Reworking leftover pizza into salad

John Freitag

A completed pizza salad sits ready for consumption in the apartment of Maxwell Reister, Wednesday Oct. 2, 2013.

Maxwell Reister Evergreen Food and Beer columnist
October 3, 2013

Leftover pizza is a sad sight – orphaned from its mother pie, which you devoured last night. You’re tempted to give it a home among its brethren in your belly, but can’t nutritionally justify eating pizza for two consecutive meals.

Despite its wonderful gooeyness and lip-smacking flavor, most pizza can’t satisfy all the nutritional requirements of the human body. While taste buds frolic in salt and grease, your body needs healthier fare to keep you operating at full capacity. Vegetables are the usual answer, but few college students get excited over a pile of leafy greens.

The solution is pizza salad, which welcomes abandoned slices into your diet and wards off scurvy with a generous helping of greens (which are way cooler now, because they get to hang out with pizza).

The idea behind pizza salad is to replace dry, tasteless croutons with something far more exciting: a handful of toasted, crunchy-yet-chewy, tomato-sauced slices of leftover pizza.

This recipe works best with leftover pizza, but it can also be used with a fresh slice if you want. I recommend a well-cheesed pizza, as the cheese will help keep the pizza ingredients from falling off your bits of pizza.

Your salad base can be as fancy or plain as you like. For an incredibly satisfying crunch, try a salad made with kale, purple cabbage, and cucumbers. One of the best qualities of salads is the variety of textures and flavors you can achieve in one bite, and these three vegetables all have nice chewiness and distinct flavors. Drizzle your favorite salad dressing on top for an extra dash of flavor and moisture.

Ingredients

  • One slice of leftover pizza
  • 1 cup of chopped kale
  • 1 cup of chopped red cabbage
  • ½ cucumber, sliced into chunks
  • 1 tbs. of salad dressing

Method

  1. Preheat your oven to 450°F, using the broil function.
  1. Chop the leftover pizza slice into crouton-size chunks.
  2. Place the pizza chunks in the oven and broil for less than three minutes.
  1. While the pizza get toasted, wash and combine salad ingredients.
  2. Put the pizza chunks on the salad and top with dressing.

Serves one guiltless person.