There's nothing like a Christmas dinner, but it can be a stressful part of the holiday. Even if you're cooking for a small family, there's a lot of different dishes to create, and the stress ramps up with every extra guest.
While planning out my Christmas dinner this year, I noticed that I had a pizza oven sitting out in the yard - an entire extra oven that could be used to give me a hand through one of the biggest meals of the year. However, I worried that the high heat of a pizza oven would incinerate all my ingredients. I was also concerned the turkey wouldn't fit, and that the vegetables would burn to a crisp. But after speaking to pro pizza chefs, I was convinced to give it a try.
I still had a sample of the new Ooni Karu 2 Pro, so I put all the advice to the test. I found that while you can just about make a Christmas dinner in a pizza oven, it's only the vegetables that make it worthwhile. Here, I share everything I discovered when attempting to cook Christmas dinner in a pizza oven.
Turkey (or chicken)
First up, the centerpiece of any Christmas dinner – the turkey. I wanted to see if the pizza oven could tackle this crucial part of the meal. Many people think that pizza ovens aren't big enough to hold a turkey. They only have a small opening, so many assume that the the tall crown of a turkey won't fit. However, this isn't true.
Pizza chef Hakki Akdeniz told me that 'You can cook a turkey in a pizza oven if you spatchcock it. The pizza oven's high temperature keeps the meat moist while giving it yummy crispy skin on the outside.'
Spatchcocking means removing the spine from the carcass. This allows you to lay the body flat, so it fits into the low clearance of the pizza oven. This has the added benefit of making jucier meat - every part of the bird is on the same plane, so the breast sticking out above the limbs doesn't dry out as the others cook. I was cooking for one, so I went with a chicken instead so that there wasn't as much waste.
With the chicken spatchcocked and dressed in a lemon and herb dressing, I added a quartered lemon, an thickly sliced onion, and a couple cloves of garlic for moisture and extra flavor.
Outdoor cookery expert Mary Cressler suggests 'Lower heat is better heat. Avoid burning the skin by lowering the flame for a better ambient heat matching a typical indoor oven, which for us is between 375 and 400 degrees Fahrenheit. Be sure you are rotating the bird every so often as one side will cook faster with the flame on only one side.'
However, I got off to a bad start. The chicken had been in the oven for around 10 minutes when I noticed that the oven had dropped a lot of temperature down to 246F. I turned it back up a little and a flame shot out the oven and over the chicken.
In the minute it took to fiddle with the dial get the flame down to a reasonable intensity the skin of the chicken on the side facing the flame crisped and charred while the rest was raw. It's all a lot more effortful than cooking chicken in a domestic oven.
Things didn't improve: the oven would drop a lot of temperature, so the only choice was other to have the flame roaring hot or for it to drop down below 250F, which isn't food safe. I turned the flame up higher, and this was a mistake - after a few minutes it incinerated the chicken skin and the vegetables roasting with the chicken, so I covered the chicken with foil to reduce any further damage.
This is fine, but part of the point of using a pizza oven is that you have an open flame for smokiness. If it's covered in foil, preventing that char, you might as well cook it in a regular kitchen oven. Unlike the last time I cooked chicken in this oven, which went well, I wasn't standing by the oven to keep a constant eye on the food and its temperature as I cook, so it's easy to overdo, especially with the open flame. The temperature is much more variable than the consistent heat of a kitchen oven.
The temperature drops a lot, so it's hard to find the balance between too cool and too hot. With the foil covering the chicken, it wasn't getting hot enough, and the oven kept dropping heat in the cold. This meant I only really had two options - either grill it under the flame or bake it at a temperature so cool that it isn't safe. I opted for the former - so it was more like grilled chicken than roast chicken.
So, while it's technically possible, I didn't save any time or make a better roast chicken. For all the effort I put in, it's no better than other turkeys and chickens I've roasted. It tastes delicious - there's an incredible smokiness and char to the chicken but it's more like a grilled chicken than roast chicken.
In short, even if I cooked it perfectly, pizza oven chicken takes a lot more effort and diligence for a slightly worse outcome.
Potatoes
Chef Hakki told me that 'Roast potatoes in a pizza oven is a treat you never knew you needed. To get the perfect crispy skin and airy inside, parboil them first and add some oil or butter.' Following his advice, I boiled the potatoes a little to soften then, then shook them with olive oil, onion, garlic and rosemary.
I turned the potatoes after around 10 minutes, and this showed me that I'd have to be careful with these as they cooked. The outside of the potatoes was licked by the flames and starting to char, but the interior was still relatively raw. The skin was developing a crust closer to wedges than classic roast potatoes, even though the potatoes had been peeled.
I moved them to the back of the oven, and once the the carrots and sprouts finished I could turn the tray and spread them out a little. Getting them out from under the flame hugely improved the flavor of the potatoes and stopped them from cooking like wedges. All together the potatoes had an hour in the oven - half an hour faster than cooking them in a domestic oven.
In the end, the flavor was basically the same. The methods aren't very different and so the oven made crispy, fluffy potatoes. the overall result was good - if not life-changing - roast potatoes. I think this is probably the best use case for a pizza oven on Christmas - you can roast potatoes in a separate oven, freeing up some room in the main kitchen oven.
Carrots and parsnips
Pizza chefs also recommend cooking other vegetables in the pizza oven. Chef Hakki told me that 'Brussels sprouts, parsnips, and carrots roast nicely. Add salt, spices, and olive oil, then let the flame work its magic. It's amazing how caramelized they get.'
I adapted chef Hakki's recommendation a little - in the the second half of the tray I put sliced carrots and parsnips, covered with oil, paprika, salt, pepper, and hot honey.
I cooked these for around 30 minutes, slightly longer than the Brussels sprouts. This is still about 3/4ths faster than roasting them in an oven, too, so it's a good way to cut down on time.
The results were excellent - juicy, tender carrots and parsnips. The hot honey I used caramelized into an incredible char, much better than I've achieved in a kitchen oven, but it proved a double-edged sword.
The char was good, but the couple of carrots or parsnips I sliced too thinly burned into something more like a vegetable chip than a side for a roast. However, all together, these were also very successful, and infinitely better than boiling.
Brussels sprouts
With the big sheet pan taking up most of the oven I could only fit a little loaf tin up side. I filled it up with Brussels sprouts and candied bacon lardons, drizzled with oil and Maggi seasoning.
The sprouts were ready in around 15 minutes, slower than cooking them in a skillet. However, without tooting my own horn, these were delicious. The sprouts took on a delicious char that's hard to achieve in a pan without burning the vegetables. The lardons were all well cooked, and while I had worried that the sugar in the festive seasoning mix would caramelize and burn them, it lent a slight sweetness and nuttiness that played off well against the saltiness.
The only thing that stopped them from being the best sprouts I've ever made made is that the were slightly overcooked. It's hard to judge with a pizza oven, so they were slightly too soft and lost some of that vegetal firmness. However, this is tiny criticism - these are some of the best sprouts I've made.
Should you cook Christmas dinner in a pizza oven?
I think a pizza oven can be a great help if you don't have room in your main kitchen oven. The scenario I imagine is if you're hosting a lot amount of people and need some extra oven room.
If your oven is full with the turkey and other dishes, and Yorkshire puddings and stuffing and the rest of it, a pizza oven can give you another spot for all of your roast potatoes, for example. Vegetables are much better roasted in a pizza oven because they take on delicious, smoky char that boiling or straightforward roasting can't match.
However, simple practicalities get in the way. The simplest is size. A pizza oven only cooks on one level, unlike a kitchen oven which can hold lots of food at once. You'll notice in the image above that I didn't cook any sides like stuffing or pigs in blankets, and that's only because I lacked the room.
On top of that, you need to keep the oven near to the house, because I found it a little frustrating to move from the kitchen to the yard to check on the food as it cooked. In a kitchen you can keep a near-constant eye on food as it cooks, but when it cooks outside you're always moving from the kitchen to the garden and letting cold air into the house.
There's also less control than in a domestic oven, because it's harder to set the oven to a specific temperature. Midway through cooking I found that the temperature would randomly drop or ramp up, and because you open the oven door out in the cold (it was 43°F as I cooked) rather than a warm house I dropped much more heat than usual .
This means that I wouldn't cook poultry in a pizza oven. It's much harder to achieve an even, consistent temperature, so while you can make much juicier meat by spatchcocking it, it's much more effort than prepping a turkey and leaving it to cook for a couple hours.
In the end, I wouldn't cook a whole roast in the oven. It has half the room of a traditional oven, and the main draw of a pizza oven - that it can reach blistering temperatures - isn't useful when slowly roasting vegetables and poultry.
My pizza oven picks
If you're considering a pizza oven, here's some of my current favorites.
This is the pizza oven I used to test out a Christmas dinner. This new oven snatched the #1 spot from its predecessor, the Ooni Karu 16. It reaches 950°F in just fifteen minutes – it's easily the best pizza oven we've ever tested.
There are more details in our Ooni Karu 2 Pro review.
The Roccbox is one of the fastest ovens we've ever tried, and it makes great pizza. It's especially good at simple flatbreads and focaccia, and packed with handy features like a thermometer and the ability to switch fuels. The only catch is the marketing - as it weighs in at 44 lbs, I don't think you can call it 'portable'.
There are more details in our Gozney Roccbox review.
This simple gas pizza oven offers excellent value and fast pizza. Just bear in mind that there's no door, so it can take a while to reach top temperatures.
There are more details in our Ooni Koda 12 review.
A pizza oven isn't the only hack for a good Christmas dinner. Our resident expert chef Lydia Hayman recently tested out some Christmas air fryer hacks that can make your cooking faster, easier, and tastier.
