ElizabethB
Guru
Shrimp/seafood pizza is is always available at the three most popular/best locally owned pizza restaurants. When you live this close to the Gulf of Mexico seafood is incorporated in almost everything. The sauce is a white cheese sauce, probably Mozzarella. It is tasty but the shrimp is over done. If I were to make a shrimp pizza I would add all of my other topping, cook until a couple of minutes from done then add the seasoned, chopped shrimp. When done finish with Parm R and red pepper flakes
flyinglentris
Disabled and Retired Veteran
Yes. Seafood Pizzas are my favorites and usually go much farther than just shrimp.
You should note that when doing a Seafood Pizza, you have a choice between sauces, traditional red or use an Alfredo (I like Alfredo Four Cheese for Seafood Pizzas).
Other ingredients beyond shrimp, might include scallops, salmon, crabmeat and clams. I would use more petite veggies, like scallions, instead of onions, julienne cut sun-dried tomato, instead of tomato slices, an finely diced serrano peppers, instead of bells or Anaheim peppers. Garlic can be must. And I would not rule out dried seaweed crumbles.
A really nice touch on Seafood Pizza using Alfredo Sauce, is to squeeze out some chive cream cheese stars on top.
This sort of Pizza can be really rich, so invite your family or friends.
mjd
Veteran
The first thing I thought about when I read the OP was the shrimp being overcooked. I like your idea of putting them on last minute. I'm allergic to shellfish but can have shrimp for some strange reason. I will add this to my list of recipes to try from this forum. Thanks for posting.
Excellent point. I would also wait to add the shrimp until the pizza is almost cooked.
CD
epicuric
Legendary Member
Never made it, but I have eaten seafood pizza, which includes shrimp, brown crab meat and anchovies. The rest of the pizza is pretty much standard apart from a little extra garlic. The garlic and anchovies bring the rest of the ingredients together very well. I always ask for extra anchovies!
If cooked in a proper pizza oven raw prawns (shrimp) would cook in the time it takes to cook the pizza. In a domestic oven of course, a pizza takes longer. In my oven whacked up to top heat I can cook a home-made pizza in about 10 minutes. With raw prawns this would probably be OK but as you say ElizabethB, you can always pop them on towards the end of cooking.
My thoughts exactly. We often order an Alfredo type base sauce made of Finnish butter cheese and post-bake dill-sprinkle when choosing seafood toppings. Sadly the (defrosted) shrimp of our haunt pizzeria is always overcooked. All shrimp is imported here - and raw, peeled or unpeeled frozen ones cost a zillion. We hardly ever bake pizza at home as we don't have a proper oven (high-temp stone base furnace) and the local pizza joint has a large choice of toppings and a wonderful rye-mix fibre crust (which doesn't taste much different from the basic plain durum crust). I really love your description of petite veggies and seaweed: looks and mouthfeel are an essential part of cooking.
When I (seldom) bake shrimp pizza at home, I use a rye-mix crust. I activate the yeast in lukewarm rye-water mix until it produces a spongy foam, add durum flour, oil and salt and let rise for many hours. I place the defrosted shrimp on top without cooking even for a couple of minutes (I tend to buy frozen, pre-cooked shrimp). The hot pizza warms the seafood up sufficiently - the same with e.g. smoked fish or canned mussels. (There isn't a big variety of fresh/unpeeled crustaceans available here.)
Defrosted shrimp and fresh greens on top of a baked Pizza Margherita base. (Photo source)
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flyinglentris
Disabled and Retired Veteran
I always pre-cook shrimp, prawns, crabmeat, mussels, salmon, whatever, before adding to pizza, if I don't use the canned stuff. In fact, if I put sausage on a pizza, I precook and drain that too. It makes thinks less sloppy and really doesn't detract much from flavor.
BTW: There only ever two spices I use on Pizzas, Red Cayenne Pepper flakes and Oregano flakes.
Pizza Crusts are another matter and while pizza dough is a simple standard, you can get creative. When I lived in Connecticut, you could buy pizza dough balls in the stores. Here in California, that's not so.
That surprises me a bit - Finland is
I'm not sure why you are doing that with prawns or mussels in particular. They take minutes to cook on top of the pizza.
flyinglentris
Disabled and Retired Veteran
That's my habit, I suppose, based on avoiding too much sloppy juices. You can also pre-marinade, with butter and lemon, if you pre-cook.
In fact there are e.g. fresh mussels, squid and calamari for sale in bigger supermarkets but they are quite expensive. Frozen crustaceans are also available quite abundantly. The salinity of the Baltic Sea is much lower (0.1% in the north to 0.6-0.8% in the centre) than that of oceans (average 3.5%) because of plenty of freshwater runoff from the surrounding land. Thus, there aren't that many crustaceans in the surrounding waters - mainly planted signal crayfish (Pacifastacus leniusculus) in the lakes.
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Sorry I didn't finish my Finnish comment. I was going to say it surprised me because of the amount of coastline. But you have now explained.
It turned out great. I sautéed the shrimp just long enough for it to start to change colors. Cooled it off in the refrigerator. For sauce I just used Sonoma Gourmet kale and white cheddar pasta sauce. Very very simple. Not a fan of kale or white cheddar. Honestly I thought this is going to be awful. But thought the wife would eat it. We both worked late so this was kind of a “what is this stuff. I’ll use it “ dinners. I’ve already eaten half the pizza.