How to Make Healthy Pizzas
It’s Wednesday, and cooking is probably the last thing you want to do after a dreadful day of slugging your way through work. Albeit, I do try to start off the week by cooking at home, just so we don’t get into the bad habit of going out too many times during the week. Even though I love to cook, sometimes going to the store to gather ingredients for a recipe can be a bridge too far. That’s why I created this semi-homemade pizza recipe so that I can have it on hand when we need a quick and easy weeknight dinner.
How to Make a Homemade Pizza in 20 minutes
You can grab all these ingredients with two hands at the grocery store. You don’t have to… they have baskets, but I’m just saying that to say… there’s not that many complicated ingredients in this homemade spinach and artichoke pizza. If you’ve made a white pizza before, you know that the base is usually a garlic (alfredo-like) sauce that is sold in jars on the Italian isle. DON’T BUY THAT! Make your own instead! It’s super easy.
To make your own white pizza sauce at home, all you’ll need is.
– 2-3 fresh garlic cloves (minced)
– half and half (milk and cream)
– 1 small shallot (minced)
Trader Joe’s Cauliflower Pizza Crust Recipe
I’m taking some pages out of my girl Sandra Lee’s book and buying some of the pizza ingredients pre-made from Trader Joe’s. Getting pre-made pizza crust is a huge time saver in the kitchen and will cut down on a ton of cook and clean up time. A new popular healthy pizza crust option is this Cauliflower crust from Trader Joe’s. It isn’t quite as sturdy as regular crust, but it still tastes great! I highly recommend it, especially for a group of girls that love to stay health-conscious for a fun girls night!
Healthy Pizza Toppings
This easy to make spinach artichoke pizza is a perfect option if you’re wanting to ease into doing #MeatlessMonday. You really don’t miss the chicken or meat toppings on this pizza because the artichokes are so hearty! All grocery stores should have artichoke hearts in marinated oil that you can buy for topping your pizza.
As for the spinach on this pizza, you can opt to buy frozen chopped spinach or fresh spinach. The main difference between fresh and frozen spinach here is that you’ll have to spend some time squeezing out the excess water after you saute the fresh spinach. You can do this by hand, but it works best if you have a cheesecloth to wring the water out. I use fresh spinach most of the time.
Homemade Spinach Artichoke Pizza with White Garlic Sauce
– garlic
-half and half (milk)
– small shallot
Pizza Topping Ingredients
– 1 bag of fresh spinach or package of frozen spinach
– 1 jar of marinated artichokes
– feta chese
– grape tomatoes
– bacon lardons (optional)
Healthy Spinach Artichoke Pizza with White Garlic Sauce
Take store-bought pizza crust and turn it into something amazing when you make your own sauce and use fresh ingredients like spinach and artichokes!
Ingredients
- 1/4 cup shallot minced
- 3 cloves fresh garlic minced
- 8 oz cream half and half
- 1 bag fresh spinach About 5 cups raw spinach
- 1/2 cup marinated artichokes handful
- grape tomatoes halved
- 1/2 cup crumbled feta cheese
Instructions
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Saute raw spinach over medium heat. Spinach contains a lot of water so you won't need much olive oil.
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Cook spinach for about 3-4 minutes until wilted. Transfer over to sink and let cool in a colander.
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While spinach cools, add 1-2 tablespoons of olive oil to the pan you used for the spinach. Add in shallot and cook for 2-3 minutes. Salt and Pepper.
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Add minced garlic to the shallots and stir together.
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Add cream to the pan and bring to a simmer. You'll want to leave the cream at a simmer over medium heat (making sure not to burn) for about 10-12 minutes or until it starts to thicken.
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While sauce continues to cook, go back to sink and remove as much water from the spinach as possible.
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Combine spinach and artichokes on a cutting board and roughly chop. Add spinach and artichokes into sauce
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Start assembling pizza by spooning white sauce onto pre-made pizza crust. add tomatoes, bacon, and top with cheese. Bake in the oven for 7-9 minutes or desired time on your pizza crusts' packaging.
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Remove from oven and let cool before cutting. Enjoy!
Yum Mer!! I didn’t know you had this in your arsenal of recipes!! Need to make this soon!