Keeping frozen pizzas on hand is such a handy kitchen hack.

By starting with a pre-made frozen, you have taken almost all of your traditional prep time and cut it more than in half. The greatest thing about this hack is that you can make it different every time and the combination options are limitless. Here’s a few tips on how to get the most out of this hack and upgrade your frozen pizzas.

Get a Good Base

To start off, it’s important that you have a good foundation to build on. I prefer to pick up cheese pizzas for this reason. They are blank canvases that you can build any flavor profile on.

When picking your base consider things like what the crust is made of. Sometimes I like to get cauliflower crusts, but my go to is typically a thin crust cheese pizza. You also have options of stuffed crust, deep dish and traditional hand tossed available as starting points.

Since the ultimate goal of this hack is to elevate the frozen pizza experience, this is not the time to grab the least expensive pizza on the shelf. Spending a little more on a good quality pizza could be the first step to getting the most out of this hack.

Choose Quality Toppings

For this hack to be successful, I cannot stress this enough. Get QUALITY ingredients to go on top of your pizza:

•  Fresh Veggies
•  Gourmet Cheeses – who can say no to extra cheese
•  Fresh Herbs and Spices
•  Artisinal Meats
• Explore about non-traditional toppings like BBQ chicken or a breakfast pizza

The battle is won in the details with this hack. You don’t need very many ingredients. Just good ones. In the pizza shown I only used 3 – fresh basil, red pepper flakes, and pan fried spicy salami.

Don’t Forget the Crust

While your pizza is still frozen and wrapped in the plastic take a fork and poke holes in the bottom of the crust. This will allow space for hot air to enter and you’ll end up with a more thoroughly cooked crust. After you’ve poked holes, allow the pizza to defrost completely before baking it. Baking from frozen can leave your dough feeling wet and underbaked in some areas depending on crust thickness.

Show your crust some love. Add more flavor to your pizza by brushing a garlic butter on your crust. If you don’t want to make garlic butter you can brush the edges with olive oil and dust with an Italian seasoning and garlic powder.

Place your pizza directly on the rack, Trust me. I didn’t want to try this either but I finally caved and baked it on the rack and it’s how I should have been doing it all along. Bake at 10 degrees higher than directed and check on it 5 minutes under the recommended cook time. For easy removal you can bake on a pizza stone. If you don’t have one, keep the cardboard insert to help you get the pizza in and out of the oven. You’ll use an oven mitt and the cardboard insert (or a cutting board) to insert and remove the pizza.

Finish Strong

Just because the pizza is out of the oven doesn’t mean the hack is done. At this point you can add more cheese, additional fresh herbs and spices or sauces and drizzles. Here’s a few good additions:

• Balsalmic Glaze
• Basil Pesto Drizzle
• Buffalo Sauce Drizzle
• Garlic Butter Drizzle
• Italian Seasoning
• Crushed Red Pepper
• Fresh Cracked Pepper
• Fresh Oregano
• Fresh Basil
•  Fresh Cilantro
•  Parmesan Cheese

Hot Honey Drizzle shown

Flavor Favorites

As a bonus, here are a few of my favorite combinations I’ve tried using this hack on a plain cheese pizza.