Grilled Chicken Pizza

We've had great weather here where we live, so we've been grilling out a lot lately. I've been looking for new grilling recipes to try!

I found this one in Family Circle Magazine and it looked good to me, but I was a little nervous to try it out. The reason being that we're not exactly maverick in our food preparation. We tend to make pizza in the oven, the way our ancestors did. We grill burgers and steaks, not pizza.

After our pizza success last week, I decided to jump in with both feet!

Grilled Chicken Pizza


Chicken

6 bone-in chicken thighs or bone-in chicken breasts
salt
pepper
1 tsp paprika
olive oil

Crust and Toppings

1 canister refrigerated pizza dough
2 tbsp olive oil
1/2 c jarred pizza sauce
2 c shredded mozzarella cheese
2 tbsp grated Parmesan cheese
3 tbsp shredded fresh basil leaves

1. Prepare chicken. Rub chicken with olive oil, sprinkle with salt and pepper and paprika. Place on baking sheet and bake at 350 degrees for 45-60 minutes. Allow chicken to cool slightly and shred.


2. Roll crust on a lightly floured surface and let rest.


3. Heat gas grill to medium. Brush pizza dough with some olive oil. Transfer dough to grill, oiled side down. Brush dough top with olive oil. Cover and grill, 3 minutes. Using tongs and a spatula, flip over dough.
   


4. Working quickly, spread pizza sauce on dough and top with mozzarella cheese and chicken. Grill 2-3 minutes or until cheese is melted.


5. Remove pizza to cutting board and top with grated Parmesan and fresh basil and serve.

Now, this was very good, but D wanted me to warn you about something! As the resident griller in our house, he did quite a bit of the work for this meal. Here's what he had to say about it:

"Make sure they know that they have to own a rolling pin to roll out the dough and they need to have all the toppings out at the grill before they start!"

I guess I never mentioned that we don't own a rolling pin. Its not really one of those things that I ever needed. So, instead of rolling my pizza dough out into circles, our dough was in the shape of a square (the way it was when it came out of the canister) and then I cut it in half diagonally so it would fit on the grill.

So folks, the moral of the story is, the pizza was yummy (and it had a nice char-grilled flavor), but the difficulty was a little higher than just popping a pizza in the oven.