Here's Exactly How to Reheat Your Pizza So It Tastes as Good as It Did Yesterday
When it comes to quick and easy comfort food dinners, there are plenty of options. However, one food rises above all others: Delivery pizza. It's right up there with Netflix and a glass of wine as one of the best ways to spend a Friday evening inside.
And as everyone who's ever been in their twenties knows, one of the best things about a Friday night pizza delivery is having plenty of leftovers to eat the next day. But at some point most of us leave our twenties, and decide that, while the Friday night pizza is great, eating a slice of cardboard-stiff cold pizza the next day leaves something to be desired. Wouldn't it be great if there was a way to get the pizza back to the gooey, cheesy, perfectly cooked condition it was in the night before? When you reach that particular adult realization is when you start experimenting with ways to reheat your pizza.
Of course, pizza is at its core a food of convenience. We order it because we don't want to cook. So if reheating it is at all complicated, then you've defeated the purpose. So most of us turn to the microwave the first time we decide we're ready to stop pretending coagulated cheese on fridge-chilled tomato sauce tastes okay. And that's when we discover that a soggy, wet, goopy slice of hot microwaved pizza is gross. Not only is it gross, but if it's too far gone, then you can't even eat it with your hands! You need a knife and fork, turning the meal into a tragedy.
So what is the option? Do you resort to turning on the oven, defeating the entire point of the convenience food's existence? Do you resign yourself to a sub-par leftover pizza experience? Do you start trying only to order as much pizza as you think can eat in one sitting?
We say all of these ideas are terrible. And so we've found a solution. It's quick. It's convenient. It results in pizza that tastes nearly as good as it did the first time you cracked open the cardboard box. And perhaps best of all, it involves our absolute all-time favorite kitchen tool: A cast-iron pan. (We also love using an air fryer to reheat pizza, if you have one of those on hand.)
How to Reheat Pizza in a Cast Iron Pan
To be fair, any stove-stop skillet should work with this method, though we've found cast-iron gets the crust a little crispier. Here's your no-fuss, no-muss method for perfectly cooked leftover pizza.
Step 1. Put a slice or two of pizza in a pan, and put that pan on your stove's burner. Don't bother preheating or anything—we're not cooking anything. We're just warming.
Step 2. Set the dial on that burner to medium. Now set the timer on your phone or on the stove to 5 minutes. Go scroll through your favorite social feed while you wait.
Step 3. Timer go off? Good. Use a spatula to check the bottom of the pizza. Is it looking a little crispy? If not, give it another minute. If so, move on to the next step.
Step 4. Now splash a few drops of water onto the pan (not the pizza!) and slap a cover on there. Give it one more minute under the cover, while the steam from the water heats up and re-melts the cheese.
That's it! Pop it onto a plate, tuck a napkin into your shirt, and go to town! You've now got a slice or two of leftover pizza that is every bit as crispy and gooey as it's supposed to be, in just about six minutes. That's about five times faster than it took the delivery person to arrive last night!
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