How to BBQ Pizza - The Tests

Today, I'm going to show you some of the experimenting I did to see if it's possible to cook a pizza on a barbecue. Maybe everyone else wants a barbecue, but you fancy a pizza and you want to cook it outside. Maybe you're away camping, or maybe you're at home, but your oven's broken. So I started by tipping some charcoal into the barbecue, and I used lighting gel to help get it started nice and easily. You just squirt a load on, and light it up with a match. When the charcoal was nice and hot, I spread out the coals, put the grill on, and tried placing a pizza straight on top. Then I put the lid back on to act as an oven. After a few minutes, I could smell burning, so I took it off to have a look. It looked fine from the top, but the underside was a bit black, and it hadn't really warmed through yet. I decided to try again, but this time I let the coals die down, and moved them into two piles on the outside edge. The idea was that the heat is not so intense in the middle where the pizza is, and instead it rises from the sides around the pizza like an oven. This time I tried cooking a frozen pizza to see if it would help. It says it should take 13 to 16 minutes in an oven, but it didn't give any indications about barbecuing. I placed the pizza in the middle, same as before, and put on the lid. After around 10 minutes, it was looking pretty good, so I took it off to have a look. It was definitely nice and hot all the way through, but unfortunately the base had burnt again. Maybe if I'd taken it off sooner, it would have been okay, but I did want to make sure it was cooked all the way through. It was obvious that the heat from the coals was just too intense for the pizza. So I decided to try one of these pizza stones. It's a ceramic stone which you heat up first, then cook your pizza on. Normally they go in the oven, but I wanted to try it out on the barbecue. You're not supposed to put it over direct flames, so I let the coals die down and spread them out evenly again. I put the grill back on, placed on the pizza stone and lid to let it warm up. After a few minutes, I took another pizza, sat it on the stone and put the lid back on. You need to make sure you check it regularly, but using a pizza stone, you can get a delicious perfectly cooked barbecue pizza. Of course the stone is very very hot, so do be careful when handling it. A lot of people probably haven't got a pizza stone, so I wondered whether there was anything we could use instead and I decided to try a cupcake tray. The idea is the pizza will sit on top and the coals will make pockets of hot air in each hollow, which will cook the pizza but not burn it. So I placed the tray on the grill, then sat the pizza straight on top like this and put the lid back on to bake it. I kept on checking it and it didn't take long before it was smelling amazing and cooked all the way through. Carefully transfer it onto a chopping board and it's ready to serve. This time the base is really nice and not actually black. And if I lift it up to show you the underside, you can see the imprints from the cupcake tray and how the air pockets stopped it all from burning. Pretty cool, huh? I hope you enjoyed watching this video. If you do try barbecuing a pizza, you can let me know how you got on in the comments below. And if you want to see more of my videos like this, you can click on the links on the right hand side or take a look at my YouTube channel page. Stay safe, have fun and as always, thanks for watching.