Kids in the Kitchen Wednesday: Pizzas

Both the Wisconsin and Arkansas test kitchens make homemade pizzas for lunch and dinner pretty regularly. It's so much less expensive than carry out; and when made correctly it can actually be a pretty healthy dinner!

Why pizza?

 We've blogged before about the importance of giving kids ownership in making their food. This is a great way to have kids help, and if you introduce a variety of different vegetable toppings, kids are going to put them on their pizzas, and they will eat them. Bam- how easy is that?!

 Also, making homemade pizza can actually be faster than ordering, and waiting for delivery to arrive. 

Last week the Arkansas test kitchen made homemade pizzas; here is Doug's blog:

 We used Huffy Pizza Dough mix per the instruction. You will want A LOT of flour on your hands because the dough is sticky. Since we had 3 kids participating, we divided the dough into three equal size balls. We rolled then out on a well oiled cookie sheet, and baked for 3 minutes before topping.  We like a very thin crust so we spread it out very thin. I ended up using a rolling pin to make it as thin as possible.

 When it came to sauce, we used Contadina Pizza Squeeze, which was fast, easy, and yummy. Then we topped the pizzas with a shredded pizza cheese mix. Then the fun part... the toppings! My little dude only wanted pineapple (which is huge, since he does not eat a lot of fruit). Our niece wanted pineapple and ham, and finally my nephew wanted pineapple, ham, and sliced mushrooms.

The adults wanted a veggie pizza; so if there was a veggie in the house- it pretty much found its way onto the pizza.

Notes from the Kitchen:

There are a lot of great recipes for homemade pizza crust, but when you're in a hurry, the Huffy brand or even Boboli will work really well.

Pizza is a great way to get veggies into your kids diets, as well as lean proteins. Think about chicken, or even turkey pepperoni.

Don't limit yourself to just tomato sauce: the Wisconsin test kitchen regularly uses fresh basil pesto instead of marinara sauce- and the results are incredible.

We encourage you to try pizzas for dinner next week- it will be a fun cooking exercise for the kids, and a healthy meal the whole family will enjoy.

Stay Cool,
The Cool Dads Crew