Popchips Pizza

As part of my New Year's resolution to get out there and meet new people, I joined a local blogger group. This is one of the best decisions I've made since moving to Boston as I've met so many great ladies and had the opportunity to mingle among restaurants, bakeries and wineries. Last week, I attended a cooking competition a la Chopped, hosted by Workbar, Kitchen Surfing and Popchips.

All the cellphone photos

Kitchen Surfing provided the chefs, Popchips provided the product and Workbar provided the space (and cocktails) to create a cook-off and tasting event attended by local bloggers. You know it's a blogger event when everyone takes out their cell phones to carefully craft images of the on-going food prep and drinks served. The three chefs were tasked with incorporating popchips, potato chips that are popped instead of baked or fried, into their dishes. Each one was completely unique from the other. The three choices included popchips cheddar soup, which used over 300 bags of popchips (whaaaaat!!!), a pork sandwich with popchips in both the roll and the braised pork, and chicken and waffles.

The contenders! 

In our goody bags were six bags of popchips and the recipe cards for the dishes we had sampled. We bloggers have been tasked with the same challenge--create a dish that incorporates popchips and enter it into a competition where the public votes for their favorite recipe. Lemons unite!

My personal favorite for flavor and creativity 

I preferred the sandwich from Aprons Off because it used popchips in a unique way, baking them directly into the roll. It inspired me to make a popchips pizza, using the original flavored chips in the crust and then frying chicken that had been crusted with barbecue chips to create a popchips barbecue chicken pizza. My history with breads is pretty limited and my attempt at making rolls didn't go very well so I was a little nervous to try and make my own pizza dough, let alone alter it to include popchips. But that's what experiments are all about!

The lovely products

Turning to the interwebs for a simple pizza dough, I came across this flat bread recipe from the Food Network. It seemed easy enough and I substituted a portion of the flour for popchips. How much? Only a 1/4 cup although judging from the sandwich recipe, it should have been more. I allowed the dough to sit and 'rise' for an hour but it didn't really change much (huge shocker). Nevertheless, I continued with my preparations.

Not sure this is right but at least it's elasticy...

The chicken tenders were dipped in flour and then egg before being rolled in the crushed popchips and fried with vegetable oil. I didn't cook the pieces all the way through since they would be baked on the pizza further. I would recommend cutting the chicken pieces before you fry them instead of after, like I did. While I fried the chicken, I preheated the oven to 350 to bake the rolled out dough for 10 minutes.

Fry up some poppin' chicken

Everything came together with a little barbecue sauce and cheddar cheese. Spread over the flat bread and baked for another 10-15 minutes, the pizza came out looking delicious! Although the bread didn't rise as much as the recipe said it would, it worked very well as a flat bread and I think it tasted delicious with the barbecue sauce.

Altogether now!

It's been my lunch all week and I'm glad I gave this a try! The real reward (prepare for the cheese) was meeting some fabulous ladies at this event and reading up on their recipes as well. Even blogs that are not devoted to straight up cooking have given popchips-Chopped a try.

The final product in all its glory

Voting is now open, check out all of the creative recipes here! Voting is simple. you just leave a comment with your favorite recipe in the article.

Popchips Pizza

Flat bread Dough- substitute 1/4 cup of all-purpose flour with ground popchips from the Food Network's flat bread recipe.

Chicken and Extras- Place flour in a bowl, two whipped eggs in a second bowl and ground barbecue popchips in the third. Place chicken first in the flour, then eggs and lastly popchips. Place chicken strips into a pan with heated vegetable oil and crisp until the chips appear golden brown.

Once the flat bread has cooked in the oven for 10 minutes at 350, cover with barbecue sauce, chopped chicken and cheese. Cook the pizza for another 10-15 minutes until all ingredients are melted and cooked. Slice and enjoy!