Skillet "Pizza"

I try to do the majority of my eating by cooking meals at home, but my problem is that I end up eating the same things all the time because I never really venture out and try to come up with anything new.  So, when regular blog reader Show recently sent me the recipe for Skillet Pizza, I got interested because this recipe includes a lot of things that I usually have around the house and it wouldn’t require me to go to the store.  Plus, who doesn’t love pizza, especially with a neat twist to it?  It’s also very cheap, easy to make and will give you enough for a minimum of two to three servings, depending on how big of an eater that you are (Show says that he usually gets about six servings out of this; I got three).

Here’s the ingredients that I used with estimated prices of the items when you’d find them at the store (I buy all my stuff on sale, so the prices I listed would not be the regular price).  This recipe is very user friendly, so you can add or subtract any ingredients you want depending on what you like on your pizza:

• 1 lb. roll of hot sausage – $2
• 1 16 oz. package of elbow macaroni (you could use any pasta, I just had this on hand; this will be your “crust” of the pizza) – $1
• 2 cups shredded mozarella cheese – $2
• 4 oz. fresh mushrooms (I diced them) – $1.50
• 4 oz. sliced pepperoni (this is just a ballpark guess on the amount I used) – $1.25
• 2 cans (15 oz. each) of pizza sauce (I happened to have pizza sauce at home for once; I would ordinarily just use any random jar of marinara sauce) – $2
• Total Price of Ingredients:  $9.75 (remember, this can get you several servings so your unit price should be well below $4 per person)

Cooking steps (you can review a photo diary of these steps in my Picasa photo gallery)

1. Brown hot  sausage (you’ll need to break it up obviously) in skillet.
2. Add macaroni noodles to boiling water and cook.
3. When hot sausage is about 75% complete, drain the sausage grease, add in diced mushrooms, the pizza sauce and cover skillet.  Reduce heat to medium low and simmer for about ten minutes.
4. When pasta is done (you’ll want to try to time it up so that the pasta is done about five minutes before the pizza mix), pull out of boiling water and drain.
5. After about ten minutes, remove lid from pizza mix and add pepperoni and top of mix.  Do not stir as you want this to be layered like a pizza.
6. After adding pepperoni, spread shredded mozarella cheese over the entire mix on the skillet, cover and remove from heat (the heat from inside the covered skillet should melt the cheese, but if you have issues like I did, you can take the lid off after a few minutes and throw it in the oven on the Broil setting and that will melt the cheese).
7. Once cheese is melted, you can season the “pizza” any way that you want.  I added in a little Italian seasoning and some garlic salt (this step is optional).
8. Cut into “slices” and serve on top of the macaroni noodles.

Like I said, this one is simple, cheap and reasonably quick.  I’ll definitely be making this one from time to time and I’ll also be playing with the ingredients.  Give it a shot if you are interested.

-IndianapolisEater

Tags: Food, Pasta, Pizza

This entry was posted on Friday, November 27th, 2009 at 6:00 am and is filed under At Home. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.