You can totally have pizza and it be healthy, and not, you know not be greasy, and you don’t have to order it from you know, a Domino’s or Pizza Hut or something like that. I mean there are ways to eat pizza and feel satisfied and it’s not going to bust your diet. So that’s what we’re going to talk about today.
Okay, so there’s a lot of variations on how you can make a healthy pizza. Today, I’m going to do one that basically is the simplest way to do it. And you know, you can get your own crust, you can get whole wheat, you can get glutton free, you know, you can buy a pre- made, already decked out pizza, you know health food store but today I just bought a frozen pizza and actually it is from Whole Fruits Market and it has uncured pepperoni on it so it’s going to give some good flavor but the pepperoni isn’t going to be treated with Sodium Nitrate so you don’t have a risk of carcinogens developing when you’re digesting the pepperoni. And this is a great way to make a quick and easy meal and it’s very convenient and yet you get to add a ton of good stuff to it.
So today, we are going to add some mushrooms and I’m going to thinly slice those. We are also going to add, this is an organic red bell pepper. We’re going to thinly slice this as well and put that on top. I have a red onion. We’re going to chop this up pretty finely. We’re going to add some fresh garlic and we’re going to add some fresh sliced organic tomatoes and then I love Jalapeños or anything spicy. So I usually add slices of fresh Jalapeños to mine. And of course if you can’t handle spice or you don’t like spice, you certainly don’t have to add Jalapeño to it. But I found that this combination and then combined with whole bunch of spinach on top is the perfect combination for a lot of different vitamins and it’s very filling and satisfying. You’re not going to miss you know, all those delivery pizzas. And then also, depending on you know, all the ingredients you put, you can add little bit more of tomato sauce and I’ve chosen an organic tomato sauce. And you want to be careful about not adding too much of that because that can make the crust soggy and you want it to cook all the way through. And then you have the option of adding a little bit more cheese. I’ve chosen organic, skimmed mozzarella. And so you can choose that. Now, the one that we have today actually has a pretty good amount of cheese. So you don’t want to add too much because of course that’s going to increase your calories. So let’s get started!
Now this is the pizza right out of the box. It’s still frozen, haven’t done anything special to it yet. Now this has pepperoni already on it. And, I’m actually going to remove some of the pepperoni. Although I found that with uncured and organic pizzas, they don’t seem to be as greasy as regular ones. I like to take off about half of the pepperoni that way you get some of the flavor but you’re not you know, getting too much fat from all the pepperoni.
Ok, so we have our ingredients here. We are first going to start with our garlic and it’s up to you how many cloves you would like to use but I like to use about two cloves and the real simple way to is to break it apart is to put your knife flat on it and press down really hard, you’ll hear a pop. And it actually will help separate the outer skin and you’ll just cut off the tip. And then you just want to chop this not too finely, because I think it takes away some of that flavor if you get it too fine. And garlic is excellent because it really helps support your immune system and it also has antibacterial benefits, as well as helping with digestion.
The second thing we’re going to do is slice some mushrooms. Now I’m using a shredder here that has a julienne cut and that allows you to make really thin slices of the mushroom without having to slice it with the knife because you can actually make this really paper thin and it’s almost like they melt when they’re on the pizza. And then we’re going to add a little bit of Jalapeños here. Now I want to emphasize that you want to use you know, organic ingredients whenever possible.
Alright, so that is going to be enough Jalapeño right there. So we’ve got some mushrooms, garlic, Jalapeños. Let’s do some of this tomato. Now, organic tomatoes actually a lot of times can be a little bit softer and so you don’t, you don’t want to press down too hard when you’re slicing it. So you want it to just, you want it to be a pretty thin slice, but you don’t want to smash it when you’re cutting it.
Ok, then we’re going to do some red bell pepper and you can just cut off a section here on the side. You won’t need too much, too much of this. And you just want to cut it in real thin strips. Now, I’m not a professional chef but I do love to cook and I think that’s the important thing for people to realize is you can always learn, and you can always do what you don’t have to you know, be a professional at it.
And now we have just a little bit of onion. You cut a thin slice of this. You take off the outer peel here. And you just need a thin slice, you don’t need to, if you add too much of this red onion and it’ll make your pizza even spicier, so that’s what you have to be careful of. So we have all our ingredients and they’re ready to go on to our pizza.
Alright, so first we are going to put the spinach on top of our pizza first and this is really going to shrink down so, we can put a nice layer on here. And although they look like “god, that’s a lot of spinach”, it really does wilt down a lot. It may look like you don’t have any on here if you don’t put enough. And of course spinach is going to be great source of fiber, iron, all kinds of nutrients and antioxidants.
Alright, and then we’ll go ahead and sprinkle our mushrooms on here. And you know, if someone does not like mushrooms, then ok let’s just do half of it and then, you know people can still like what they, eat what they like. Alright, and then we’ll put the red bell peppers on here and you know there’s really no perfect way to do this, you can just really lay it on however you want.
Alright, and then we’ll do our, let’s do our onions. Sprinkle these on here. And the Jalapeños, now, if someone doesn’t like spice, you can just do half of the pizza with Jalapeños. In that way you don’t have to you know make them eat it all. That’s the thing about buying the pizza that’s already been made is it’s harder to remove the ingredients, you know if, if they’re already kind of mixed in together. And then we’ll do our tomatoes on top. It’s our fabulous organic tomatoes. And last but not least, our garlic. Sprinkle our garlic on here. And like I mentioned before, you can add a little bit more cheese but the one that we chose for today actually has enough cheese. And then on the very top I’m going to sprinkle a little bit more of tomato sauce, just sprinkle it though. You don’t want too much because it’ll make the crust soggy. Just enough to kind of help the vegetables cook a little bit.
Now I got to say that, that looks a lot better than what we originally started it with. And so, this is now ready to go into our preheated oven at 425 degrees and you can actually cook it for the same period of time and it will come out just great. I’m using my flexible cutting board that I used to chop my vegetables on because you want to put the pizza on the oven racks so that it cooks all the way through the crust and doesn’t have a soggy crust. So we’re just going to slide it into the oven.
So it’s been about 10 minutes and we’re ready to pull our pizza out. And I love when the crust is a crispy brown, you know, golden color so that’s what we have cooked it. So here’s our pizza is and I don’t know if you can see it but it looks just fabulous. And now we’re ready to cut and eat. So now, we’re ready to cut our pizza. And you can hear the crunch so you know that the crust is cooked. Ok, now on the pizza box, it says that the serving size is the third of the pizza and that’s going to give you 370 calories. But the good news is because we took off some of the pepperoni and the stuff we added didn’t have hardly any calories because it’s all vegetables, you actually can eat about half the pizza and get about 500 calories which is you know, a good calorie range for a whole meal and that’s very filling and you know, you’re going to be so satisfied.
Now for those of you who, you know, always say that maybe organic food or healthy food is so expensive, well this pizza was only 3.99 and that the heck of a lot cheaper than you know, if you ordered it from the delivery pizza place. So, and then you’re eating half of it so it can either be two servings or you’re sharing with someone so of course that cuts the cost even more. So it’s very economical and very tasty and I’m going to give a little try.
I love it. The crust is crispy. It’s cooked all the way through. The vegetables are not mushy which is fabulous. You don’t want them to be overcooked. The flavors are just perfect. It’s a perfect combination. I’m getting lots of vitamins and antioxidants from your vegetables. You’re giving the flavor of the pepperoni and the flavor of the cheese, it’s perfect.
So I really wanted to do this pizza video because I want you to know that you can totally and absolutely keep eating pizza and it can be a healthy option for a meal even when you’re you know, wanting too watch your diet and maintain your weight or even lose weight. And the key is get a thin crust and now you don’t have to have a pepperoni pizza. But if you do want some of the flavor, take some of the pepperoni’s off and that will reduce the calorie content and fat content and then load it up with veggies so you’re getting all the nutrients and you know, you’re getting carbs, you’re getting a little bit of fat and you’re getting lots of vitamins and it’s just really a great meal and I hope you enjoy it.
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