Soup on Pizza: A Courageous Culinary Feat That Looks at Tradition a Little Bit Sideways

If you’re a home pizzamaker who’s been wondering about how to raise the bar on your homemade pizzas in a new and exciting way, this is your lucky day.
 
Right now, I’m eating not a pizza, but a homemade soup that is very specific and controversial.

As if that's not madness enough, the leftovers will very soon will end up upon...

You guessed it: a pizza.
 
What is this degenerative homemade culinary evil of which I speak?

I'm keeping it just a little bit secret for the moment.  Let's call this installment one of the new series...
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Soups can make great pizza!
 
I’ve been doing this ungodly thing to soup and pizza for almost a decade.

And recently, I was very glad to see the 34-pound, three-volume, steel-encased pizzapedia of Nathan Mhyrvold’s Modernist Pizza suggesting that my potentially criminal actions here are 100% valid.
 
They pointed out that soups are emulsions, and emulsions belong on pizza.
 
Yay, emulsions!

 
Of course, this also justifies ranch dressing on pizza, but that’s another discussion.
 
If you’ve been struggling with deciding what fun, new things to do with your homemade pizza program, look to your soups.

I've used a variety of soupy comestibles. 

I just went to look at the soups mentioned in Modernist Pizza. It was surprising to realize that in there with bisque and gumbo, they mention laksa. 


Who in the world has laksa pizza except for Modernist Pizza and possibly a whack job like yours truly? 

Laksa is a soup found in Malaysia and Indonesia, as well as in Singapore, which is where I had the coconut curry version with prawns. 

It would make a great pizza topping!

The Modernist crew has devised a recipe specifically for the sauce. But nothing is stopping you or me from grabbing a jar of Thai-style curry soup off the shelf, a handful of frozen shrimp, and making your own CPK-beater Thai curry shrimp pizza. 

 
The first time I did this was with a leftover homemade gumbo.

Not exactly a soup, but so close.

And this was long before I'd even heard of Modernist Pizza, so it's all on me whether you like it or not. 
 
My soup-on-pizza method (which you are free to use unabashedly and without royalty or license) requires first straining out the solids.

In the case of the gumbo, for a 12-inch pizza, that means using a slotted spoon to extract about a half cup of the chicken, sausage and vegetables.
 
Then, taking about a half cup of the soup juice (that's a pro kitchen term, y'all) which goes onto the stove in a saucepan for thickening into a sauce.
 

Heat the soup juice gently.

(Try using that term on your pro-chef friends and see their respect for you blossom like an orchid in the moonlight.)

Sprinkle about a half teaspoon of flour very lightly across the top of the soup juice and keep whisking it over a low flame until it thickens like magic. (Alternately, you can make a slurry and add it to the saucepan before whisking.)

Let the sauce cool to room temp.

Sauce the pizza with the thickened soup, spread the cheese (if any), then add the strained solids as pizza topping.
 
Bake your pizza per usual.

The one I'm about to make will look like this...

ABOVE; Pizza made with soup. (More to come next week.)


This is so simple and so rewarding, you will feel as if you’ve invented fire--or even Liquid Paper.
 
I’m providing this as a public service to you without any formal recipe, merely the exhortation to “Give it a shot!”
 
After a couple of weeks of long, hard slogging through hip-deep absurdist pizza screeds, I wanted to offer you something quick and easy and useful.

Or, at the very least, free from stress.

You probably understand and appreciate it. 
 
Next week, we will be seeing more of this exciting little technique in action—including a pizza that is a product of one of the nation’s leading food-fight Donnybrooks. 

Free the pizza!

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