Featured comment
This is awesome! The crust is great and love the barbecue chicken. I used chipotle barbecue sauce for extra spice. Thanks for the great recipe!
Gina
I’ve always been fashionably late with… fashions.
Like Capris. As a brace-faced-bad-bangs 8th grader, I was convinced that I would never ever wear them. My friends went capri crazy but I resisted. As luck would have it, I came to realize that my friends were right and now I have a closet full of capris from my late-bloomer capri phase in the late 90’s. Sweet.
Twitter. I’ll get back to you on that one.
Jeggings. I didn’t want to wear them, like, this year. But then my sister told me they were cool so I bought them. And now I wear them all the time, and I’m crossing my fingers that the fad is still a fad and I’m not just 5 years behind the fashion train again.
Speaking of jeggings, do you wear them in the summer?
How? And why?
Mysteries.
So it figures that I’d be about 10 years late on the cauliflower crust fad with this BBQ Chicken Pizza, but I don’t care if I’m 100 years late on this one. All that matters is that I’ve arrived here at the point of making cheesy, filling pizzas that are secretly packed with vegetables.
I don’t mean to say that I donāt like cauliflower, cause I really love it. Er, I take it back. Love is a strong word. Does anyone truly LOVE cauliflower? {Update: I DO! A few batches of creamy cauliflower garlic rice later, I really do!}
Whether or not you love cauliflower is beside the question. This crust is a delicious alternative to traditional pizza crust and it holds up incredibly well under a mountain of toppings and a bucket of cheese. Wait, no no no, this is light and I didn’t put a bucket of cheese on top. I didn’t.
Don’t like BBQ Pizza? You’re weird. But you could actually still make this sneaky-healthy-crust and top it with whatever other weird-o toppings that you like, cause you’re weird like that.
Print
Light BBQ Chicken Pizza
- Total Time: 1 hour 10 minutes
- Yield: 8 1x
Description
This light BBQ chicken pizza has just 200 calories per slice thanks to a cauliflower pizza crust. Healthy, colorful, and full of BBQ flavor!
Ingredients
- 1 head cauliflower
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
- salt and pepper
- 1/2 cup cornmeal
- 2 eggs
- 2 teaspoons Italian seasoning
- 1/2 cup barbecue sauce
- 1 cup cooked, shredded chicken
- 3/4 cup shredded Mozzarella cheese
- thinly sliced red onions
- fresh cilantro
Instructions
- Chop the cauliflower into medium pieces. Heat a large skillet over high heat. Add the oil and heat until shiny. Place the cauliflower in the hot oil, stir to cover with oil, and place a lid on the skillet. Check skillet every few minutes to keep cauliflower from burning, but let it get a nice browned roasted outside. Continue to let cauliflower cook, covered, for about 10-15 minutes, or until tender-crisp. Let cool for a few minutes.
- Preheat the oven to 450. In a blender or large food processor, place eggs, cornmeal, and seasoning. Place cauliflower in blender and puree until you have a semi-smooth, thick batter. Cover a pizza pan with parchment paper and pour batter into the center of the paper. Spread until you have about a 1/2 inch thick crust or thinner if desired.
- Bake the crust for about 20 minutes, checking occasionally to keep from burning. I liked the crispy edges, so I recommend letting it brown a little bit more than a normal crust.
- While crust is cooking, coat chicken with barbecue sauce. When the crust is cooked through and golden brown, remove and top with barbecue chicken, half the cheese, red onion, and the rest of the cheese. Bake for 10-15 minutes or until cheese is melted and golden. Top with cilantro, slice, and serve!
- Prep Time: 30 mins
- Cook Time: 40 mins
- Category: Dinner
- Cuisine: American
Keywords: healthy pizza recipe, bbq chicken, bbq chicken pizza, pizza recipe
FYI, every time I type this little section at the bottom, I have to do some mad HTML coding. That’s right. I make cauliflower pizza crust and I do HTML coding.
I don’t even know who I am right now.
Post Update: I’ve continued the cauliflower craziness with a Healthy Fettucine Alfredo recipe that includes a cauliflower sauce. Click here to check it out.
Love this site as it has great recipes but this crust was disappointing. I made a different recipe at the same time I made this one the other one made me squeeze liquid from the cauliflower and with that made a great crust. Almost 2 cups of water came out. This crust was soggy and not pickable (not many toppings). Wonāt make it again.
Do you think the crust would still work if I substitute the cornmeal for almond meal? or nutritional yeast?
Hi Kim! We can’t say for sure since we haven’t tested the recipe with those substitutions. If you give them a try, we’d love to hear back!
The cornmeal crust was a little too sweet for my taste–plus it doesn’t fit into my diet–so I tried this recipe two different ways, substituting out the 1/2 cup cornmeal. For one I tried 1/2 cup Almond Meal, which I think is my favorite. For the other I tried 1/2 cup Nutritional yeast. The nutritional yeast crust turned out to be very flavorful but a bit salty. Maybe next time I eliminate the salt. A good compromise would be 1/4 cup of each in one crust.
If I could only get up the creativity & energy someday to make my own homemade pizza. I’m born and raised in Brooklyn and grew up eating all kinds of delicious Italian pizza. And I’m guilty of eating pizza the other day from Lorenzos in Philadelphia on South Street. They have humongous slices for $4.00 a slice and I ate 2 of them back to back. Thanks for this nice pizza blog. Maybe you can make a few good YouTube videos for us someday showing us how you make these award-winning dishes fresh from scratch? š
Thoughtful comment..Got some of my best BBQ. Recipes from this book.https://bit.ly/2IKTLM9
This recipe looks great. I make cauflower pizza crust a lot but I always squeeze the water out of the cauliflower and I donāt use corn meal. Does the crust come out nice and crispy and not flimsy without squeezing the water out?
Yay! Lindsay once again for the win! Made this last night when I had a friend over for dinner and we polished it off easily (leftovers? when will this recipe ever leave us with leftovers – it’s a mythical unicorn in my book). I’ll crisp it a tad longer in the oven next time (trust Lindsay!) and make it a teeny tiny bit thinner just to see what happens.
I have to agree Kara (above) – skipping the whole squeeze out the riced cauliflower is AWESOME. I’ve never made cauliflower crust before (because of that?) and this is now “my” recipe – no need to try any others! Yay. Thank you!
I feel like I should say something like “long time listener, first time caller” because I LIVE on your website and make so many recipes and also recommend it to all my friends and family. I just got “clean” after a December obsession/addiction with cashew coffee (I tell people to try it at their own risk now, since it’s so good). And I was eating two salads a day for weeks just so I could eat your miso dressing. I can’t even name all your recipes that I just LOVE and live off of (and have for years). Thank you so much for everything! xo
Awesome! Thanks so much for the comment, Julie!
This pizza is totally YUM! I made it exactly as directed. I’ve always made cauliflower crust pizza the “squeeze out the liquid as hard as you can” method. This roasted method (with the addition of the cornmeal) makes a far more delicious crust. My husband is eating it right now and can’t stop saying, “Delicious!”
The website won’t let me give this a 5-star rating–not sure why it is defaulting to 4.
Any suggestions for a cornmeal substitute? Would love to make this corn free and friendly for my family. Thanks!
I want to try this crust for when my gluten free bestie comes over for dinner. Since it calls for cornmeal, it is gluten free, correct? My friend is celiacs so I want to make doubly sure I don’t feed her stuff her body hates. Hope I can make this for her!!!
Hi, Julia! Cornmeal in itself is GF, but often it is processed or packaged in the same factory as gluten-containing products. Check the labels on the cornmeal you buy to make sure it’s GF. Sometimes sauces can contain gluten as well, so make sure your BBQ sauce it GF. Otherwise this is a great recipe for your friend!
We made it and loved it. I think we could have crisped the crust more but the strange thing is that it tasted a bit like turkey stuffing. Not the same consistency though. Only reason I can’t gI’ve it 5 stars is that my son thought it was terrible. Kids can have no sense of taste at times though.
Haha! Agreed, Bill. š
Hey! I just made this recipe for dinner and it was SO GOOD! YUM! I live by a low carb diet so naturally pizzas are not a common occurrence for me but worked really well as a low carb meal, I just had to find appropriate BBQ sauce and we’re good to go! I just reviewed it on my food blog at http://thetinykalemonster.tumblr.com/post/92277262757/bbq-chicken-pizza
Thanks, I love your recipes!