You may have noticed that everyone is talking about pizza potential lately. We whipped up a recipe for BBQ jackfruit pizza And Jalapeño Ranch (Vegan) to give the masses what they want. The BBQ sauce is a tad sweet to balance the salty jalapeño ranch and adds some smoky flavor to the decadent, savory pizza.
This hearty, cheesy pizza recipe is vegan, gluten-free, and can be made 100% whole30 compliant with a side of a large leafy salad. For best results, we recommend roasting your organic jackfruit and shredding it.
There is a lot of talk about jackfruit on the plant-based diet, so it’s time to get to know the fruit.
Jackfruit is native to southeast Asia and has been cultivated and harvested for several centuries by the people of Malaysia, Indonesia, and Thailand. The fruit, which can be ripened on trees or grown in greenhouses, looks like a mash between a buffalo, orange squash, and a coconut. It has an inedible exocarp, edible mesocarp, and very sweet juicy aril (the pulp surrounding the seed).
The nutrition facts tell another story. Jackfruit is high in protein and fiber, low in sugar, and all-around an excellent source of vitamins and minerals, including potassium and calcium. Its flavor isn’t classified as sweet, sour, or bitter — it’s described as savory-sweet. The same can be said of the fruit’s texture: it feels like meat in your mouth, yet the taste is more subtle than beef.
This plant-based replacement for meat is exported from Southeast Asia to India, Pakistan, the Philippines, and Indonesia — to name a few countries — where people enjoy its nutritional value. The outer shell is scooped out when jackfruit is cooked and used for delicious cakes and sweets.
Now that you know more about jackfruit let’s make some pizza!
The recipe is simple: we mixed a BBQ sauce that has an Asian twist with a touch of sweetness. The sweetness is necessary to balance the salty jalapeño ranch. Feel free to adjust the sweet flavor by adding maple syrup and reducing the amount of sriracha sauce used in the recipe. You can also experiment with other sauces, like Chipotle BBQ Sauce (Vegan).
We highly recommend making your BBQ sauce to achieve a more prosperous, deeper flavor. This is an easy recipe — you’ll need vegan mayo, tomato paste, Sriracha sauce, and a bit of maple syrup (or brown sugar).
Preheat the oven to 450F. Wash and drain the jackfruit. Cut the green core out, cut it into slices and place it in a mixing bowl. Brush with olive oil and roast for 20 minutes. While the jackfruit is roasting, start on the pizza dough.
Mix flours and psyllium husk powder in a small bowl with 2 teaspoons of salt (we used acceptable sea salt).