Superstar Pepperoni Pizza Skillet

Here's a quick recipe write-up of the pepperoni pizza skillet I made last week. This is mainly a concept so you can customize it with your favorite pizza toppings.  The only measurements are the 8 ounce can of pizza sauce and the amount of rice (approximately 1.5 cups cooked). 

Inspiration

Green Lite Bites pepperoni pizza rice

As written the recipe isn't dairy free or vegetarian, but you could easily skip the cheese or use a non-dairy version.  And of course for a vegetarian version use whatever your favorite pizza toppings are - faux sausage crumbles, artichoke hearts, black olives, jalapenos, etc.  And it's easy to add extra toppings to your own serving if your family doesn't agree on the ideal pizza. 

Directions

Cook 1 cup brown rice or you can do like I did and mix half brown rice and half quinoa.  I did this in my rice cooker and I added a packet of onion soup mix to the water to give it flavor.  I also started the rice cooker in the morning and let it sit on the 'keep warm' setting until it was time to cook dinner so we didn't have to wait for the rice to cook since brown rice can take close to an hour.

When you're ready to cook dinner, over medium-high heat saute some chopped peppers and onions.  Mine come frozen in a bag, it's called "pepper stir fry mix", totally love it.

A little extra chopping of the peppers and onions.

Add some chopped spinach and minced garlic (from a jar) and cook a couple minutes until the spinach is wilted.

Then add some diced tomatoes, a pinch of oregano, and chopped pepperoni.  Add an 8 oz can of pizza sauce.   The add some of the rice, only as much as you think looks right.  I used about half of the rice-quinoa mix and saved the rest for fish dinner a couple nights later.  I added shredded mozzarella cheese on top and covered to let it melt over low heat, but if you want more cheese, stir some in and add more on top. 

Not beautiful, but tasty. 
After this photo I added shredded cheese and covered to melt it.

Verdict 

Like most skillet/casserole dishes this wasn't good looking but it sure was delicious.  I completely loved it and wanted to eat more, but I had cardio dance fitness class after dinner and with all the bouncing and jumping I was afraid if I ate more than I would be sick on the floor.  I sauteed a bunch of mushrooms and added that to my bowl since I'm the only one in the family that likes mushrooms. And I chopped up green olives for Husband Jeff and I to add to ours. 

It was good as leftovers too.  I will definitely make this again.  I'd like to figure out how to include more veggies though. Maybe I'll substitute part of the rice mixture with cauliflower "rice" (granules of cauliflower that mimic rice). 

Sonny D likes pizza well enough, but he doesn't LOVE it.  He ate a little bit of this, but wanted just the plain rice-quinoa with soy sauce.