Background: I’m so sick of pizza. I mean, I eat it because it’s pizza. Sometimes I eat just the point because everyone knows that’s the best part. My kids don’t eat the crusts. A while back, I started making croutons out of them. Over time, I’ve developed this move designed to be built with lettuce and the healthiest pizza toppings.
- Get a pizza.
- Get some romaine lettuce.
- Use kitchen shears to cut the crusts off all the slices.
- Use the shears to cut the crusts into crustons.
- On a sheet tray, toss the crustons with a bit of oil and the “Parmesan” cheese packets that came with the pizza.
- Toast the crustons.
- While they are toasting, chop some romaine.
- Add your favorite vegetable pizza toppings. Mine are: Kalamata olives, banana peppers, red onions, & arugula.
- Throw in some halved grape tomatoes for the tomato component.
- Make a Wild Onion ranch dressing.
- Cool down the crustons, add them to the salad, and toss.
Why It Works
- When you have three kids, there’s always a pizza party and that means there’s always leftover crusts.
- You need a strong lettuce to stand up to this salad.
- Often I’ll do this before I serve the pizza so the crusts aren’t mangled by kid hands of varying cleanliness. Sometimes, I cut the bite marks off the discarded crusts and trust the heat of the oven to kill the germs.
- It’s a portmanteau.
- I don’t think this stuff is really Parmigiano Reggiano.
- I set my oven to 350 because it’s pretty forgiving at that temp. Air fryers also work (and do the job much faster).
- Keep using the kitchen shears. You should be able to do the whole salad with shears without even getting a cutting board dirty.
- Do they have to be vegetables? I don’t know. Are you going to feel better if you eat a pepperoni salad?
- Keep using those shears.
- I also added the Pickled Wild Meadow Garlic Bulblets the last time I did this. It was delicious.
- Tossing the whole sheet tray in the freezer will bring the temp down faster.
Mods:
- Consider adding anchovies someplace (perhaps to the dressing). I didn’t because the olives and peppers have plenty of salt.
- I considered ordering a pizza with mushrooms and olives on it, just so I could pick them off and throw them in the salad. I didn’t because then my kids wouldn’t eat the pizza. But I still think it’s worth a shot for free salad ingredients.
- Try an Italian dressing and throw some soft cheese (goat cheese or bleu cheese) in there.