6 Fresh Ideas for Pizza Night

Is there anything better than pizza night?  It’s a dinner kids love to help cook and it’s a meal everyone loves to eat.  Pizzas can be fancy or simple, and they’re a great way to use ingredients already sitting in your fridge.

The challenge can be thinking of ways to break up the usual red sauce and mozzarella  routine.  This week we’re sharing 6 fresh ideas for pizza night.

1) Let Your Vegetables Lead the Way
Think about what vegetable you’re craving and ask what flavors you love to eat with it.  Have some roasted squash in the fridge?  Close yours eyes and think about what you want to eat with it, then put that on the pizza.  (For us, it’s caramelized onion, rosemary, squash and Parmesan.)  Have mushrooms?  We think they pair perfectly with blue cheese.

2) Take A Break From Red Sauce
The easiest way to mix up a pizza is to change the base. How about topping a pizza with peanut sauce for an Asian spin or BBQ sauce for a down-home feeling?  A simple herbed olive oil spread over a crust is simply delicious and lets the toppings really sing.

3) Think Past Cheese
We love melty cheese, but it’s by no means a pizza requirement.  This coconut-basil pizza (above) was one of our favorites, and there wasn’t a shred of cheese on it.  Nuts make a flavorful topping, too, as does a simple drizzle of olive oil, balsamic reduction or even honey.  (Yes, honey.  Yum!)

4) Start With the Cheese
Forget about everything we just said about skipping cheese.  How about starting with a cheese you love and building a pizza around that? Jen loves feta, which takes her to olives and arugula  Chef Max loves gouda, which takes him to dried cherries and cauliflower.

5) Play With Your Crust
Don’t have pizza dough in the house?  We’re suckers for naan pizzas and old-school French bread pizzas.  Sometimes we even go crazy with a potato-crust pizza casserole.  The sky’s the limit.

6) Less Is More
Take a page from the Italians, who use just a few, wonderful ingredients and spread them with a light hand.  It keeps the pizza from getting soggy and lets you enjoy each and every ingredient.