How Your Next Pizza Night Can Start With A Simple Potato

Making homemade pizza instead of paying for delivery or settling for a frozen pizza of dubious quality sounds great in theory, but in actual fact, it can be kind of complicated. Okay, so making pizza sauce from scratch isn't too difficult, but DIY pizza crust is a whole learning process. If you reenvision pizza as a baked potato topper (or jacket potato, if you speak British English), though, this can be a game changer. While there are various recipes for making gluten-free and vegan pizza crusts using mashed potatoes as a main ingredient, one super-simple version that's been making the rounds of the internet for the past few years involves nothing more than a smashed baked potato. (After all, isn't the best homemade pizza the easiest to make?)

To make a smashed potato crust, begin by baking a potato (or microwaving it, if you'd like to save time). After the potato is baked, smash it under a heavy frying pan, then either saute it in oil for about eight minutes on one side or bake it in a 350-degree Fahrenheit oven for 20-30 minutes. If you're going with the latter method, you can do a kind of reverse stuffed crust by sprinkling grated parmesan or cheddar cheese in the baking pan and then plopping the potato on top. You can also coat the potato with garlic butter to enhance its pizza-esque flavor.

Once the smashed potato is beginning to crisp up on the outside, it's probably sturdy enough to add the toppings. The first to go on would be the sauce, which can either be a standard tomato sauce or a white sauce, barbecue sauce, or Buffalo sauce, depending on what you've planned for the other toppings. Add some grated cheese, too. Mozzarella is traditional for good reason since it has the perfect fat-water balance to melt without becoming greasy. It also browns more evenly than other cheeses, but if you're a St. Louis native you get a pass for using Provel.

Unless you're a pizza purist, you'll probably want a few other toppings. Basil leaves would turn the tomato-mozzarella combo into a Margherita pizza, while pepperoni is always classic. Ham and pineapple would give you a Hawaiian-style pizza potato, while barbecue sauce, red onions, bacon, and a fried egg would turn it into an Aussie potato pie. Use Buffalo sauce and chicken for a Buffalo chicken pizza (duh), supplementing the mozzarella with a sprinkling of blue cheese crumbles.

Once your potato pizza has been topped, return it to the oven one last time. It may take up to 20 minutes to melt the cheese and cook the toppings, but keep an eye out to make sure the potato "crust" doesn't get too crispy.