An outdoor pizza oven is a significant investment, but they’re so worth it! You can cook much more than just pizza in them, and you’ll be surprised at how often you’ll use this new equipment. Not only that, but it even has the potential to become your new favorite cooking appliance!
While the name suggests it’s a one-trick pony, a pizza oven can change the entire trajectory for your home-cooked meals. Just like kitchen ovens, pizza ovens can be used to cook a wide range of foods. Let’s take a look at some of the most exciting things you can do with a pizza oven.
Learning To Cook In A Pizza Oven
So, a wood-fired pizza oven is effective for cooking much more than just pizza. But what else do you have the opportunity to cook? In the most basic terms, you can cook anything in a pizza oven that you’d cook in a traditional oven. A pizza oven and traditional oven can be used interchangeably.
But once you cook something in a pizza oven, you might never go back to your kitchen! Many people think that cooking food in a pizza oven tastes better than in a conventional oven. The fact that it uses a wood fire to cook the food gives your meals a smoky flavor that cannot be achieved from a traditional oven.
Once you have purchased and set up your pizza oven, we recommend that you start cooking with it what it was intended for – pizza. While you might be excited to try new things in your pizza oven, it’s best to learn through the manufacturer’s instructions. These will most likely detail pizza.
After a few attempts, you should get to know your oven. Pizza ovens, just like any other cooking appliance that uses fire, tend to have their own quirks that make each one unique. So, you’ll need to learn these before cooking other foods so that you don’t ruin anything.
Foods Other Than Pizza – What Will You Choose?
Now that you’re happy with the knowledge of how to use your pizza oven correctly, or are content with learning as you go, it’s time to choose what meal you’re going to cook first! Here are a few of the most popular things to cook in a pizza oven:
- Baked or grilled fish
- Seared meats
- Roasted vegetables
- Slow-cooked meats
- Smoked meats
- Roasted potatoes, wedges, or baked potatoes
- Flatbreads and other types of bread
- Cakes, cookies, brownies, and other baked goods
These are just some of the foods that we’ve found to be effective at cooking in a pizza oven. Using a wood-fired oven is an excellent way to put a new spin on beloved meals. Whenever you’re getting bored of the same old dish, find new ways to liven it up!
Our favorite way of doing this is with a pizza oven. You can bake, roast, fire, and sear all kinds of food – the opportunities are endless!
How To Cook All Foods In A Pizza Oven?
While you can cook almost everything in a pizza oven that you normally would make in a traditional oven, you need to be mindful of a few key differences.
Cooking temperatures, positioning, and cooking time will all need to be adjusted slightly in your recipes. Don’t be discouraged if you don’t get it right the first time round – it just takes some trial and error!
Cooking Temperatures
Your pizza oven’s manual might tell you that the ideal cooking temperature for a wood fired pizza is 400 degrees. However, if you’re planning on cooking roast beef in your pizza oven instead, you’ll want the temperature to rise to only 200 degrees.
Hotter temperatures than this would dry the meat out and leave it tough and chewy. Try and stick to the recipe of what you’re making when it comes to cooking temperatures. The recipe will have taken into account the optimal temperature for cooking, so it’s best to follow this advice rather than the generic advice for cooking pizza.
Food Positioning
You’ll find, as you make more foods with your pizza oven, that some taste better when cooked nearer the flame than others. You can have fun experimenting with the position of your food and whether it tastes better by the flames or by the embers.
Type Of Wood
The type of wood you use for the fire will alter the taste of your food. If you’re unsure about what type of wood to use for different foods, Google has some excellent answers for you. Or you could have fun experimenting with different flavors!
For example, we tested cherry, hickory, and oak when making our roast beef. We found cherry to be our favorite, but you might think differently! Enjoy the excitement of learning about woods and their flavors.
Tools And Accessories You’re Using
Pizza ovens get much hotter than a traditional oven, so you need to be sure that you’re using the correct tools. Most of your current kitchen tools should suffice, but any with rubber or silicone on them might not be able to withstand the highest temperatures of the oven.
You can also experiment with other accessories such as foil, wire racks to create sear marks, and more. Our personal favorite is using our dutch oven within our pizza oven. It’s oven inception!
Summary
Thank you for reading our article on other foods to cook in your pizza oven. Unlike the name suggests, you don’t need to be confined to cooking only pizzas. You might even find that your pizza oven becomes the most used appliance on your property!
You can make anything that you’d usually use a traditional oven for, in a pizza oven. All you’ll need to do is adjust cooking times and temperatures to make sure that everything cooks correctly and is safe to eat. So, now you know that the possibilities are endless with your pizza oven, what are you going to cook first?