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PIZZA BEEF ZOODLE: sauteed garlic zucchini strips serve as base for gateway sauce and as the main topping for a cast iron pizza.

Today we will make a garlic beef zoodle pizza, with strips of sauteed zucchini as our main element. We will cook part of our pepper, onion, and zucchini vegetable medley and puree it and use that for the base sauce. We also add our zoodle strips as the final topping to create a delicious and elegant gateway meal.

Please check out my post on simple pizza dough HERE, for a super-easy pizza crust.

Have you ever struggled with ideas for meals? The pattern we use today might help open up a lot of opportunities for you to creatively use the ingredients you already have in your kitchen. I call it a gateway pattern. We will use the familiar pizza dough, the familiar pizza layering of toppings, but we will not go down the tomato sauce path. In a lot of ways this limits what a pizza is. I think it’s true that a pizza pattern, is a very efficient way to create a dish that combines all it’s ingredients.

So let’s use this pizza platform pattern to create any dish that we might want to eat with bread. Kind of like a quiche, where we can feel free to any almost anything and everything to a pizza we can imagine, and it all starts with the sauce. Zucchini and beef are our featured players and taste surprisingly good and natural on a pizza.

So let’s get right to it!

EQUIPMENT LIST
cast iron pan
sectioned trays
1/2 cup measure
1/3 cup measure
1 pinch measure
1 dash measure

INGREDIENT LIST

pizza crust

1/3 cup red bell pepper
1/3 cup orange bell pepper
1/3 cup yellow bell pepper
1/3 cup onion
1/3 cup diced cabbage
1 clove minced garlic

1 1/2 cup mozzarella cheese
1/2 cup parmesan cheese
1 cup whole mushrooms

1 1/2 cup cooked ground beef
1 dash apple cider vinegar
1 pinch hot sauce
1 pinch mustard
1 pinch ketchup

pinch salt
pinch pepper

Short Prep

PREPARATION

add oil and vegetables to cast iron pan

add onions

add zoodles

/ikmage

add salt and pepper

cook for 7 minutes

add garlic

add beef

add eggs

take off heat

set aside half ingredients

puree in blender

take pizza crust
add sauce

spread sauce evenly on crust

add mushrooms

add mozzarella

add parmesan

add cabbage salt and pepper

add zoodles, meat and vegetables

add remaining mozzarella and parmesan cheese

bake at 400 for 30 to 35 minutes

enjoy!

Today we learned how to leverage the pizza pattern with a custom sauce to open up a whole new set of pizza meal ideas. The key of course is the sauce. We saw how half our ingredient medley was sauteed then pureed and used on top of our pizza dough in place of tomato sauce.

It could have been rice and beans and cheese, or skittles brisket rolled up like a stromboli. Tomato sauce is awesome, but our pizza creations are not limited to those ingredients that go with tomatos.

Look out for my next post, where we use our pizza pan and our short prep toppings to create a quick noodle stir fry using angel hair pasta or ramen noodles.

Thanks and see you next time!

Chicken Butterfly keto: the chicken’s joints and backbone are cut and laid flat inside down in a cast iron pan to bake with sauce.

This butterfly chicken recipe was inspired by the world famous French chef, Jacques Pepin. There are many of my recipes which are based on in some part one of his recipes, this one is top of the heap. Along with Julia Child, Jacques Pepin are the cooking personalities I enjoy the most.

Ketogenic diets are very popular and have been for sometime. I myself have practiced a ketogenic diet and lifestyle off and on over the last 10 years. Keto diets and cast iron are very closely aligned, which makes perfect sense. Why be keto if you are going to cook in cookware that may be toxic, or at least unhealthy. This connection is something I believe is very important to a balanced and healthy lifestyle.

Some of the recipes I share are keto, many of them are not. Some will be what I call one step away, One step away means the meal is keto except for one thing, which can be removed. For instance in this case, this butterfly chicken recipe is keto except for one thing, the gravy, which can be removed.

Athough Jacques Pepin did not cook this dish with cast iron IIRC, cutting the backbone and joints, along with flattening and the laying the chicken inside down create maximum contact and interaction between the cast iron, the vegetable mixture, and the chicken. This is as you might imagine, in my view a positive.desirable. This recipe is keto-friendly, with minimum carbohydrates. The gravy does contain flour and can be skipped if you are low-carb or no-carb and don’t want to get kicked out of ketosis.

BTW: This recipe is a test case to demonstrate that there is a difference in the taste of something cooked in cast iron, that is superior to the taste of using another type of cooking implement. You can demonstrate this by making this recipe in a non-cast iron vessel and compare the taste with that of the cast iron version.

Making a separate sauce with any dish allows us maximum flexibility, for example if we make a separate sauce for a pizza, we can use it instead of tomato sauce as the base of the pizza. This opens up a lot of possibilities that go down a non-tomato based road.

Today’s episode is action-packed. We will prepare all our vegetables, prepare the chicken from in the package, cook our vegetable medley amd puree a sauce. Then we we cut up and flatten our chicken, and then combine them all in a cast iron pan

Let’s get right to it!

EQUIPMENT LIST
large cast iron pan
saucepan to hold chicken

2 cup pyrex measure
1 cup measure
1/2 cup measure
1/3 cup measure
1 pinch measure
1 dash measure

apron
kitchen towel
paper towel
damp hand towel

Place chicken in wrapper into saucepan to keep splahing of chicken liguid to a minimum

Place 2 layers of paper towel into the cast iron pan to asorb any extra liquid

Place the chicken into the cast iron pan and cut packaging

Remove the packaging and then the paper towel

put the ckicken on a plate to the side

Wash, dry and cut up the mushrooms

Then the jalepeno peppers

Then the lime

Place ingredients into Short Prep sectioned trays

Saute ingredients in coconut oil until soft

Set aside 1/2 vegetables and puree in blender
remove backbone from chicken

Cut leg joint on both sides at thigh and at drumstick joints

Cut wing joints from both sides at breast and wing joint

take the cut-up chicken, turn it over over and push the backbone with your thumbs while pulling the outside towards you, flattening the ckicken on the insides

add the remaining vegetables to the cast iron pan

add cabbage
add salt
add pepper
saute 5 minutes

salt and pepper inside of chicken
place chicken inside down on top of vegetables in cast iron pan          
salt and pepper outside of chicken  

add sauce to top of chicken

bake a 400 degrees for 1 hour

leg sections should break right off

cut along the breast bone

Giblets

GRAVY set aside 1/4 cup oil from pan drippings add oil to cast iron pan

add 1/4 cup flour to the oil

take remaining pan drippings and add water to equal 2 cups

cook on medium until gravy thickens

cook for 1 minute more

Today we learned how to prepare a very healthy, keto-friendly cast iron butterfly chicken, Jaques Pepin style. We cut the joints of the chicken, removed the backbone and flattened the chicken for baking in a cast iron pan with vegetables. We created an awesome keto friendly chicken meal with healthy ingredients and a minimum of effort. Look for episode 7 where we use the remaining chicken to create a jalepeno lime pizza with no tomato sauce

Because this meal is so easy to prepare once you have some practice, you can use it as the base of any dish requiring cooked chicken. To demonstrate this we will use the left-overs from our chicken to create a delicious and appetizing Jalapeno Lime Pizza.

BTW: According to Jacques Pepin, the purpose of cutting the joints is to considerably reduce the time it take to cook an entire chicken, which I have confirmed at about 35 minutes. However, in this episode I used a giant cast iron pan instead of a cooking tray(?), which dramatically increases the cooking time. The large pan performs very well at exactly one hour and makes for great gravy.

And, we also used our techniques of Long Prep and Short Prep, to facilitate the food creation process. With our ingredients cut up and prepared as much as possible before hand, we can really make the final step in cast iron cooking fun. This really demonstrates one of my favorite things about cast iron cooking; putting the pan in the oven and cleaning up while the meal is cooking, and then removing my dinner into a cleaned kitchen.

Join me next time as we use part of our butterfly chicken to create a Jalepeno Lime Chicken Pizza.

Thanks and see you next time!

Composition: taking prepared pizza toppings and a existing pizza crust, and making a pizza.

Pizza composition is the glamorous part of pizza preparation. It’s predecessors Long Prep, Short Prep, and Pizza Dough take our ingredients from from a raw state and turn them into a pizza dough and proper toppings pre-measured for a pizza. And with toppings and a pizza dough, we can make a pizza.

While we input raw ingredients and output proper toppings in Long Prep, in Short Prep we measure and then package those now proper toppings specifically to use to compose a single pizza. We can make multiple Short Preps as we can cook multiple pizzas, we keep an eye on using them in under two days

We will put out stack of toppings into the fridge for storage until we are ready to use them. I like to Short Prep in the morning for Composition around dinner time, or do Short Prep the night before for composition for dinner the next day.

In the Composition stage, because up until now we have been doing nothing but preparing, we are going to see all our hard work pay off. With the hard lifting done we can use our energy to create whatever we want.

This will reinforce the value of separating the pizza creation process into Long Prep, Short Prep, Pizza Dough, and Composition. We will see that it is very beneficial to our ability to make pizza. In addition it is more immediately beneficial to our ability to practice making pizza. Mastery of the individual phases by repetition will allow them to seamlessly flow together to make you a pizza power player.

Let get right to it!

EQUIPMENT
cast iron pan
apron
kitchen towel
paper towel
wet rag
sectioned trays
knife to open tray

INGREDIENTS
1/3 cup red pepper
1/3 cup orange pepper
1/3 cup yellow pepper
1/3 cup onion
1 1/2 cup mozzarella cheese
1/2 cup parmesan cheese
1/2 cup tomato sauce
1 dash salt
1 dash pepper

add tomato sauce and make a smooth layer

Add a layer of mushrooms

Add a layer of garlic

Add mozzarella cheese

Add parmesan cheese

Add the red pepper.

Then the orange

Then the yellow

Add the jalenpeno peppers to the center

The add the remaining mozzarella and parmesan cheese

Bake at 400 degrees for 30 to 35 minutes.

We did a lot of work to prepare for composition, the glamourous part of proficient pizza preparation. Long Prep, Short Prep, Pizza Dough all play their part to setting us up for a successful composition. All of our preparation pays off when we simply have to evenly distribute our ingredients in layers and put the pizza in the oven.

A quick review of what we learned today reminds us that simple layering is exactly what we did. We added our layer of tomato sauce onto our pizza dough in a cast iron pan, and distributed it evenly. Next we added the garlic chunks and mushrooms so they will cook in the tomato sauce and cheese we will add next. A layer of neutral-colored mozzarella and then parmesan cheese set the background for the array of colorful peppers arranged in a pie clockwise pattern. Reg, Orange, We Finish in the center with the green jalapeno peppers as the span the color wheel. Lastly we add another layer of mozzarella then parmesan cheese which covers but does not hide the colors of the peppers.

We saw how the separation of concerns in pizza preparation allow us have a very simple task when we start to prepare dinner. Yes it takes quite a bit of preparation to be able to “Compose” a pizza with ease and minimal stress. But it pays off. As we can see by the pictures, it is really simple to compose a pizza, it can easiy be done in under 5 minutes. If this is true then pizza is a very effective and efficient meal to prepare on short notice, in fact in any situation.

So, if you are returning home after a hard day at work and want a quick and satisfying meal, you might be surprised to discover that pizza in one of the most if not the most easily prepared meals, on the night of preparation, one could make.

Look for our next episode, Jaques Pepin style butterfly chicken with gravy!

Thanks and see you next time!

Short Prep: Measure and store prepared pizza toppings for a single complete pizza composition.

Just to review where we are: In episode 1 we did the simplest thing possible to start, we created a pizza with basic ingredients and a store brought crust. In episode 2 we learned to easily create the crust that we had bought from the store in episode 1. Episode 3 introduced Long Prep, the process by which our raw pizza ingredients are turned into usable pizza toppings and stored in clear containers. Which brings us to episode 4, Short Prep.

In Short Prep, here we take the pizza toppings we created in episode 3 and prepare them to be used in composing a pizza, that day or the next. We use sectioned trays to store the toppings. Some ingredients such as mushrooms need to be washed and prepared right before using. We will add our ingredients to the trays, stack them with paper towels in between, and then wrap them with plastic wrap.

With the trays securely wrapped in plastic wrap, we can store the stack in the refrigerator for 2 days. It’s usually best to Short Prep in the morning for later that day, or that evening for the next day. Somewhere around 1.5 days after Short Prep is a good time to have used all your ingredients for quality pizza.

By preparing everything we need to compose a pizza beforehand, we can really see the power of separation of concerns in pizza. When we have all our ingredients before hand, we can literally remove the plastic wrap and compose our pizza in under 5 minutes with ease (mushrooms take a bit extra) time. Those ingredients could easily be used in another meal, such as a stir-fry or to spice up left-overs. The value really shines through in the composition of pizza.

Today’s episode is short and sweet, so let’s get right to it!

EQUIPMENT LIST
compartment tray
1/3 cup measure
1/2 cup measure
saran wrap unfurled
knife to cut saran wrap
apron
dish towel
paper towels
wet rag

INGREDIENTS LIST
1/2 cup red peppers
1/2 cup orange peppers
1/2 cup yellow peppers
2 jalepeno peppers
1 cup whole mushrooms
2 limes
1 1/2 cup mozzarella cheese
1/2 cup parmesan cheese
1 dash apple cider vinegar
1 dash hot sauce

PREPARATION
measure 1/2 cup of each pepper into tray section
measure 1/2 cup of onion into tray section

measure 1 1/2 cup mozzarella cheese into tray
measure 1/2 cup parmesan cheese into tray
add garlic to tray
add jalepeno peppers, hot sauce, and acv to tray

stack and cover with saran wrap
VIOLA!

Today we learned about Short Prep, where we end up with the ingredients for a pizza, ready to use.

We saw how easy it is to prepare for pizza composition with Short Prep, when you have prepared for Short Prep with Long Prep. Where in Long Prep we process our raw ingredients into pizza toppings for multiple pizzas stored in convenient clear containers, in Short Prep we take those bulk toppings and measure out exactly what we need for the composition of a single pizza. We can do this for multiple pizzas as needed.

With our sectioned trays filled with toppings we learned to stack them with paper towels to absorb moisture, then to wrap them securely with plastic wrap. We then stored the stack of trays in the refrigerator, for up to 2 days.

Next up is episode 5 where we will learn about pizza Composition. It’s my term for the separate process of creating a pizza from a prepared set of ingredients, and an existing pizza dough. Please join me.

See you next time!

Long Prep: from raw ingredients to ready to use toppings.

In Long Prep, we first de-label, wash, and dry our raw vegetables, and clean any other ingredients as needed (such as removing the skin from an onion). Then we have the option of either rough chopping our vegetables by hand and then finalizing them in the food processor, or do all the cutting by hand with a sharp knife. Either method is equally effective, I have arrived at cutting by hand as my preferred method.

NOTE: for a quality pizza, some ingredients like mushrooms need to be cut right before they are used. So you can store them whole in a tray, and then wash and cut them right before use. Mushrooms for example can really improve a pizza or any dish, so it’s really worth it to take the time to use them generously once you have become proficient.

Once our vegetables are chopped and other ingredients prepared, we squeeze dry the freshly-cut vegetables in paper towels to remove any excess moisture, and put them into a paper towel-lined clear containers to store in the fridge. We also put any other ingredients into their own clear containers, using paper towels to control moisture as needed, one ingredient per container. NOTE: I have found that it helps if all the containers are identical or just two sizes.

We can then use our clearly identifiable pizza toppings on our pizza, or a calzone, or a stir-fry, or an omelet.

Our process today, Long Prep is naturally followed by “Short Prep”, the process where we package those now prepared pizza toppings produced in Long Prep, from their clear containers into divided trays to be used in pizza Composition later that day or the next day.

So let’s get right to it!

EQUIPMENT LIST
apron
kitchen towel
wet towel
paper towels

food processor
timer
colander
cutting board
butter knife

plastic jars

INGREDIENTS
1 red pepper
1 orange pepper
1 yellow peppers
1 cup whole mushrooms
1 onion
1 clove garlic
2 jalepeno peppers

We will take our bell peppers, remove the stickers, clean them and put them into a strainer to dry.

We will roughly chop the onion

And the garlic

We will clean the jalepeno peppers and we are ready for the next step

We will roughly cut up the bell peppers and onions for the food processor, mince the garlic and cut up the jalepeno pepper

Next we will put the mushrooms into their container

We will add each ingredient to the food processor bowl, making sure to shake the bowl so the ingredients are evenly distributed on the bottom and in the cutting blades.

We will squeeze the freshly processed pepper or onion in a paper towel

Flip it over and give it another squeeze

Add to a container with a paper towel at the bottom.

Do this for each of the peppers and onion

Today we took another step on the road to pizza prosperity with our review of Long Prep. We learned how to process our raw ingredients and turn them into legitimate pizza toppings. Then we took our toppings and put them into clear containers, and put those containers in the fridge

The utility of Long Prep will become especially evident when we learn the next step, Short Prep. Short prep involves our measuring and cleanly storing all pizza toppings we need for the composition of one (or more) complete pizzas.

When we put all the steps together: Long Prep Short Prep Pizza Dough Composition we have a complete system to allow us to eat pizza often and stress free.

Thanks and see you next time!

Pizza Dough: an awesome simple pizza dough that will work.

updated on 5/24/2025

With an eye on showing that home-made pizza is easy and practical, we have separated the process of pizza creation into logical, discrete parts.

Episode 1 dealt with the “Composition” part of pizza creation, actually adding the layers of prepared toppings onto an already existing store-bought pizza dough, and putting the pizza in the oven.

In this episode we will actually create the pizza dough we bought from the store in the first post, and then follow the recipe from that post to compose upon the pizza dough we will make today.

We will start with a batch of two pizza doughs today, one for immediate use and one to put in the freezer. Once you get the hang of making the dough, you may want to have multiple frozen pizza doughs at your disposal. The dough will last several months in the freezer.

Towards our theme of pizza as ultra-practical, our goal is to prepare this dough today so it’s ready to compose upon, in less than five minutes, minus the time in the stand mixer. We may not hit our goal exactly, but we will surely be close.

Let’s get right to it!

EQUIPMENT
stand mixer
glass measuring cup
1 cup measure
1/3 cup measure
1/2 tsp measure
1/4 tsp measure
cast iron pan
pan to warm liquid
butter knife level flour in 1 cup measure

INGREDIENTS per pizza dough
1 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
1/3 cup + 1/2 tsp warm water
1/2 tsp dry active yeast
1/2 tsp sugar or honey
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp apple cider vinegar
1/4 olive oil

PREPARATION
add 1 cup flour to stand mixer bowl
add yeast to glass measure
add sugar or honey to glass measure
heat water until warm
add warm liquid to glass measure and stir
wait 5 minutes or until mixture bubbles
add salt, apple cider vinegar, and olive oil to glass measure and stir

add liquid to stand mixer bowl mix on lowest setting for 6 minutes
dough should pull away from the sides

dough should stick to dough paddle but be easily removed with a minimum of sticking

form dough into a loaf and cut into pieces as needed form each piece of dough into ball and lightly coat with olive oil

if freezing, put into freezer bag

remove air from freezer bag

put any dough not using being used immediately into the freezer you may want put the date and time or a batch number on each freezer bag for easy identification

if using immediately, place in airtight container in warm spot

cover and let sit for 30 minutes

add some flour to your cast iron pan and spread it around with your fingers

place dough into the cast iron pan

generously sprinkle flour over dough
flip dough over
generously sprinkle flour over other side

pick up the dough so its resting on the back of your hand

put other hand under dough
move hands apart once or twice to stretch the dough
THIS IS THE TRICKY PART AND WILL REQUIRE REPETITIONS

put the dough back into the pan

push dough with fingers to form to the pan as needed

VIOLA!

In episode 1 we dealt with pizza Composition, the last step before the pizza goes into the oven. But we need something to compose upon, a pizza dough. That’s what we learned today.

It can be very intimidating to do any kind of baking or dough preparation, but as we saw today it’s actually very easy when you have a proper set of steps to follow. The way we prepared the dough today, letting it knead for 6 minutes, and letting it rise for 30 minutes, assured us of a very pliable dough which would turn into a proper pizza crust, even in a pinch, by simply stretching it in place with our fingers. We did stretch the dough with the back of our hands, but that was not necessary to form the crust exactly as we want it.

Stay tuned as we learn the other steps of captaincastiron pizza creation. We learned to compose a pizza with an existing dough, and then today we learned how to make the dough to compose upon. Next we will learn how to process our raw ingredients and turn them into the prepared toppings (Long Prep). Then we will create a set of toppings before-hand for an individual pizza composition (Short Prep) later that day or the next.

Thanks and see you next time!

Basic Pizza: compose a simple pizza on a store bought crust.

Making pizza at home can be a daunting task, especially for the beginner. This blog will provide information to make that task easier, by breaking the process of home pizza creation into it’s component parts.

Separating the parts of pizza preparation allows us to take a scientific approach to what can often be a chaotic experience, resulting in a much less frustrating enterprise.

So, in this episode, we will cover just the basics of pizza “composition”, the stage of pizza preparation where we have an existing pizza crust and we have already prepared toppings. In this stage we simply layer the already prepared toppings on top of an existing crust, and then put the pizza in the oven.

In a later episode, we will cover the process of efficiently creating a pizza dough.

Lets get right to it!

EQUIPMENT
oven
cast iron pan

INGREDIENTS
1 store bought frozen pizza dough, defrosted
1/2 cup tomato sauce
1/2 cup green peppers
1/2 cup red peppers
1/2 cup onions
1 1/2 cups mozzarella cheese
1/2 cup parmesan cheese
pepperoni cut into stalks

Place in a 400 degree oven
Cook for 25 to 30 minutes as desired
Let cool for 15 minutesCut into slices
Enjoy!

Now we have learned how to compose a simple pizza from already prepared toppings and an existing crust.

In the next episode we will learn how to easily create the pizza crust that we bought from the store in this episode.

See you next time!