Can you bring a homemade pizza to a meatloaf fight and expect to wow the judges without looking like a culinary fool?

The word “meatloaf” often seems like the punchline to a joke. The word “pizza,” not so much. But if you mash them together into “meatloaf pizza,” it’s more confusing than anything.
 
And yes, it actually happened.
 
I did it and accept full responsibility.

But there was an actual chef involved, and he didn’t seem to be bothered by it at all. (Though he won’t return my calls.)

It all started with an invitation from friends who are funny and creative lovers of food and wine.
 
We actually met them at a food and wine event. The event was being thrown by a noted Napa, California winemaker in Louisville, Kentucky, celebrating their new bourbon, and this couple sitting next to us said, “You’re in Park City, Utah? We’re in Park City, Utah.” And the rest is geography nonsense history.
 
I’ve made these two lovely people things like pizza. They’ve made us things that aren’t like pizza.

We’ve shared wines fine and not so fine—the latter usually provided by us. They tend to serve things like rare vintage reserves. We tend to serve things like lawnmower wine.
 
But I digress.

We’ve even been on vacation with them and spent a week together aboard a small sailing vessel, so our meager tastes in fruit of the vine must not be too problematic.
 
Anyway, their invitation arrived in our email.

​Envision the hellacious motorcycle cover art from Meat Loaf’s Bat Out Of Hell album. It had been appropriated by our friends without a license, a daring and potentially costly move if the late Mr. Loaf’s estate gets wind of it.
 
In the cover art, where the artist’s name and album title should appear, it said “Meatloaf, Manhattans & Merlot.”
 
There was a date, a time and a place, and a request to “Please let us know if you will be competing. (Last year’s winners will not be.)”
 
I turned to the Fabulous Honey Parker and said, “Competing in what?”
 
“The meatloaf cook off.”
 
“Can I enter a pizza in a meatloaf cook off?”
 
“I don’t know. Can you?”
 
Well, that’s about all the gauntlet throwing that I require.
 
The meatloaf mishegas was happening at the same time that we were making a “business trip” from the Mississippi Gulf Coast (where we presently live) to the mountains around Park City (where we once were residents and still have a business).
 
I would have none of my personal pizza tools available. 
 
Was it worth the risk?
 
Should I bring a pizza knife to a meatloaf gunfight?
 
My arsenal was unavailable to me, risking the potential for global embarrassment at the hands of Instagram-posting, compressed-ground-meat fanatics.
 
Could I stake my reputation on this nonsense and risk the ensuing fall from grace?
 
Of course. Because any grand reputation I have is in my head.
 
And following the Reinhart's Law that there are only two kinds of pizza, good pizza and great pizza, it stands to reason that if I indeed fell, I wouldn’t fall much further than the distance from the oven door to the tile floor.
 
I’d just have to hope it wasn’t covered in meatloaf grease.
 
First, we needed a test-run of a meatloaf pizza. That meant commandeering the kitchen at the friends’ house where we were staying.
 
It also meant having to make a meatloaf.
 
I have plenty of pizza recipes. I do not have a lot of meatloaf recipes.
 
For me, meatloaf is much like pizza. There’s a basic formula: ground meat, spices, bread crumbs and eggs.
 
Sometimes I go looking for inspiration for meatloaf modification. And we’re not talking custom mods like on the Bat Out Of Hell motorcycle (which appears to be a chopped Harley of indeterminate vintage).
 
We’re taking subtle things. Like substituting cricket flour for the breadcrumbs. Or swapping out the chicken eggs for Cadbury Creme Eggs and seeing if the loaf still loafs together.
 
Glancing at an interwebs meatloaf recipe for inspiration, I realized that I often forget to include any milk in my meatloaf construction project.
 
While searching in the fridge for milk (our hosts were fresh out of Cadbury Creme Eggs), I stumbled across a giant bottle of half & half.
 
Half and half is like dairy magic.
 
If you’ve ever only made mashed potatoes using milk, I encourage you to venture down the road to Hell with half & half (or with heavy cream, which takes you right through Satan’s gates).

​It is a dramatic change in the quality of the mashed potatoes, and some might even consider it to be erotic. (It’s uncertain whether we want to know those people.)
 
Anyway, I executed my usual meatloaf: equal amounts of beef and pork, eggs, breadcrumbs, a heavy hand in the spices category, and then: half & half. Mix. Bake. Realization: we have a killer meatloaf on our hands.

Now for the pizza delivery system. 
 
Using a New York-style pizza dough seemed wise. Not only is NY-style much-loved, but it travels well and reheats nicely. I baked a test pizza topped with square slices of meatloaf. (See the image below: this is the first-run meatloaf pizza protoytpe. The giant bubbles result from baking a pizza at 7,000-feet elevation with a dough that was allowed to sit out on the counter for perhaps a bit too long.  

This prototype meatloaf pizza was…acceptable.
 
But this is supposed to be a competition-grade pizza. “Acceptable” is an unacceptable state. 
 
We needed to push it over the edge. Otherwise, all we have here is a pizza covered in square meatballs. Because really, what is a meatloaf but a giant meatball as if reorganized by a drunk?
 
Sudden realization: there was only one thing missing here…
 
Gravy!
 
But gravy on a pizza is problematic—especially when already adorned with a tomato-based sauce. Unless…one takes a tip from the mass-market commercial-product format.
 
Enter: dipping sauce!
 
But instead of a ranch dressing dipping sauce (a pox upon you for popularizing that crime upon dining, Pizza Hut), we’re going to go for gravy dip!
 
My excitement at this point was unbridled.
 
There is no hope in hell that I’m going to be winning a meatloaf competition with a pizza that has little more meatloaf than provided by the adjectival noun in the title.
 
Surely, it would be a meatloaf disappointment—but perhaps a very memorable left turn for a roomful of Merlot- and Manhattan-swilling party animals who will have eaten way too much spiced-up ground-meat product cemented together with eggs and bread.
 
My taste testers in the guest kitchen seemed uncertain about any championship potential for this pizza—except that they had no problem continuing to taste test. They kept saying, “I dunno” and “Maybe” through mouthfuls of gravy-dipped pizza portions adorned with half & half devil meatloaf.
 
Call me crazy. That sounds viable.
 
If I was understanding the rules of the meatloaf game, the judging would be by popular vote. And once souped-up on Manhattans and Merlot, could the meatloafing judgment be swayed by the siren song of pizza?
 
Because really, after enough alcohol, many party people find themselves seeking a pizza.
 
But how many of us, after a night of clubbing say, “Let’s go grab a slice of meatloaf!” Answer: none.
 
(No, I have zero statistical evidence to back this up. But I feel safe in my judgment. I’ve eaten pizza everywhere from Solana Beach to Singapore, and I’ve never seen a single meatloaf slice joint anywhere.)
 
How to deliver meatloaf pizza to the competition? Good question. Par-baked. Cook the pizzas to about 80% done. Allow to cool. Wrap in aluminum foil. Transport along with a container of homemade gravy. Cross fingers. Hope to not spill the gravy in the backseat of the Uber.
 
(IMPORTANT NOTE OF SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY: One does not drive oneself to the Manhattans & Merlot dispensary event in a state as alcohol-intolerant as Utah. The BAC for DUI is .04, about half the national norm. And no church-going judge is going to cut you any slack when you show up in his courtroom stinking of cocktails and wine and bathed in gravy.)
 
When we arrived at the party, we greeted our hosts with glee. We hadn’t seen them in over a year. And in short order, they introduced me to a young Napa-Valley sous chef. Seems he’s dating their daughter, and he was assisting with food service.
 
He guided me to the oven in the downstairs kitchen. (The house was originally designed with a kind of rental-market/mother-in-law apartment in the basement. And really, in a cold-weather mountain town with an annual snowfall average of 10 times your standing height, what better place to install one’s mother-in-law than in the basement?)
 
The chef and I made small talk about pizza and such. I asked him where he worked, and was intrigued to learn he had once been employed at Thomas Keller’s iconic French Laundry.m(If you don't know it, dinner for two requires a reservation made a decade in advance and costs about the same as your unborn child's college tuition.)
 
I said, “So, French Laundry. Very cool. You and Tom were tight?”
 
“Oh, yeah. Totally.” A sardonic sense of humor. This will help. I hope.
 
As I ripped aside the foil on the pizzas, he looked at them and said, “Hey, those look pretty good.”
 
There’s always something unnerving about exposing one’s amateur efforts to the trained eye of a culinary professional. So that was helpful. If nothing else, French Laundry Man approved of their appearance—which is half the battle.
 
Reheating the pizzas at 450 and using the broiler to give them a little char, we delivered them to the tasting table alongside a vat of gravy. 

The well-lubricated, party-hearty guest judges seemed pleased to be presented with meatloaf pizza. Nobody threw it at me. Several folks hunted me down to express their amazement at the quality of the pizza. And in the end…
 
There was no championship ring.
 
While the enjoyment factor was clear (the pizzas evaporated instantly and there were heads exploding around the room), you just can’t award “best meatloaf” to a pizza.
 
Next time, I will try serving a meatloaf with a pizza baked inside.
 
In the meantime, if you’d like a good meatloaf recipe, just email me.
 
And if you’d like to use leftover meatloaf (or any other residual comestible in your fridge) upon a pizza, I encourage it. But it comes with no recipe. Instead, it begins with “What if…” and assumes no rules beyond the physics of good baking judgment.
 
For instance, if that leftover soup is watery, thicken it before using it on a pizza.
 
Or if you’re using a meatloaf, slice it thin enough that it heats, but not so thin that it burns.
 
Or if the Thanksgiving leftovers seem like a good idea for a pizza, go nuts—but use discretion with regard to quantity and coverage. Too much mass, and your pizza will not pop. Too many different toppings, and the flavors will be muddled.
 
Using unusual toppings on pizza is fun to do. There are no rules. Just think it through, and see what happens. How bad can it be?
 
In a word: go crazy. I toast your experiments with a glass of Merlot. (Sadly, an under-appreciated wine since the movie Sideways made it a vineyard pariah. It can be really quite lovely.)

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If you’re still thinking about starting your pizzamaking journey, one good place to do so is inside Free The Pizza. Really, it’s A Simple System For Making Great Pizza Whenever You Want With The Oven You Already Have. It’s a manual that takes you from zero to pizza with a few laughs along the way. Also, if you buy a hard copy, I'll send you an autographed book plate. If you buy the Kindle edition, know that there are printable cheat sheets on this website so you can take them into the kitchen and spill red sauce all over them. ​