This elote pizza has everything you love about the original Mexican street food, but it’s all baked into a convenient pizza form!!
You can have whatever you want in life on an elote pizza. It satisfies both my craving for pizza and my hunger for Mexican food in one satisfying package. To be completely accurate, it ought to be known as esquites pizza given that it is not served on the cob, but let’s not be too picky here.
Making this pizza is a breeze, as it only requires a few basic ingredients that can be bought in almost any grocery store. Even simpler if you buy a pre-made crust from the shop and use that instead.
Ingredients Needed:
1 pizza crust
Sauce:
- ¼ cup mayonnaise.
- a quarter cup of sour cream.
- a half lime’s worth of juice and zest.
- ½ teaspoon cumin.
- Salt and pepper.
Topping with Corn :
- 1 and a half cups of corn in any form: canned, frozen, or fresh.
- a half lime’s worth of juice and zest.
- 1/2 of a teaspoon worth of cumin.
- 12 teaspoon of ground chili pepper.
- 1/2 milliliter of garlic powder.
- Salt and pepper.
- a quarter of a red onion, sliced as thinly as possible.
- 1 cup of mozzarella cheese not fresh mozzarella.
- crumbled Cotija cheese equaling one-half cup.
- Garnish with additional lime juice and chopped cilantro.
Instructions
Turn the oven up to 450 degrees.
Follow the instructions on the package for preparing your pizza dough.
Mix together the mayonnaise, the sour cream, the zest and juice of half a lime, and a half a teaspoon of cumin in a small bowl until well combined. Try it out, and then season it with salt and pepper according to your tastes. Set aside.
Place the frozen corn in a medium skillet (non-stick is recommended for this task) and heat it for one to two minutes over medium heat. Mix in a half teaspoon of cumin, a half teaspoon of chili powder, and a half teaspoon of garlic powder, as well as the juice and zest of the other half of the lime. Try one or two of the kernels, and season with salt and pepper as desired. Set aside.
Prepare the red onion by slicing it very thinly with a sharp knife or, my favourite way, a mandolin, and setting it aside.
The mozzarella should be shredded, and the Cotija cheese should be crumbled.
Put dollops of the sauce all over the pizza using a spoon (you might not need all of it), making sure to leave a border of half an inch around the borders. Include one-half of both the mozzarella and cotija cheeses in the dish. Place the corn mixture in a random pattern on top of the cheese, and then do the same with the onion slices. Add the remaining cheese on the top.
Bake for 12 to 15 minutes, until both the crust and the cheese have reached the desired level of browning.
After the pizza has finished cooking, cut it into eight pieces. Include a wedge of lime and some chopped cilantro on the side.
Recipe Remarked
Flavor
I’ve never been to Mexico, so I can’t comment on how authentic this dish is, but I can say that it tastes pretty darn nice. Unfortunately, I’ve never tasted actual Elote in Mexico, so I can’t speak to how authentic it is there. This dish will appeal to your taste buds if you enjoy corn and authentic Mexican spices.
Texture
The topping for the pizza is a creamy sauce, on top of which are sharp pops of corn and the bite of red onion, with salty, smooth mozzarella and cotija cheeses underneath all of that.
Ease
Making a circle out of the pizza dough is going to be the most challenging element of this recipe. The preparation of the sauce requires very little effort. Both the corn topping and the pizza dough itself are simple to prepare, especially if you buy the dough.
Notes and Suggestions
If you have access to an air fryer, I strongly advise you to reheat your leftovers using that appliance; five minutes at 400 degrees will produce a pizza with a crisp crust that is hot all the way through. In the event that you do not have access to an air fryer, you can still reheat this dish very well in the microwave.
You can get an early start on the preparation of the recipe by breaking it down into its component parts and setting them aside for a few hours. Then, just before you put the pizza in the oven, you can mix everything together.
If stored in the refrigerator for about 2 days, the pizza will remain edible.
If you are going to use corn from a can, make sure that it is completely dry before you sauté it.
Instead of buying pre-shredded mozzarella cheese, you should purchase a block of mozzarella cheese and grate it yourself. This type of cheese will melt and brown much more evenly than the pre-shredded variety.
