Gateaux1

What do you do when you can’t decide between BBQ, pizza and macaroni and cheese? You combine them all into one!

Behold: The Pulled Pork Mac & Cheese Deep Dish Pizza!Thanks to Utah Pork for sponsoring this post!

OK, let’s get this part out of the way first. Is this technically a pizza? I have no idea. It’s got a crust with sauce and toppings so on a super basic level I’d say that makes it a pizza, but I’m sure there are plenty of pizza purists out there who would disagree with me on that. I do know one thing though — it was absolutely delicious! 

I started off by making some macaroni and cheese and spooning it into a 6″ springform pan that I put in my freezer for a few hours until it was frozen through. Then I popped the mac & cheese disc out, coated it in flour, dunked it in a mixture of eggs and milk, covered it in panko breadcrumbs and put it back in the freezer while I waited for my deep fryer oil to heat up.If you’re having trouble with the macaroni and cheese disc sticking to the springform pan you can run a knife around the inside of the pan and then use a spatula between the bottom of the pan and the mac & cheese disc to separate it. You can also just flip the pan over and run a little bit of warm water over the bottom of it until the macaroni and cheese disc separates.

My crust was about two inches thick and took 15 minutes at 375° to cook all the way through in the fryer. The cooking time will vary depending on the thickness of your crust though, so I’d recommend just checking it periodically by sticking a toothpick into it. You can also use a thermometer to check it. The pizza will still go into the oven once the toppings are added so the most important part of this step is to just make sure that none of the macaroni and cheese is frozen anymore.If you don’t have a deep fryer or a heavy skillet to use for frying you can bake your crust in the oven as well, but if you go that route you’re probably going to want to double your cooking time. Either way, just check it every five minutes or so and you’ll be good.

Once my crust was ready I topped it with BBQ sauce, shredded cheese, pulled pork and sautéed red onions and jalapeños and baked it in my oven for ten minutes at 350°.

Why top the pizza with pulled pork? Well, aside from being super easy to cook and a great value, pork is absolutely packed with protein. Eating 20 to 30 grams of protein per meal helps fuel your body and may help you feel fuller, which works our perfectly because every three ounces of pork is packed full of 22 to 24 grams of protein depending on the cut.I’ve included a really simple recipe below for pulled pork in a slow cooker which will leave you with a lot of leftovers, but if you don’t need quite that much pulled pork or you’re in a hurry you can also just buy your pulled pork straight from the grocery store. As far as recipes goes though it really doesn’t get much easier than pulled pork in a slow cooker.

Plus if you have extra pulled pork you can use it for things like Pulled Pork Crunch Wraps, Pulled Pork Flatbreads, Pulled Pork Taquitos or Pulled Pork Tater Tot Nachos.I even had enough macaroni and cheese left over to make a couple mini pizzas using some smaller springform pans that I had. I actually almost preferred these smaller pizzas to the larger one because instead of slicing them up you can just pick them right up and take bites out of them. Were they a little messy to eat? Of course! Was it worth the mess? Absolutely!