We whipped together this delicious appetizer recently for a football game. We were having a few friends over to watch the game and wanted to provide foods that were easy to prep and serve and also tasted really good. What could be better than a gooey cheesy Traeger pizza dip with all the flavors of your favorite food? Give this pizza dip a try!

A CHEESY EXPERIENCE

Baked pizza dip is extremely easy to make and versatile. You can use whatever ingredients you have on hand– especially your favorite pizza toppings. We kept this version pretty simple to highlight the traditional pizza flavors, but next time we’ll probably take a different spin on it with a few different pizza toppings as ingredients. You can use your favorite marinara sauce, but we elevated this recipe by using Truff pasta sauce as the tomato base. The addition of some truffle flavor to this dish makes it extra delicious and decadent.

You can easily prepare this dish ahead of time and keep it refrigerated until ready to heat and serve. We served this dish with a variety of dippers– strips of fresh french bread, a variety of crackers and veggie sticks. You could alternate use pita chips, bread sticks, or make dippers out of baked pizza dough cut into finger-wide strips.

PRIMARY INGREDIENTS

Other than the pizza dough, all you need for this recipe are the standard ingredients of pizza and a block of cream cheese. MIx and match the ingredients you like best on pizza or have on hand. Or make a variety of dishes and your guests can enjoy some great flavors of pizza in an appetizer serving.

The base of the dip is cream cheese. When you bake the cream cheese under all these ingredients, it gets soft and melty and begins to take on the texture of ricotta cheese. If you wanted to end up with even more iconic flavor and texture, you could mix ½ ricotta and ½ cream cheese. But you’ll be surprised to see how great the cream cheese layer turns out on its own.

On top of the cream cheese, I added a generous layer of my favorite pasta sauce. I am a big fan of all things truffle and Truff’s pasta sauce is to die for. It’s rich and decadent and goes perfectly in this dish.

Then I added a big layer of shredded mozzarella cheese. You could also mix in some parmesan if you have it on hand.

The top layer is pepperoni. Honestly, put more pepperoni in the dish than you think it needs. If your friends are like mine, they’ll go for the pepperoni in their first few dips and you’ll want to have more to go around!

Cream cheese
Pasta sauce- I love Truff pasta sauce
Shredded mozzarella cheese
Pepperoni
Strips of french bread, crostini rounds, crackers or veggies for dipping

WHY COOKING THIS PIZZA DIP ON THE TRAEGER WORKS

Pizza dip is ideally created for the Traeger grill because it uses the great, even convection baking system that is inherent in such a grill. When you use your Traeger as an outdoor oven, you are guaranteed an even heat that is naturally like a convection oven because of the shape and design. The heat circulates around the Traeger pizza dip and you’re unlikely to get a super hot spot in the grill because of the way the firepot is hidden by the deflector.

We put the grill at 350* and used it just like we would have used our kitchen’s oven (which never gets use). Your dish will get a hint of amazing wood-fired flavor and come out piping hot and delicious.

STEP-BY-STEP

Preheat your Traeger grill to 350*.
In an 8×8 oven proof dish, spread your block of cream cheese evenly over the bottom.
Top with your tomato sauce of choice.
Sprinkle generously with shredded mozzarella cheese.
Top with pepperoni slices– lots of them!
Place prepared dish in the preheated grill and bake for 25 minutes until bubbly and melted.
Allow to cool briefly and then serve with assorted dipping utensils– breadsticks, crostini rounds, crackers or veggies.

MIXING IT UP

In this recipe, I kept things pretty traditional and iconic– the flavors of pepperoni pizza. But next time, I think I’ll go with a supreme pizza approach, and add crumbled cooked italian sausage, diced and sauteed peppers and onions, and a hearty dash of dried oregano.

For cheeses, you can mix it up and use what you have on hand– and add more cheese if you desire. You could stir in shredded cheese to the softened cream cheese to ensure stringy dippable melted cheese throughout. Sprinkle with parmesan or use cheddar cheese if you’re going for a less-traditional pizza flavor approach (like chicken, bacon and ranch). The possibilities are endless!

Another idea would be to use jalapeno popper flavors- like those found in this recipe- to mix up how this dip comes out! You could also make Cheesy Pizza Bites and serve it with piping hot sauce, like this recipe.

Products used in this cook:

MAKE IT TONIGHT

We served this dish as part of a Sunday football game snack buffet. It was rich and decadent, but very well received and people liked having the flavors of pizza in a different format. Next time, we might consider doing a couple different variations, and make pizza dips the main event!

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