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Recipe · Pizza · Advanced

Smoked chicken BBQ pizza on the kamado

Two cooks, one kamado: first the chicken smokes low with hickory, then the machine climbs to 300°C and turns it into the BBQ pizza the chains have been promising for decades.

Pizza barbacoa de pollo ahumado con hilos de salsa BBQ y borde tostadoSave to Pinterest
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Prep
1480 min
Cook
75 min
Servings
4 servings
Temperature
300 °C

Ingredients

  • "00" or bread flour, W 260-300 (100%)500 g
  • cold water (62% hydration)310 ml
  • fine sea salt (2.8%)14 g
  • fresh yeast (0.2%)1 g
  • boneless, skin-on chicken thighs500 g
  • hickory or apple wood chunks2 trozos
  • homemade BBQ sauce: ketchup, vinegar, honey, Worcestershire, smoked paprika200 ml
  • low-moisture mozzarella, coarsely grated250 g
  • red onion, finely feathered1 ud
  • fresh coriander or chives (to finish)1 puñado

Method

  1. 01

    Sauce and dough the day before

    Standard 24-hour dough. For the sauce, simmer gently for 10 minutes: 150 g ketchup, 2 tablespoons cider vinegar, 2 of honey, 1 of Worcestershire and a teaspoon of smoked paprika. It must be thick: it cannot run on the pizza.

  2. 02

    Smoke the chicken: indirect, 160°C, 45 min

    Kamado with deflector at 160°C, two hickory chunks on the coals. Seasoned thighs, skin up, 40-50 minutes to 74°C internal. The skin will not crisp — irrelevant, it gets discarded: what we want is juicy, smoke-perfumed meat.

  3. 03

    Pull the chicken and reconfigure the kamado

    Pull the chicken out, remove the deflector, set the raised stone and open both vents: target 300°C with a saturated stone in 30-40 minutes. Meanwhile, shred the chicken, discarding the skin, and fold it through 2 tablespoons of BBQ sauce and its own juices.

  4. 04

    Build with a light hand

    Stretch to 30 cm. A THIN layer of BBQ sauce (3 tablespoons: it is intense), mozzarella, the smoked chicken well spread without mounding, and the onion feathers. BBQ pizza dies by overload: less is more, here more than anywhere.

  5. 05

    Bake 4-5 minutes at 300°C

    This pizza carries more weight than a Neapolitan, so slow the pace: 4-5 minutes with a turn at 2. The sauce should bubble at the edges and the onion show toasted tips. If the base browns early, slide the pizza to a cooler zone of the stone.

  6. 06

    Finish with fresh herbs and sauce

    Out of the oven, chopped coriander or chives and a few fine lines of BBQ sauce from a squeeze bottle or spoon. The fresh herbal hit offsets the smoky sweetness of the whole.

About this recipe

Chain BBQ pizza fails because of griddled chicken and bottled sauce. Ours starts two hours earlier: chicken thighs smoked indirect at 160°C over hickory, pulled while still warm and folded back through their juices. That chicken — smoke-blushed, juicy — is the one ingredient no food-court pizzeria can buy.

From smoker to pizza oven in 30 minutes

This is where the kamado's double life shines: once the chicken is out, you remove the deflector (or swap in the raised stone), open the vents, and the same coal bed climbs from 160 to 300°C while you pull the meat and finish the sauce. The pizza is built on barbecue sauce as the base — no Italian tomato — with mozzarella, the smoked chicken and raw red onion feathers that roast during their minute in the oven.

Editor's tips

  • Thigh, not breast: smoked breast re-baked at 300°C ends up as sawdust. Thigh survives both cooks juicy.
  • Smoke a double batch of chicken: frozen in its juices it keeps a month and turns the next pizza into a 30-minute dish.
  • A touch of smoked gouda (30 g) mixed into the mozzarella amplifies the smoke without another smoking round.

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FAQ

  • Can I use store-bought roast chicken for BBQ pizza?

    You can, and the pizza will be decent — but you lose exactly what separates it from the chain version. Rotisserie chicken has no real smoke, and its meat, already twice-cooked by the time it leaves the kamado, arrives dry. The honest middle ground: griddled thighs with a teaspoon of smoked paprika and a dash of liquid smoke in the sauce. Not the same, but the spirit survives. Real smoking is 45 near-unattended minutes: it is worth it.

  • How do I take the kamado from smoking at 160°C to baking pizza at 300°C?

    It is the easy transition (going up is always easy; coming down, nearly impossible). Pull the chicken and the deflector with leather gloves, stir the coals to shed ash, add a couple of handfuls of charcoal if the bed runs thin, set the stone and open both vents fully. In 30-40 minutes you have 300°C with a loaded stone. Crucial: always plan in this order — low cook first, high cook second. The other way round you would wait hours for the ceramic to cool.

  • Which wood is best for smoking chicken destined for pizza?

    Hickory if you want the smoke to register through the barbecue sauce: it is the classic American marriage. Apple or cherry for a gentler profile that will not fight the mozzarella. Avoid mesquite — too aggressive for a bird that faces a second oven — and resinous woods, always forbidden. Two fist-sized chunks are enough: chicken takes smoke quickly, and on the pizza it competes with other strong flavours.

  • Does barbecue sauce replace the tomato on the pizza?

    Yes, completely, and in a thinner layer than you would use for tomato: about three tablespoons for a 30 cm pizza. Barbecue sauce concentrates sugar, vinegar and spice — where tomato brings freshness and light acidity, BBQ brings pure intensity, and double the amount means double the sweetness and a soggy base. Some houses blend half tomato, half BBQ to lighten it; legitimate, but it loses the punch that makes this pizza memorable.

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