5 Minute Ovenless Pizza

Hack your way to a delicious, thin and crispy pizza in only 5 short minutes using nothing but your stove top. Genius!

I’d recommend spending a few moments reading the following for useful information and tips on making this 5 minute ovenless pizza. If you’d prefer though, skip to the middle of the page for step-by-step instructions or jump to the bottom for quick recipe.

Note that 5 minutes is the approximate time to make this dish once all of your ingredients are assembled. Actual preparation times may vary slightly due to factors like knife skills and how quickly your hob heats up.

Easy peasy

This recipe was born one unfortunate day when my oven decided to break. (Which is always fun when you’re a busy working mum and food blogger!) This meant that options for making dinner were suddenly very limited. On this particular day, it just so happened that it was pizza night in our house so my family and I had our hearts set on a traditional crispy, cheesy pizza for our dinner.

I really wanted to avoid getting an expensive and unhealthy takeaway one, so rather than disappoint everyone, I decided to create this quick 5 minute ovenless pizza recipe which turned out to be delicious, healthy and ridiculously quick. My family and I were very happy!

How it works

For this 5 minute ovenless pizza, I use a white tortilla wrap as the base which is perfect as the thinness means it cooks super quickly and also replicates nicely the delightfully thin base of a traditional Italian pizza. The base ends up lovely and crispy whilst the cheese on top melts and oozes perfectly. Although in it’s raw state a white tortilla is rather ‘floppy’, I’ve found that after crisping up in the pan, it firms up and holds it’s shape much better, so the toppings don’t fall off when it’s picked up and eaten.

What toppings to choose?

Of course, there are endless combinations of toppings you could use, however for these 5 minute ovenless pizzas, I’ve chosen toppings that have very little preparation required, with flavours that blend well together and that also heat through quickly, to ensure the whole time it takes to make one pizza falls comfortably within the 5 minute mark.

Time saving tips

I recommend using pre sliced olives and these are easy to purchase in tins or jars to avoid having to chop them yourself. Of course, you can slice whole olives if you’d prefer but this takes up precious time and might take the whole preparation time beyond the magic 5 minute mark. You can even also use whole olives if you’d like to but I personally find they are a bit too chunky in this particular ovenless pizza as the base is so thin, meaning that large-sized toppings can ‘swamp’ the whole dish.

The only real ingredients prep you need to do is tear up the prosciutto and the mozzarella by hand. I find that hand tearing these two ingredients is quicker than cutting them up with a knife, plus there is something surprisingly enjoyable – almost therapeutic – about ripping up ingredients with your bare hands. Some might call it stress relief! Also, some people would argue that hand-torn mozzarella is more authentically Italian anyway so that’s another bonus to using this method in your preparation.

Tortillas are excellent to use in many quick meals, such as these 10 minute quesadillas and I often find I’ve got a few leftover after using a pack in such a recipe. These 5 minute ovenless pizzas are perfect to use up such leftover wraps as I find that otherwise they can end up drying out after a few days and being thrown away. Many of us are becoming increasingly conscious about food waste so this recipe is the perfect way to reduce that whilst creating something really delicious in the process.

5 minute ovenless pizza – step by step

Now lets take a look at a useful step by step guide to making the perfect ovenless pizza, with handy photos to guide you in the process.

STEP BY STEP GUIDE;

1) To start with, grab a medium sized dry frying pan (don’t put any oil or butter in it) and pop it on your stovetop on medium-high heat.

2) Next, take one large white tortilla wrap (approx. 25cm / 10 inches in size) and place it on a clean surface. Then dollop 2 level tablespoons of tomato paste onto the tortilla base. Spread this tomato paste around evenly, leaving about a 1cm tomato-free rim around the edges. You can use a knife for this if you want, but I just use the back of the spoon as this gets the job done quicker and leaves you with less washing up!

3) Make sure your hands are nice and clean, then grab 60g (2oz) of fresh mozzarella (drained weight). There should be no need to measure or weigh it, as this is works out at about 1/2 of a ball of mozzarella. Tear up the mozzarella into approx 1-2cm sized pieces and sprinkle evenly on top of the tomato covered base.

4) Next, take 1 slice of prosciutto and tear this with your hands into 2-3cm sized pieces. Scatter these pieces evenly on top of the tomato and cheese.

4) Finally, throw on top of everything 2 tablespoons of sliced black olives..

5) Now it’s time to get cooking! Place the finished tortilla into the preheated pan and immediately cover it with a lid. Cook for 2 minutes. After this time, the cheese will have melted and the base will be nice and crispy, mmmm.

6) Carefully remove the cooked tortilla from the pan and transfer it to a plate. To add some vibrant, green colour and extra peppery flavour, finish it off with a few scattered rocket (arugula) leaves and serve. Delicious!