Leftover pizza
- rosemary
- Mar 17
- 7 min read
"Some like it hot
Some cold
I like it room temp" u/eboj-dm/reddit
I'm reviving that reddit haiku about leftover pizza, because I really didn't say much about it even though I actually noticed at least two websites telling you what to do with leftover pizza. Besides I have leftover pizza in the fridge for dinner tomorrow. I always make pizzas that are too big for us, and so we have to eat it again a day or so later.
And we shall, but in the process of searching for things to do with leftover pizza I also discovered that I have probably been reheating my pizza all wrong. I just reheat it in the oven sitting on baking paper in a baking tray. Well apparently that's Ok but it should be foil not baking paper and I should heat the tin and the foil before putting the pizza on top.
I have now researched quite a few sites telling you how to reheat pizza and almost unanimously they tell you to fry it. Although it's not that simple. First of all you heat your pan, then you add your pizza untl the bottom is crispy. Add a couple of drops of water - away from the pizza, put on the lid and cook until the cheese melts. See the diagram at left here because this is fundamentally what everyone suggested.
To make it even better and if it's a poor shop bought pizza you can add further toppings to your pizza before reheating. And there are a few suggestions on this - like this one from reddit:
"Just remember Tabasco sauce - It makes 3 day old Pizza taste like 2 day old Pizza"
Or Nigella who, being slightly more sophisticated - only slightly - posted on Instagram this photograph with these words:
"Now this is what I call a breakfast: leftover pizza from my Friday night @asap.pizza order, reheated and topped with a poached egg and a splodge of chilli crisp." Nigella Lawson
Or here's a reddit variation:
"I usually just crack an egg in a pan and put the pizza into the egg topping side first. Flip after 5 minutes to get the other side hot too!
Best to do that in a non-stick pan though or the cheese will stick.
Various people also suggested a variation on this - a kind French toast, whereby you douse your slice of pizza in the usual French toast custard mix, fry it until golden and the serve with other stuff - bacon - even the American maple syrup.
That reddit page had a whole range of suggestions.
Ernest101au suggested making a sandwich - as did others. Mostly a toasted or fried one:
"Put two pieces together so the toppings in the middle. Put in sandwich press. Profit."
said Ernest.
Others expanded on the idea by using a waffle iron - as here - still others recommended adding more cheese if the cheese was a bit sparse.
I guess it's a pretty good solution if you are dealing with a thin crust pizza shop kind of pizza, after all pizza is really just a kind of bread isn't it? You could even scrape off the topping and just use the crust. But that would be wasteful. Somebody else suggested rolling it around a hot dog - or a sausage, and somebody pondered on tacos. Fundamentally though I guess the possiblities for a sandwich kind of thing are pretty endless.
Here I will say that virtually all of the ideas that I found for leftover pizza came from 'ordinary folk' - with that one exception of Nigella. The Guardian had nothing to offer other than this Pizza crust rouille from their waste not want not man Tom Hunt. I'm including it, but I don't think it really counts, as he only uses the crusts, so frankly you might as well be doing this with bread. And then you dip the real pizza crusts into the dip. I'm sure the dip - or rouille - is lovely, but not really what I was looking for. Plenty of recipes for pizza of all kinds, but nothing on what to do with the leftovers. And Hugh Fearnley-Whittngstall doesn't cover it either. Maybe they would all agree with this reddit commenter: "Wait. I don't get it. "Leftover" pizza?"
To continue - because the rest of the world which either buys in pizza from Dominos and the like or buys frozen pizza from the supermarket has leftovers. Maybe even some of those who cook their own, because they don't like to not have enough.
So the next suggestion is pizza fries:
"The world becomes a new unexplored pizza paradise when you have pizza fries to work with. Consider the possibilities: chili pizza fries, loaded pizza fries — heck, why not make pizza poutine?"
This one came, I think from the Tasting Table website which had 18 creative ways to use leftover pizza which covered most of the ideas that people came up with. For the fries, they said: All you need to do to make pizza fries is: "Cut pizza into strips; Bake them until crisp". Elsewhere people suggested scraping off the toppings and adding your own, whilst others suggested adding more cheese.
Lasagne. I first found this one on the Giordanos website (they are obviously a chain of pizza shops or makers) who had a pretty good blog post called 10 things to do with leftover pizza. Lasagne was one of them, but not unique to them. Others had the same idea. Some used the pizza bases as the lasagne sheets, some chopped the pizza up and used it as part of the filling. Once you have the idea I'm sure you can see ways of making it work.
Similarly there are the bread pudding kinds of things - and frittatas.
For both of these you cut your pizza into pieces, soak it in a milky, creamy, eggy mixture, add various other things to the mix to taste, then bake in the oven, or in the case of the frittata fry/bake in a pan as for frittata. People also suggested adding chopped pizza to scrambled eggs, but I think it would be tricky to manage that time-wise.
Pizza rolls. This is another good idea - initially found on the Giordano's website, but found elsewhere as well. I confess I don't really understand this one really. Well I don't understand the way you roll them up. The instructions clearly say to roll up a pizza slice from the outside and then bake - with or without cheese and other stuff sprinkled over them. But then they have photographs like this, which don't really seem to correspond to what they say. I think you are more likely to end up with a croissant kind of shape than a pinwheel aren't you? And, again, you need a thin base. Also they recommend warming the pizza first to make it more pliable.
Croutons, stuffing, breadcrumbs.
As you can see there are at least three ways of making croutons. The first demonstrates somebody's suggestion of stacking them to avoid too much cheese mess as you bake them in the oven and that one obviously used the whole pizza, not just the crust/base. The croutons on the soup, I'm guessing, only use the crust or the base. The topping of the pizza has been either scraped off or the outside crust has been cut off. Ditto probably for the last ones, although these tip over into biscuits rather than croutons. And they are very thin, so either the base was sliced in half or the original base was very thin anyway. Perfect for dips though. And of course you can always add a coating of your own devising. Lots of uses for croutons of course, besides soup - salad being the main one I guess.
Stuffing and breadcrumbs are sort of the same thing and stuffing is just one way of using up breadcrumbs. There are thousands of ways of using up breadcrumbs. My favourite of the moment is to toast them in the oven (or fry) with a little oil and then sprinkle over a pasta dish. Two ways with the leftover pizza - as for the croutons, remove the topping or just use the crust, or just blitz the whole thing. Which is what I would do. Why lose all that flavour? As I said recently blitzing is an excellent way of dealing with things like leftover this and that.
Maybe you could even blitz sufficiently that you could make a kind of meatball or fritter - with an egg of course, and other stuff as well, depending on how much was already there on the pizza, although but you would need an egg to hold it all together.
Kebabs. This was marginally innovative I thought. In a way it's a variation on croutons, because you start in the same way by cutting your pizza into chunks. This time however, you thread them onto skewers with whatever else you fancy and grill. Dipping sauce is your choice too.
Or I also saw somebody say that you roll your pizza around a skewer and then grill, however I cannot find a picture of this one, so don't know if it would work. There were various pictures of pizza dough strips intertwined with bits of ham and other stuff, but not the same really, although I guess you could use the same folding technique with your actual slightly warmed and flexible leftover pizza. Cut it into strips and fold on to a skewer.
As I have said earlier on, this is an 'ordinary' people's problem and so the solutions themselves need to be 'ordinary'. Quick, easy and cheap without fancy ingredients. I find it really heartening to find forums like reddit with 'ordinary' people, the majority of whom are young I am guessing, suggesting interesting, not 'ordinary' things to do with a common leftover problem. Now can you think of something else?
YEARS GONE BY
March 17
2024 - Pierogi from Poland
2022 - A mixed bag
2020 - Deleted
2017 - In between summer and autumn
Have acquired an air fryer Good for reheating. Not tried yet.