Meat for Pizza Question Pizza Discuss Meat for Pizza Question in the Brick Oven Cooking forums; Question regarding the topping of Italian sausage, or other meats- do you precook sausage for topping pizzas? I know pepperonis ...

[timo]

Question regarding the topping of Italian sausage, or other meats- do you precook sausage for topping pizzas?

I know pepperonis are OK to top, but raw meat I am thinking should be precooked. Thanks much for any insight!


Timo

[BrianShaw]

I know that some people do, but I don't. Personally, I like my sausage "just done" and don't mind if the pizza is slightly greasy.

[DrakeRemoray]

I always precook the sausage. I don't think it has time to cook on the pizza. Plus you risk cross contaminating your ingredients if you have raw pork on your make table.

Drake

[BrianShaw]

Originally Posted by DrakeRemoray

Plus you risk cross contaminating your ingredients if you have raw pork on your make table.

TNX, Drake, I was just coming back to address this issue. I think this is the primary reason (plus easier handling) that the commercial pizza joints use cooked meat products, if not otherwise cured.

I'm anxious to see other opinions on the "cookedness" issue. I've never noticed a problem (but admit to liking slightly pink pork) and have never knowingly poisoned eaters of my pizza or any other food. Please note that I intentionally wrote "knowingly".

[texassourdough]

Hi Timo!

I actually BRIEFLY boil my pepperoni to reduce the oiliness. It crisps up really nicely in the oven. I also cook my Italian sausage but mainly to get it into reasonable size chunks. On a sparse WFO pizza it will cook fine. For other meats it is mixed. I usually cook pancetta because I buy it in "thick" slices so I make a dice of it, fry it crisp and finish with it. I would tend to fry thick bacon for the same reason, but I use thin bacon raw. I shave guanciale and always put it on raw and it cooks beautifully on the pizza and bleeds beautiful pure pork fat onto the pie!

Because of contamination I agree that it is preferable to precook. However, there are some pies where you want the fat and that is when I use raw!

Jay

[BrianShaw]

Originally Posted by texassourdough

...and bleeds beautiful pure pork fat onto the pie!

Oh my... I'm salivating and can't stop!

[dmun]

There are raw meat contamination issues, but trichinosis is pretty much a thing of the past.

Infection was once very common, but is now rare in the developed world. The incidence of Trichinosis in the U.S. has decreased dramatically in the past century.

[timo]

Thanks for the quick helpful responses! I used to work at a pizza place in Waukegan, IL called The Quonset. Just wondering, anyone ever here of it?

They always ground and seasoned their pork and I placed pounds and pounds of it, raw, on pizzas. They were baked at about 450-480.

To this day when people from out of town visit, a pie from Quonset is on their list of to-do's while in town.

I think I will play it safe and precook. Maybe I'll have to experiment on my own, though. Mmm.

[tomtom]

I like to use fresh Italian Sausage wrapped in a casing. Cut the end of the casing. This will give you a hole that you can squeeze pieces of sausage thru. I like doing it this way because I can load up a pizza with small pieces of sausage. They are small so they cook real quick in a hot oven. Before I take the pizza out I will raise the pizza up towards the roof to give it a little extra blast of heat. Get the best sausage you can. Im luckey. We have some great Italian markets around here. Sausage onion. Sausage mushroom. Sausage mushroom onion. Their all good.
Tom

[BrianShaw]

Originally Posted by tomtom

Sausage onion. Sausage mushroom. Sausage mushroom onion.

Wow, Tom.... what kind of Italians do you have in MO? We only get: Sweet, Hot, and no-fennel where I live!