one I did was kielbasa and onion. Picture taken before cheese was added.

This is why you want hot oil in the beginning: a nice, crisp thin-crust pizza.

Kielbasa and onion out of the oven to cool. This started to get a little darker on the edges than is ideal. That crispy cheese overflow on the edge is the best part, though!

Made a final one with a little remaining onion and the rest of the cheese.

Sliced and ready to serve! From top down, there's the kielbasa and onion, onion and cheese, and plain cheese. As you can see, the onion and cheese got a little overdone while I was taking pictures. Still good!

Some notes:

• Use the same technique with naan or pita bread to get a doughier, more hand-tossed crust style pizza.
• No pizza sauce? No problem! Use jarred spaghetti sauce, BBQ sauce, ranch dressing, whatever sounds good to you!
• No pizza cheese? No problem! When I plan to make these I usually like to use an Italian blend or pizza blend. Today I was using what I had which was Colby and Monterey Jack. I think anything would go well here, short of Velveeta slices. Even that might be good with the right combo. You never know until you try...
• I usually use a larger tortilla that fits the base of the skillet completely. All we had on hand today were small tortillas, and I think I like that better. They're kind of like pizza sliders!
• When dressing the pizzas, less is more. Thin layers of sauce and cheese, and thinly sliced toppings. You're flash-cooking these, so there's not a lot of time for it to hang out and bake. If you want big honking chunks of stuff, make a real pizza.
• Let these sit a minute so the cheese has a chance to set up before you cut it. Honestly, these are best the fresher they are so if you're going to make more than one my ideal scenario is to let one cool while you build the next, then eat it while your next one is in the oven. Repeat until sated.

Other good flavor combos to try:

• BBQ sauce, chicken, red onion, cheese
• Ranch or blue cheese dressing, buffalo chicken, thin celery
• Alfredo sauce, chicken, broccoli
• Mashed potatoes, caramelized onions, cheddar cheese (Pierogi pizza. Carb-heavy and delicious. Trust me!)
• Literally anything that sounds interesting or you would have on a regular pizza. This is a blank canvas. Go nuts!

Thanks for reading!