Raw mushrooms and peppers: how do I prep them so they're most delicious on pizza?

Just dice the peppers up into thin strips or small, easily cooked pieces and the mushrooms will cook down on their own. I add fresh veggies to frozen cheese pizzas all the time and they cook just fine. 20 minutes is plenty of time for them to soften and bake with the pizza.

Pizza parlors add fresh, raw veggies that have not been sauteed. Mmm…yellow peppers…don;t forget the black olives! :-)

The best way to do mushrooms is to saute them with a lot of garlic before putting them on the pizza. They taste soooooooo much better. Slice them thinly too, that also helps.

Toss them in olive oil and roast them first. I’d saute the mushrooms in a bit of oil, first.

EDIT: @coloma, my very Italian grandfather did the same thing. He’d buy cheap grocery store cheese pizzas, then cover the pizza (until you could no longer see it) with mushrooms, peppers, tomatoes, olives…and quite frankly anything left in the fridge. Then, bake it as normal…no special prep whatsoever.

I would lightly saute them in olive oil, salt and pepper. I have tried just putting them on pizza raw, even made-from-scratch pizza, and they don’t cook satisfactorily that way.

No need to sautee the veggies, they will roast on top of the pizza in the oven. I like my mushrooms sliced fairly thick, it gives the pizza a much better texture (they have a bite, kind of like meat does) so I ususally get 4 slices out of each mushroom. I would slice the peppers a little bit on the thin side, so that the flavor permeates the cheese, also so they aren’t still raw tasting or too crunchy.

Note: I would also add some chopped sundried tomatoes to this pizza, to make it really killer.

Usually veggies are added to a pizza thinly sliced and raw, so they roast on the pizza, and that’s the way I like them best.

Is anyone feeling hungry right now, besides me? How lucky that I have mushrooms, peppers and a frozen pizza here!

Amazingly, I had a gluten free pizza for lunch just prior to this q @Kardamom ;)

Cook ‘em

Pizza is supposed to be fast food. It aint fast if you have to cook everything before you start. If the mushrroom or pepper or whatever won’t cook in the time you have the thing in the oven then your slicing it too thick (or the ovens too cold).

Every time I have tried to cook a pizza with raw veggies like that, they dry up but stay raw. I even tried drizzling them with olive in oil in hopes to create some kind of frying action.

@Skaggfacemutt if the veggies are staying raw you’re probably not slicing them thinly enough, or you’re covering them with cheese.

Yes, I have been covering them with cheese. Is that what I am doing wrong?

@Skaggfacemutt Yes. The cheese needs to be beneath the veg for the veggies to bake thoroughly.

@SpatzieLover Oh, well that explains a lot.

If you cut them super thin, they should just cook right on top of the pizza, no need to cook them before hand.

Just slice, dice and sprinkle on top. (I used to be a pizza chef at an Italian restaurant), That’s what I did.

Also, don’t cut them too thin, unless you are going to put cheese on top of them to “insulate” them. Not to thick either. Just imagine the size of them on a pizza from Pizza Hut . . . they’re that size for a reason! LOL

@Kardamom Yes, hungry. Ready for something that fits your description. Hmmm, mmmm !!
And good advice that the veggies will cook on the pizza, no need to cook them prior.
Maybe a marinade…..

Slice, dice or however you wish them to be then saute them just a little and viola put them on your Pizza !

Thanks everybody! I put them on raw, above the cheese, fairly thinly sliced, and it was awesome.