Pizza on the Big Green Egg

5 from 4 votes

Pizza on the Big Green Egg

A favorite in our house! This pizza is made using J. Kenji López-Alt's New York style pizza dough recipe. This is more of a guide to how we do it on the Big Green Egg than a recipe, so don't feel like you have to follow this precisely.

Prep Time45

Cook Time15

Total Time6 40

Course: Dinner

Cuisine: American, Italian

Keyword: Big Green Egg, Grill, Pizza

Servings:

Calories: 532kcal

Equipment

Big Green Egg or other smoker
Big Green Egg Pizza Stone

Ingredients

1 recipe Serious Eats New York Pizza Dough
16 Oz Mozzarella Cheese Shredded
8 tbsp Tomato Sauce
20 pieces Pepperoni
4 oz Sausage Browned
1 tsp Oregano
¼ tsp Garlic Powder
½ tsp Red Pepper Flakes
2 tbsp Jalapeños Pickled, diced
3 tbsp Banana pepper sliced

Instructions

For the grill:

We use an XL Big Green Egg, but this recipe should work on any grill with a pizza stone.
Place your charcoal and light as normal, once your coals get going well place your platesetter and pizza stone.
Allow the grill to come up to temp (and burn off any gunk from the bottom of your plate setter if you've been smoking a bunch of yummy).
I cook mine at roughly 600°F. You need to know your grill and equipment here, a thin pizza stone built for the oven (especially Pampered Chef) will crack at best and shatter at worst.
Once the grill is at temp and burning clean you're ready to cook! It may be unnecessary with this dough, (it is a holdover habit of mine from using dough that burned quickly on the bottom) before I put on the pizza I dip a 100% cotton cloth in water and rub the stone until it doesn't immediately boil away. Again, know your equipment here, this may be unnecessary or even damage your stone. If you have trouble with your crust burning before your toppings are ready I'd consider adding this step.

For the Dough:

Follow the linked Serious Eats dough recipe.
Let the dough rest for at least 24 hours in the fridge, we find 2-5 days is really the sweet spot. Remove the dough from the fridge and let it rest at room temperature for a couple hours before using. Divide into three roughly 5½ inch dough balls and place on parchment paper. Flour as necessary to keep from sticking to your hands as you work the dough.
Use a rolling pin to roll dough, and if necessary stretch by hand (or hell, toss it if you've got that in you!) until it is about ¼ inch thick, it won't have a perfectly even thickness, that's fine just roll with it.
Finished dough should be 12 to 14 inches in diameter. Return to parchment paper.
Top pizzas as your heart desires, the toppings we used are above, but this is really a preference area. IMPORTANT, less is more when it comes to sauce, a nice thin layer will do the trick, you don't want to introduce too much liquid here.

Grilling the Pizza:

Once you have the pizza and grill prepared as above, slide a pizza peel (or something similar) UNDER the parchment paper and take the pizza to the grill.
Slide the parchment paper (and pizza) onto the pizza stone and shut the lid. The parchment paper may catch on fire, it's ok.
After 5 or so minutes start testing to see if the dough has set. I do this by pulling on the parchment paper with tongs or a gloved hand while sliding the pizza peel under the dough. If the dough gives resistance, give it a bit more (trust me, I've made many calzones on the fly before I learned you'd rather spend a little extra time on the parchment paper than screw up here). Once the pizza is ready to leave the parchment slide the parchment off and make sure it's not on fire before you dispose of it.
Cook the pizza checking every 5 minutes or so and making sure to check the doneness of the dough by lifting the edge with the pizza peel. If the top starts to get done before the dough leave the dome open to allow the dough to firm up.

Notes

This is much more a guide than a recipe, I'm hoping that a decade of me screwing up pizzas will help people. Some folks can put semolina or cornmeal on a pizza peel and slide it right on the grill without the need for parchment paper, but that never worked for me.

Don't be discouraged if your first results are less than perfect! There's a big variation between grill etc., use this guide and adjust for what works for you. Take notes about what you'd change in the future. If you're nervous try just making a cheese pizza at first so you don't have much to lose.

There are tons of premade doughs and recipes, but this is the absolute best to stand up to the temp of the pizza stone on a hot grill. I highly recommend the J. Kenji López-Alt recipe. If you buy your supermarket premade dough follow their temp guide and make sure to cool your stone, it can burn fast.

Nutrition