Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Kitchen Chat: The pizzazz is NOT just for pizzas!!

Oh, dear pizzazz, how do I love thee?  Let me count the ways.....

When we got married one of the gifts we got was a Pizzazz pizza maker.  His parents got it for us, I believe.  It didn't take long for us to discover how supremely awesome they are.  not only do they cook a frozen pizza to near perfection, they cook ALMOST ANYTHING that you would bake on a baking sheet.  Without preheating the oven (heating up your whole kitchen in the process, not to mention that dreadful waiting for the oven to preheat).  Over the years since we got married we have made pizzas, pizza rolls, chicken nuggets, corn dogs, taquitos, mozzerella sticks, frozen quesadillas, I can't even tell you everything we have made on there.  Garlic bread, cinnamon rolls, biscuits.  The list goes on and on.  I even used it to bake cheddar biscuits for thanksgiving one year cause the oven was full.  It doesn't have a heat setting on it, the only options are heat on top, heat on bottom, or both.  So you don't have to worry about the temp, just put your food on there and let it spin.  Make sure you start the timer.  I can't tell you how many times I forgot to set the timer and came back 10 minutes later to find my cold food still spinning and not cooking (it won't heat up without the timer on).

We recently laid to rest our 2nd pizzazz since we got married.  The first one we thought was dead, so we went out and replaced it (it was 5 years old).  Turns out we had blown the fuse for the outlet we were plugging it into.  LOL.  So we gave our old one to a buddy of ours and started a fresh pizzazz.  We treat the tray like a cast iron skillet or a baking stone: mostly it just gets a rinse/wipedown so it has a lot of flavor built up on it.

The 2nd one lasted about a year before I killed it.  I had some fries on there cooking to go with dinner and the hot dog buns I was going to use were not totally thawed from the freezer yet, so I put those on top of the fries to help them thaw and walked away.  Came back a few minutes later to find the buns on fire because they had caught on the heating element.  Whoopsies!!  It killed something in there cause now it won't heat up.  Sadness.  haven't replaced that one yet so for the last few weeks I have been pizzazz-less.  let me tell you it has been a rude awakening.  In a home with 3 small kids we go through a lot of tater tots, fries, chicken nuggets, etc.  Which means a lot of times I have had to preheat the oven, and (gasp) look at the instructions for what I am cooking to see how hot the oven should be and how long it should be in there.  Not cool.  Needless to say I can't wait to replace the zazz (as the kids call it) so I can get back to not using my oven.

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