Pie Iron Pizza
Two slices of bread, sauce, pepperoni, and cheese clamped in cast iron over coals.
- calories
- 520
- weight
- 6 oz
- cal / oz
- 87
- protein
- 21 g
- serves
- 1, scales
- prep
- 3 min
- cook
- 5 min
- total time
- 8 min
- water
- none
- cost
- $
Calorie and protein figures are my own estimates, good enough for planning a food bag and not meant as precise nutrition data.
- Dinner
- Lunch
- Campfire coals
- Car camping
- Basecamp
- Nut free
- Foil packet
- Grab and go
- Needs a cooler
- Basic
Ingredients
| Sandwich bread | 2 slices | soft white holds the seal better than dense whole grain |
|---|---|---|
| Pizza sauce | 2 tbsp | canned or a squeeze pouch |
| Sliced pepperoni | 8 to 10 slices | |
| Shredded mozzarella | 1/3 cup | |
| Olive oil or butter | 1 tsp | for the iron, not the sandwich |
Method
- Get the fire down to a bed of coals. Flames will scorch the bread before the cheese moves.
- Wipe the inside of both halves of the pie iron with oil or butter using a folded paper towel. The iron is hot. Use the handle.
- Lay one slice of bread in the greased half. Spoon on the sauce, then the pepperoni, then the cheese. Cap it with the second slice.
- Close and latch the iron. Hold it over the coals two minutes, flip, then three more.
- Open it and check. If the cheese is not fully melted, close it and give it another minute a side.
- Slide it onto a plate and let it sit a minute. The sauce comes out hotter than it looks.
This is a sealed sandwich, not a pizza, and the pie iron is what makes the difference. Clamping the two slices together traps steam inside, so the cheese melts before the outside burns. Grease the iron every single time. Bread welds itself to bare cast iron and you will spend longer scraping than cooking.
Coals over flames, always. Direct flame chars bread in under a minute while the center stays cold. Budget about five minutes per sandwich, which means one iron feeds one person at a time. For a group, run two or three irons in rotation or people eat in shifts. Everything here needs a cooler except the bread, so this is a car-camping recipe; the tortilla and hard-cheese variation is the version that travels without one.
Packing
Bread in a hard-sided container or it arrives as crumbs. Pepperoni and shredded cheese stay in the cooler. Sauce in a small squeeze bottle beats hauling a can you will only half use.
Variations
- Swap the sauce for pesto and the pepperoni for salami.
- Shelf-stable version: tortillas instead of bread, a pouch of tomato paste thinned with a splash of water, and a hard cheese you grate at camp. No cooler needed.
- Dessert run with the same iron: butter, bread, and a spoonful of jam.
https://www.boyscouttrail.com/content/recipe/pie_iron_pizzas-549.asp