Everyone is familiar with the traditional pizza toppings, but after a while these combinations can get boring which means it’s time to spice your pizza up! One of the things that makes any style of food great is pairing flavours that complement each other to make a unique taste. A great feature of pizza is virtually anything can be added as a topping, the combinations are unlimited!
As my fellow foodies are probably aware, there are five preliminary flavours: sweet, sour, bitter, salty and savory, these flavours can be mixed and matched to produce unique tastes. There are secondary characteristics of food flavours too, such as fattiness, texture and spiciness among many others. When experimenting with pizza toppings, try to use topping with different characteristics for the best results.
When you use the combination of various food characteristics, you can produce an excellent tasting yet original pizza. Below are the seven best pizza topping combinations for a unique and delicious pizza:
1. Mozzarella Cheese, Pineapple and Jalapeno
This is one of my the best pizza topping combinations, in my opinion. You may be thinking, pineapple and jalapeno? What blasphemy is this?! But, don’t knock it until you’ve tried it! This combination is sweet because of the pineapple, savoury because of the cheese and sour because of the jalapeno, as well as spicy. Olive oil or tomato sauce can be used as the base for this pizza, try both and see what you like best!
2. Alfredo Sauce, Provolone Cheese, Feta Cheese and Sauteed Spinach
For some, tomato sauce based pizzas are not the way to go. Instead, alfredo sauce can be used as the sauce base which provides a savoury, creamy flavour as opposed to the sweet flavour of tomato sauce. Remember, the pizza sauce is technically a topping too!
Provolone cheese is savoury, as is the feta cheese, but can be substituted with other types of italian cheese. By using two different types of cheeses, you are making the pizza more textured. Finally, the sauteed spinach adds some bitterness to the pizza.
3. Mozzarella, Caramelized Onions and Prosciutto
Sweet and savoury is one of the best pizza topping combinations for pizza and other food flavours. Although, sometimes you have to think outside of the box for what your sweet and savoury components will be. Try to think of your favourite foods in general and see if they are transferable to pizza, caramelized onions is a perfect example!
Caramelized onions are sweet despite the fact that onions are a vegetable that is often perceived to be savoury. In conjunction with the savoury prosciutto, the pizza develops a different blend of flavours. For this pizza, it is better to use olive oil as the base instead of tomato or alfredo sauce because the flavour of the caramelized onions and prosciutto is already powerful enough!
4. Smoked Salmon, Red Onion and Parmesan
Smoked salmon has been used in a lot of different recipes, but surprisingly it is not used that often on pizza. Although, that doesn’t mean it’s not delicious! The smoked salmon is savoury in flavour, yet smoky and rich. The red onion is sweet and tart and the parmesan adds a hint of additional savoury taste.
For this pizza topping combination, the ingredients are quite full in flavour so olive oil should be used as the base for the pizza. To make the pizza even tastier (if that’s even possible!) use lemon and dill as garnishes before taking the first bite of the pizza.
5. Gorgonzola, Grilled Steak, Sauteed Mushrooms and Black Olives
Steak and grilled mushrooms is a popular meal, why not make it better and add it to pizza? This form of pizza is very rich, especially with gorgonzola cheese which it a type of blue cheese originating from Italy. In addition, steak has a deep, sophisticated flavour which is complimented by the earthy taste of mushrooms. The black olives add some saltiness and a bit of zest to the pizza.
6. Grilled Chicken, Tomatoes, Green Peppers and Barbeque Sauce
Another killer sweet and savoury combination is chicken and barbeque sauce. Try marinating the chicken in a savoury flavoured sauce before grilling it, this will make the combination more obvious to your taste buds. The tomatoes and green pepper add a fresh, yet savoury and bitter, flavour to the pizza.
Barbeque sauce can be used as the base for the pizza, although, it can make the pizza quite sweet. If you don’t want your pizza to be too sweet, use tomato sauce as the base and drizzle barbeque sauce on the pizza before serving. Drizzling sauces on pizza is a great way to spice up the flavours!
7. Figs, Parmesan and Arugula
This is one of the best pizza topping combination for vegetarians! Because vegetarians are limited to non-meat foods, they need to get more creative with the veggies and non-meat proteins they use. Figs are a good alternative, even though you may never have thought fruits would taste so good on pizza! The sweetness of the figs is offset by the savoury and bitter flavours of the parmesan and arugula.
