This original Italian dish is always the go-to meal or snack for everyone and was usually cooked on a pizza stone. However, have ever tried placing a slice of pizza in a paper towel or napkin – often called pizza blotting. If yes, you have definitely witnessed how much grease soaks out from it. Or have you ever cringed into greasy pizza boxes every time it is delivered right to your doorsteps?
How Do You Keep Pizza From Getting Grease In 2024
Even if you choose the healthiest toppings for your favorite food, it still creates grease. In this article, let us discover why the pizza has grease and how to lessen it in the pizza pan and stop that Pizza grease stain.
Even if you choose the healthiest toppings for your favorite food, it still creates grease. In this article, let us discover why the pizza has grease and how to lessen it in the pizza pan and stop that Pizza grease stain.
What Makes Pizza Greasy
The cheese melts and cooks faster than the rest of the toppings, that is why it produces so much grease. Also, cheese and meat like pepperoni have high-fat content stored within them.
You can add some chili flakes to spice up your pizza and reduce the cheese.
The high heat during the process of cooking can cause the butter’s fat in the cheese to melt, allowing it to form a layer of grease in the crust and all over the pizza. (Take it off the cardboard pizza base before reheating) On the other hand, it will be hard to determine how greasy it will be since frozen or uncooked dough seems very dry when touched.
Italian sausages and pepperoni are the top oily toppings in the pizza, as well as the beef. It produces so much oil, especially when you start it and bake it. The excess oil has nowhere to go aside from creeping into the dough, hence it produces a greasy layer when cooked especially at the high oven (450F) temperatures that are used in pizza making.
Also some commercial pizza sauce has a high amount of fat or grease
How To Make Pizza Less Greasy
Now that you know the top ingredients that make your pizza greasy, it is time to make your own pizza. Here are further tips and ways on how to lessen the grease to make it healthier.
1. Use another type of flour for the dough
Whole wheat flour, almond flour, and other types of natural grain flour that come with a little amount of salt is the best substitute for the traditional flour used in making pizza. Gluten-free flours are also a great option that you can have. They can literally decrease the unhealthiness and greasy levels on your pizza dough and crust.
2. Use more veggies on the toppings
Vegetables contain less oil and are more healthy. They have more vitamins and nutrients than meat. Try to add more pizza-recommended fresh vegetables like sundried tomatoes, basil, oregano, roasted garlic, bell peppers, baby spinach, red onions, and artichoke. More vegetables can contribute more flavor to the pizza. Anchovies and olives usually produce more grease, so better replace them.
3. Use cheese with low-fat content
Part-skim mozzarella cheese, white cheese, and low-fat cheddar cheese are great alternatives. If you are not a cheese lover, you can have light cheese or no cheese at all. Aside from that, make sure to use low-moisture cheese since these types have reduced fat in them.
A combination of regular mozzarella cheese and soy mozzarella cheese will also reduce the grease on your pizza slice.
4. Use thinner meat ingredients
Salami, chicken sausage and turkey bacon are better alternatives for Italian sausage and pepperoni. The latter produces more grease because of their high-fat content; hence if you want to use them as part of the ingredients, you will need to drain out the fats.
To take off the fats from pepperoni, you will need to cook them in a skillet or microwave over medium heat. Let it warm and wrap it on a paper towel to absorb the excess oils, then you can use it as a topping. You can do the same steps for the sausages, too.
5. Bake at a higher temperature
Cooking at a higher temperature will result to have less greasy pizza. Restaurants that use ovens with higher temperatures—as high as 700 degrees Fahrenheit—serve less greasy pizzas than homemade ones.
Cooking at a higher temperature will allow the pizza to get cooked faster, hence it has lesser time for the oils from the meats and cheeses to spread. A higher temperature will also make the pizza fluffy, light, and of course, less greasy.
If you do not have that kind of oven, you can cook at the highest 550 degrees on the usual oven. Just keep an eye on it to prevent your pizza from burning.
6. Cook with a thicker crust
Pizza with a thicker crust produces lesser grease. It does absorb the oil produced from the toppings, which makes it fluffy and has a flavorful crust. Thinner crusts are more likely to be greasy and end up being soggy if not eaten immediately.
Does Blotting Pizza Make It Healthier?
Yes. Blotting it with a napkin or paper towels can obviously remove the oils or grease from the pizza. Doing so can save you from consuming a huge number of calories. According to professionals, out of 324 calories present in a whole box of Pepperoni pizza, you can actually have 117 calories from a single slice out of it. In other words, there is a total of 13 grams of fat per slice.
If you do not have the healthiest ingredients on your pizza, blotting it can save you from consuming many calories. Know that the average American can consume 23 pounds of pizza annually. Blotting can reduce the calorie intake from 10,179 calories to 6,655. That is already a huge amount to help you get healthier.
Is Pizza Grease Bad For You
While eating pizza helps you feel good, it can actually cause your body to develop some health issues if you consume too much of it. So, yes. pizza grease is bad for you. Though the grease is one of the contributing factors in making it taste good, it can also contribute to the disadvantage of the pizza. Here are more reasons why it is bad for you.
1. It adds stress to the digestive system
According to dietitians, a huge amount of grease can add pressure to the digestive system. Fat is the slowest thing to be digested since it requires more enzymes and digestive juices to break it down. And since the digestive system works heavily on this, it can result in bloating, discomfort, and nausea.
2. It causes acne
Huge and regular consumption of greasy food, like pizza, can cause acne to show up in the skin. It may have an indirect effect but frequent harming in the gut health through consuming grease-filled food can result in hormonal imbalance.
3. It blows out your healthy gut bacteria
Greasy food, like pizza, does not contain nourishing, healthy fats. Thus, it results in not helping the microorganism to work well in the microbiome. Unlike the nourishing fats found in avocado, butter, fish, and extra virgin olive oil, that can help balance the fatty acids in the stomach.
How Do You Keep Pepperoni Pizza From Getting Greasy
To make your Pepperoni pizza less greasy, make sure to place your pepperoni in a single layer of paper towel and microwave for 30 sends. With that, it will start the fat to melt out and be absorbed by the paper towel. You can also double the paper towel if it has too much grease.
Can Greasy Pizza Boxes Be Recycled?
To get it straight, pizza boxes can’t be recycled, especially if it contains too much grease.
If the pizza box gets too much grease and food residue, it can add further contamination to the other recyclable materials. The grease can contaminate the process because all recyclable materials should be clean, empty, and dry, which is the opposite of the pizza box.
Furthermore, papers cannot be heated during the recycling process. If it does, the oil, grease, and pulp will ruin the process and maybe put to waste, adding the 30% of waste that ends up in the recycling bins. Greasy pizza boxes easily attract pests, insects, or animals because of the food particles from paper or cardboard. The stuck cheese found in the boxes also has the possibility of solidifying, hence it gets screened out during the pulping process of recycling paper materials.
Why are some pizzas greasy and others not? Is it the cheese used or the sauce?
Pizza is a versatile food. You can order it with just about any toppings and you’ll get a delicious meal. The only thing that can impact the greasiness of your pizza is the dough and baking method used. A thin crust pizza, like a New York-style pizza, will have more grease than say a Detroit-style pizza – a deep dish.
A homemade pizza thicker crust will slow the cooking process from the bottom and only allow the cheese to melt from the top.
Why? When you’re cooking a pizza, the crust is the first layer to go in, so you want it to be as thick as possible so it can take a little longer. This will prevent the cheese from melting too quickly, which will leave better pizza.
But too much heat from both top and bottom sides can cause the butterfat in the cheese to be released early causing a greasy pizza.
This is the main reason why NY-style is greaser than a thicker crust variant.
So How do you keep pizza from getting grease – if you are looking for a pizza that is not that greasy, choose a thicker crust.
Why are takeaway pizzas so greasy?
Often they will use cheaper variations of cheese and meat that have high-fat content – rather than if you make it yourself you can use a and some baking soda in the mix to help manage the grease.
What is a pizza screen and how does it stop a pizza from being greasy?
Pizza screens are the best way to make perfect pizzas every time. They’re made of heat-retardant aluminum mesh and they come in a variety of different sizes. The most common is the round flat surface with rhombus holes. This lets the base cook correctly but quickly so you get a better pizza crust that is less greasy. This much better than cooking a pizza crust on parchment paper.
Top Tip To Cook A Non Greasy Perfect Pizza
You do not want an orange color – soft slippery pizza
- Try to cook with a Low Fat/Moisture Cheese.
- Hig Temperature – Bake Pizza at commercial pizza oven temperatures
- Precook Pepperoni and raw sausage
- Do not use a Thin crust a Thicker Crust is better
- Serve Pizza On Clean Surface and sprinkle some cornmeal
- Use a commercial baking pan or pizza screen
Does patting grease off pizza help?
While it will remove some of the undesirable fat – it will not help the overall taste, and heavy blotting can remove some of the tomato sauce.
Hopefully for all you pizza lovers this has been helpful and means your greasy cardboard is a thing of the past.