Corn, Basil and Hot Honey Pizza

August 25, 2023

Last summer, I got my husband a pizza oven for his birthday, which was a serious win-win for the whole household.

After we’d run through the classics, our pizzas started getting a little less traditional. Whatever we had lurking in the back of the fridge got thrown on a slab of dough and hurled into the oven. Corn, basil, goat cheese, and ricotta isn’t the strangest pizza combo out there, but it’s always just interesting enough to win the delight of dinner guests.

One of my all-time favorite cooking resources is called The Flavor Bible; instead of recipes it features an extensive index of flavor pairings. Look up “corn” and you’ll get a long list of everything corn pairs well with, totally subjective but compiled and agreed upon by hundreds of chefs and culinary experts. It’s my favorite resource to pull out when I’ve got a fair amount of ingredients lying around but no real plan for what to do with them. And it’s my favorite way to discover fun pizza toppings that might already be right in front of me.

Tangy goat cheese and sweet (sometimes spicy) honey has always been one of my all-time favorite flavor pairings, a blend of sweet and tart that I just can’t resist, whether it’s on a pizza, pasta dish, or even a dessert. A little bit of heat from hot honey (my current obsession) adds the perfect amount of complexity to this pizza, but you can drizzle regular honey on in its place if you’re averse to spice.

For this recipe, I leaned on the classic, but never boring, 9” Chef Knife. Wielding a full size chef knife in the kitchen always gives me that extra boost of confidence to take on whatever’s in front of me, and I love how precise this one can be. It’s just as rock solid chopping basil for garnish as it is slicing up a full-size pizza into party-ready bites. Sharpness is key when slicing corn kernels off the cob, so it goes without saying that this knife is essential.

Corn, Basil and Hot Honey Pizza

Makes one 12” pizza

Ingredients:

1 - 8 oz. ball of fresh pizza dough
1 ear of fresh corn, cut off the cob
2 Tbsp. cup goat cheese
1/2 cup ricotta
2 Tbsp. olive oil
2 oz. prosciutto (optional)
¼ cup chopped basil
1 Tbsp. hot honey (use regular honey if you don't’ prefer spice)

Directions:

Heat your pizza oven to medium-high. If you’re cooking your pizza in the oven, preheat oven to 500°F (hotter if your oven will allow!)
Prep the pizza dough, sprinkling flour or cornmeal onto your pizza peel before building the pizza. (Be sure to add toppings just before you pop it in the oven. If they sit on the pizza too long it can start to stick to the peel and you just might end up with a calzone.)
Drizzle the dough with olive oil, then add ricotta, goat cheese, corn, and prosciutto (if using).
Cook in the pizza oven for about 2 minutes, rotating it after 1 minute. Leave it in for longer if necessary.
If cooking it in the oven, cook pizza for about 10-15 minutes on a baking sheet, checking it after 10.

Drizzle with hot honey and toss basil on top. Let the pizza cool, slice it up and enjoy!

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Lily Krass is a freelance storyteller and recipe developer based in Jackson, Wyoming. In addition to writing for ski and outdoor publications like SKI, Powder, and Outside Magazine, she also co-authored a cookbook: Beyond Skid: A Cookbook For Ski Bums, a collection of recipes inspired by life in a mountain town. www.lilykrass.com