My friends, your pizza problems are a thing of the past.
Imagine: You got yourself an entire pizza because that meal plan isn’t going to spend itself. Or maybe you threw a pizza party and ordered way too much from your favorite pizza delivery place. Either way, you’re left with the greatest of gifts: leftover pizza.
Now, you could eat it cold and cold pizza is good, cold pizza is great, but by now we all know that if you want to reheat that sucker and taste its former glory again, things could end up a little… soggy. Yes, a limp crust is the curse of leftovers everywhere, but shed no tears and be afraid no more! I am here to tell you that there is a better way. For truly sublime second servings, use a frying pan.
Consider this your illustrated guide to pizza that is not only as good as it was when it came out of the oven, but can be even better. This is pizza with a hot, gooey top and a crust so crisp that it shatters as you bite into it. All you need is an extra minute and the most basic of cooking materials.
Prep Time: 0 minutes
Cook Time: 2 minutes
Total Time: 2 minutes
Servings: 1
Ingredients:
1 pizza slice
Salt
Pepper
Oil
Directions:
Start with two slices of your favorite pizza or one leftover jumbo slice from last night.
1. Turn the stove top as high as it will go and let the frying pan heat up while you put one of those slices in the microwave. 40 seconds should be enough for most slices and microwaves, but the proper time is simply however long it takes if you just wanted to reheat the slice.
2. Take these three things: a little oil, just enough to keep things from sticking, salt and pepper.
I like using olive oil for flavor, though its lower smoking point means a slightly longer fry time and slightly oilier pizza. Any objections to using oil for health reasons should have gone out the window anyway when you made the not-so-sober decision to grab an entire pizza last night.
3. You want those three things in your frying pan, like so.
4. The moment the oil starts to smoke, you want the hot pizza slice in there as well.
5. The crisping process is fast — about a minute, no more, if the frying pan is up to temperature. Take it out when the color of the bottom is somewhere between “starting to blacken” and “charred.” Don’t worry; the pepper is responsible for most of the dramatic blackness, not the carbonization of your precious pizza.
Here we see the difference between the two methods of reheating. The photo above shows normal reheating in the microwave. The photo below shows our stove-top method.
What are you waiting for? That slice in your hand is as good as it’s ever going to be; eat it!
Don’t have leftover pizza? Good news: making it yourself is super easy and super awesome!
Check out these awesome posts to find out how you can do it yourself: