Introducing Meatza — perhaps my most favorite take on a grain-free pizza yet. This recipe comes courtesy of Cara Faus, of Health, Home, & Happiness. Cara included it in this month’s Grain-Free Meal Plan. If you’re looking for grain-free, kid-approved meals that will please your spouse without breaking your budget, be sure to check out Cara’s Grain-Free Meal Plan. Thanks, Cara, for the Meatza recipe!
What exactly is Meatza? Well, use your imagination and you just might figure it out! A “meatza” is a grain-free pizza with a meaty crust. Because let’s face it: what we really, really, love about pizza is the well-seasoned sauce, the savory vegetables, and the salty, fatty meats. A meatza is a convenient and downright tasty way to get all your favorites, but without the hassle of refined flours, yeasty doughs, or anything even almost resembling gluten.
Meatza Recipe for Grain-Free Pizza
Meatza Recipe: The Players
- 5 pounds grass-fed ground beef (where to find grass-fed beef)
- 1 ¼ teaspoons ground black pepper
- 1 ¼ teaspoons sea salt, ground (where to find a REAL sea salt)
- 2 teaspoons Italian seasoning
- 3-6 cloves garlic, crushed
- 1 ¼ cups tomato sauce
- 1 onion, diced
- 1-2 zucchini or summer squash, thinly sliced (or the vegetables of your choice)
- 2 tomatoes, sliced into rounds (or the vegetables of your choice)
- 5 cups shredded Monterey Jack cheese (optional)
(where to find bulk, organic, non-irradiated herbs & spices)
Meatza Recipe: The How-To
1) Preheat oven to 400F. Mix ground beef, pepper, salt, seasoning, and garlic. On a cookie sheet or in a large glass dish pat meat into a ‘pizza crust’.
2) Top with tomato sauce and vegetables, then top with cheese.
3) Bake at 400 degrees for 30 minutes or until the meat is cooked through and cheese is melted. Allow to cool for 5 minutes then slice into wedges or squares.
4) ENJOY! (And perhaps best of all: Save the leftovers for lunch the next day. YUM.)
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I know what we are having tonight 🙂
Ciao, Pavil
I love me some meatza! 🙂
Had one last night!
it’s kind of like having moussaka instead of lasagnaa
YUM!!!
Yup, love meatza! The sauce, cheese, and toppings give it that pizza flavor, though purists will miss the crunch that a good pizza crust has. I still eat meatza with a knife and fork, though some do eat it with their hands.
wow that sounds absolutely delicious
This sounds awesome, but does it really take 5 pounds of meat? That seems like an awfully large amount.
We love meatza! I just recently also came across a taco version- YUM!
OH!!! I gotta look at this. I MISS pizza! Son will have to wait, maybe, for lack of dairy, but I am gonna!
5 lbs of grass fed beef = about 40-50 bucks. thatsa one expensive pizza!
@Golden Cindy — Where are you buying your beef? I pay $2.89/lb for my grass-fed beef direct from a local rancher.
asheville NC
I’m in Asheville, too and there’s lots of cheaper places to buy good grass-fed meats! Hominy Valley farms is one, it’s around $5.50/lb. I’m making this using part ground beef, part beef heart (from Earthfare, $3-ish/lb). I also found some ground beef, grass-fed at Amazing Savings for $4.99/lb.
Ours is about $4 a lb here.
It’s $6-7 at the stores, here, but we, too, buy ours from a farmer…we pay $2.99/lb in Georgia.
I live in GA too, where do you buy your grassfed beef for $2.99/lb?? I’ve been paying over $6/lb…
Yes, please tell! Where do you get it in GA?
That’s direct.
I’ve seen grassfed ground beef as high as $6/lb at the stores here, but I’ve never seen it as high as $8-$10/lb for the GROUND stuff.
$6-7 here too in SC when I can find it.
@Golden Cindy…I was thinking the same thing! Not everyone has direct access to grass-fed beef direct from a “local” rancher…
Hmm… I was just thinking of how much I miss pizza today. I’ll have to give this a try when I can have tomatoes again…
@Golden Cindy — At least it’s a whole lot more FILLING than a normal pizza!
RoseAnn, you could always substitute the tomato sauce with pesto or another yummy sauce.
It gets as high at $7.79/lb in stores here. Not able to get it direct year round here….. and even so, you usually have to buy a portion, which also isn’t always possible. When we make it, we firgure a pound per person.
@Sherrie in Georgia, where do you get your ground beef? I am in Georgia also and looking into sources.
hi yea, it sounds delish. i’m gonna try it with less poundage. it’s $8# direct too, here, at least that I’ve checked. 🙁 $2.98 is AMAZING.
Holly Garrett Chitwood — we get our meat from Capes Sausage Company in Covington. It’s $2.99 for ground beef, and they also have waiting lists for cows (1/4, 1/2, etc). We’ve been using them for about a year now…much cheaper AND better than the prices at Publix and Kroger. We don’t have Whole Foods or Trader Joe’s down in Middle Georgia. 🙁
Yeah, at the store, it’s about $8 a lb, jumped up $2 in a week!
Thanks Sherrie, I am in South Metro Atlanta, but don’t have those stores either. I have ordered from White Oak Pastures, but their ground beef is $5.99. Trying to find sources closer to home.
5lbs is a lot of meat! I wonder if this freezes well? It should, I would think. I’ve been trying to come up with some easy freezer meals.
It is a lot of meat! Unless you have a big family or company over, you won’t be able to eat this in one sitting. Yes, this freezes quite well.
lucky duckies!
Have you ever had a pizza crust made from eggs, zucchini and almond flour? So delicious!
Our farmer supplies 5 oz patties of delicious grass fed ground beef- perfect for mini meatza’s
This is genius! I can eat meatza, even while on the sugar detox!!!!! Thank you!
sweet meatza goodness drooool
I get my grass fed beef direct from the farmer in OK and its about $5-6 a lb for ground. I haven’t EVER seen it in the stores around me.
Now if only my son, who should be eating gluten-free, liked meat. I’m going to have to try this anyways.
LOL, great description! I make this all the time, along with Pizza Stew in the crockpot! I have 3 kids, including a teen and an about-to-be teen and a little straggler, and they just chow down on this stuff! The oldest is a starter on a competitive football team, and this really fuels him! Along with kombucha.
Would love that Pizza stew recipe?
Every other recipe I’ve seen for Meatza always bakes the meat crust first and that is the way I started making it. I think the reason is that the crust shrinks a lot and there is a considerable about of “stuff” that cooks out and pools on top of the meat. It is then recommended to scrap that off before adding the toppings and then put it back in the oven. I certainly would rather just do it all in one step and I do think I tried that once and it didn’t turn out right. Have you had no trouble with extra stuff cooking out of the crust that you don’t want?
I also have made Meatza in individual “personal” pans since everyone in my family likes to do their own toppings. Just another option.
You’re right that the meat crust “shrinks” — kinda the same way a hamburger patty does. I just cook it in a jelly roll pan instead of a pizza pie pan. It’s deep enough to catch any pooling liquids that cook out of the “crust.”
I made it today and it juiced out all over the place. I must have used too much sauce. I probably would cook the meat crust first next time, drain any liquid, then add toppings and broil it. Sure tastes good! But mine looks more like a soup.
“without breaking your budget”, hack hack, not in my city (Boise). 5 lbs of meat? I think not… back to my yummy spelt herb pizza crust…
Well, this obviously makes 5 lbs worth of dinner & lunch — in other words several meals. Seems quite affordable when you look at it that way…
I made eggplant pizza crust tonight. Next week is Meatza!
Love this idea!
What size pan do you use for this?
Those of you paying so much for your ground beef might want to consider ordering from US wellness meats. It’s $6/lb but they have TONS of other great stuff too…
http://www.grasslandbeef.com/Detail.bok?no=523
I haven’t tried this yet, but I will. 🙂 I think I would decrease the amount of GFB though. If you’re eating Paleo or Gluten-free diet, you MUST MUST MUST try CHEBE breadstick and pizza crust mix. It’s made w/ cassava flour (tapioca) and it comes out chewy, crunchy, and toothsome…just like REAL pizza with few calories. I omitted the cheese called for in the “dough”…but it was amazing. I would brush the crust w/ ghee and garlic to add some more flavor and to make it brown more. MEATZA is next. Can’t wait. I’ll come back and let you know how it turned out. 🙂
I made this last night but scaled it down. 1lb of meat+ toppings. It was delicious and extremely filling! I’ll be making again and again.
Word of advice for anyone else who wants to scale it down: it doesn’t need 30 minutes in the oven. Mine took about half that. Less meat=less cook time.
Thanks for the delicious ideas!
Thanks for the recipe. A question for you or other commentators:
1. Do you need egg in the crust or it’s fine as described?
2. Can it just be cooked a straight 30 minutes, or must it be drained after 5-10 minutes then returned?
I like your write up of the recipe as it’s the simplest most straightforward I’ve seen. In cooking, simple AND delicious is the way to go
That’s one expensive pizza. Living in rural northern new mexico the cheapest grass fed ground meat is $7/lb. From the Farmer’s market we’re looking at around $5/lb. My life would be completely and wholly different if I could get clean meat for $3/lb. You can’t even buy goat meat for that in the NM/TX area.
With all those ingredients this would make a $40-$50 meal around here. It looks lovely, but who can afford that? It seems wasteful.
It’s not one meal. This is 2-3 meals for our family.
Is anyone aware of the nutrition facts for this?
This was more like a huge hamburger with pizza toppings. I used our really big baking dish (maybe 10x 15?) and the meat was still around 2″ thick – too much for 1 meal – so lots of yummy leftovers this week! I did like how easy it was to prepare. Next time I’ll only use 1-2 lbs of meat. I used 1/2 ground beef and 1/2 ground beef heart, plus a couple pureed chicken livers for good measure 😉
Here in beautiful California (central coast/bay area)…. the “step 4” “pasture centered” ground beef (not sure how much I trust this, but can’t afford other options) at Whole Foods every once in a while goes on sale for $5.50-$6 a pound – otherwise all grass fed ground beef is $8-9 a pound. Most the time I get cheap steaks and roasts for less – $6-7. So I haven’t gotten to make a Meatza yet, but it is SO on my must-make list!!!!!!
i was in such a rush to try this when i got home i forgot to add the Sauce …. but it was still good
I like quinoa pizza crust!!! It’s so crispy and yummy!
My mom used to make this back in the 70’s. When I had to go wheat-less, I was very happy to dig this out of the archives of my memory and recreate it.
I LOVE meats!!! Yummy! Also, I love cauliflower crust, but that takes a lot more work!
5 POUNDS OF GRASS FED MEAT? That would make it the most expensive pizza ever made. I wouldn’t spend that kind of money on one meal.
I’m so fed up with people using the work keto as click bait. Have you calculated the percentages on this? It’s mostly protein and no where near 70 – 75% fat. It isn’t keto.