Transcription
Today we're going to make air fryer calzones, and you are not going to believe how quick and easy and versatile this recipe is. Welcome to The Salted Pepper, where we cook for real life, using real food, and we keep it real simple.
And today we're making these delicious calzones right in our air fryer. My favorite part of this recipe is picking the fillings. You can get so creative, or you can keep it really simple. There's only a couple things that need to be in and not in to make it a traditional calzone.
And the first ingredient that should be in the calzone is ricotta cheese. So I have here a quarter cup of whole milk ricotta. You could use skim milk if you wanted to, no problems there. And I like to season mine up. You don't have to, you can put it in just plain, but I like to season it. So what I have here is a quarter teaspoon fine grind sea salt, quarter teaspoon of Italian seasoning, quarter teaspoon of oregano, and a quarter teaspoon of dried basil leaves. So I just put that right in and stir it up. All right, so that's what should be in the calzone.
What shouldn't be in the calzone is a tomato sauce, okay? Or a marinara sauce, or spaghetti sauce, or whatever that is. One of the differences between a stromboli and a calzone is that the calzone traditionally does not have sauce inside. Now, you know what? If you want to put sauce inside, it's your calzone, do it how you want to. But I made my marinara to be a dipping sauce, and it is, oh my gosh, so delicious. It's not dry like I thought the calzone might be dry without sauce, but it's not. That's the reason for the ricotta. Oh my gosh, keeps everything so moist and so delicious. All right, so we've got our ricotta.
After that, it is completely up to you. I'm going to go over the ingredients that I chose and let you know how I prepared them and how I would prepare them if I was doing this at home and not for a video. And then we'll go over some of the other ingredients that you could use. So I have some sliced black olives. These just came right out of a can, but drain them. Moisture is not the calzone's friend because it's wrapped in pizza dough, so we want to keep everything as dry as possible. I have roasted red peppers that I just bought in a jar, and I, there's still some juice down in the bottom, but I'll make sure that I pick them from the top and get as little as possible.
Then I have some pseudo roasted garlic. I didn't feel like spending the time roasting the garlic today. So what I did was I took about six or seven cloves of garlic, broke them up, peeled them, put them into a pan with a little bit of olive oil, just a touch of salt, and let them cook on really low heat until they were looking like roasted garlic, and that's perfect. Then I have some portobello mushrooms here that I sliced and I sauteed lightly in olive oil, and I also did a little bit of salt on those. I have some caramelized onions, which I didn't take them really caramelized, but they're, they're pretty good. A little bit of salt, a little bit of olive oil in a pan. And then lightly wilted spinach, which I also used a pinch of salt, okay?
I like to layer all of the ingredients so that we have flavor in every single bite. Now, if I wasn't doing a video, I would never in a million years cook each one of these things separately. I would throw them all in a saute pan and saute them up all together, okay? Because it's not going to matter once they're in the calzone.
And then we have our shredded cheese. Now, I don't think you can make a calzone without having shredded cheese. The kind that you use is completely up to you. I bought prepared already shredded cheese just because it makes it a little bit easier, but you could use fresh mozzarella, that would be delicious as well. The combination that I used was an Italian blend, which has like some Parmesan, some Asiago, some a little bit of mozzarella, and a few other kinds, okay? Then I also used a mozzarella and provolone blend. I like to combine those. The mozzarella provolone blend is a little bit thicker of a shred, and then the other cheeses are a little bit finer, and I just find that it just, the taste, the texture, everything is just perfect. The meltability, everything just works great.
And then last, I'm putting in some sweet Italian sausage that I browned in a little frying pan. Now, I'm not going to use all of this, obviously. You could also use cured meat, so you don't have to cook them ahead of time. You could skip all of this and use pepperoni and cheese if you wanted to, prosciutto, salami, any kind of cured meat, ham that's already cooked. Literally, you could do anything you want. The most important thing with the fillings is that they be cooked if they need to be cooked. So they have to be already cooked. They're not going to cook inside the calzone, so don't throw in tons of raw onions or anything like that because there's not enough time to cook the fillings inside. You're not going to be happy with the results. So make sure that they're all cooked. Other than that, make your calzone fillings anything you want them to be. Like, I think a nice pesto chicken calzone would be delicious. There are so many options for fillings. I certainly cannot get into them all here. Use your imagination, use what you love on a pizza. I mean, that's the best way to do it. What you love on a pizza, put it inside your calzone.
Now, the most important part, I think, of the calzone is the pizza dough. I make it myself. I use the same recipe that I use in my air fryer garlic knots. It's really easy to make, but you don't have to make it. You can buy it at the grocery store. They sell them pre-made in almost all grocery stores, or you could go to your local pizzeria and ask them for some of their pizza dough. You need six ounces per individual calzone.
Now, I'm cooking these in the air fryer, so you want to make sure that you're using the amount of dough and rolling it out so that it's going to fit in the air fryer. When I was testing this recipe, I was making, I wanted to make like a, like a calzone that would feed like two or three or maybe even four people, not thinking I'm gonna put it in the air fryer. This thing ended up being this big. It was huge. So make sure that you pay attention to that. One of the tips that I can give you is whatever size your air fryer is, cut out parchment that will fit in the basket or the drawer, whatever. Cut it out so you have a guideline of how big your calzone can be. So our calzone is going to be about this big, and it'll be puffed over like this, you know, so probably about six to seven inches long.
Now, you do want to do extra dough though. So we're going to roll this out to about eight or nine inch rounds with our pizza dough. I'm using six ounces of dough. That is a good amount. I did try the recipe with four ounces of dough because I was thinking that would make a really nice, like, almost able to be handheld calzone. It was very difficult to roll it and get it big enough so that I could put the fillings in. So I think six ounces is about the minimum that you want. You can go up to eight, but just be careful that you're gonna be able to fit it into your air fryer. Whatever size air fryer you're using, or of course, you could bake these, bake them in the oven too, and you can make a big monster one like I did.
All right, so I've got my pizza dough, and it is ready to go. It's been out of the refrigerator for a little bit. I'm gonna put some flour down on my work surface. Whether you're using a cutting board or, you know, a flat countertop, whatever you're using, put it down here. You can see my dough is kind of sticky, but it's not like sticking to my fingers or anything, and that's how you want it. That gives you a really nice dough. And then I just sprinkle a little bit on top here.
There's a couple of ways that you can form your calzones, okay? You can just push them down, which is what people recommend when you're making a homemade pizza dough into a pizza or a calzone. They say don't use a rolling pin, right? What I found though is that even though you can stretch it out and just keep going around and keep going around and keep going around, you absolutely can. I found with the calzone, it's just as easy to roll it with a rolling pin, so that's what I'm gonna do.
You want to make sure that you have enough flour on your cutting board so that your it doesn't stick to the cutting board and it doesn't stick to your rolling pin. The other thing you'll notice when you're using a rolling pin, see it just happened, huh? The other thing you're going to notice quite a bit, whether you're forming it by hand or using a rolling pin, is the fact that you roll it out and you think you're almost done, and then you move it, and it shrinks back in. That is the gluten just kind of contracting back. You just have to keep doing it, and then eventually it will relax, and you will end up with the size round that you want for your calzone, which is going to be somewhere between eight and nine inches.
The thickness of the dough also matters. You don't want it too thick, you don't want it too thin. If it's too thin, you run the chance of having your fillings kind of leak out, which is never fun. And if it's too thick, it's just gonna feel bready and and doughy and not crisp and delicious like we want in our calzone. So don't be afraid to roll it bigger if you find that it's too thick still. Like, this is still a little thick. It's about a quarter of an inch or so. It's a little, a little too thick. So even if I was at my the size that I want, I would still keep going to thin it out some because you can always trim the excess off, okay? All right, that looks perfect. That's about nine inches around, and that's going to be perfect for the size air fryer that I'm doing.
Now, keep in mind, the amount of ingredients are proportional to how big or small your calzone is. So just because I'm using a certain amount of ingredients doesn't mean you're going to be able to pack those in if you're making them smaller to fit into your air fryer, okay? And if you're making them bigger, you definitely want to increase the ingredients so that you have a nice stuffed calzone.
The first thing I like to put down is some cheese, probably about a quarter of a cup or so, right down here. You can see I'm starting at the lower part, okay? This is going to be the part we pull over, but you want to make sure that you're keeping a good one and a half inches or so, even two inch part down here so that we can seal in the fillings. That's probably the biggest problem when you're making a homemade calzone and you're not used to doing it, is not getting the dough sealed, and then you go to cook it in the air fryer or in the oven, and all the stuff leaks out. That's no fun. I put the cheese down first because it's dry, and it's going to create a barrier for some of the other ingredients that have a little bit more moisture.
I also put the ricotta, or at least half of the ricotta. You don't have to put it all on the bottom. You could layer this. Put the ricotta, and I just put it right there in the center. As it warms, it's gonna, you know, kind of melt. That's what creates this delicious texture inside the calzone. So please don't skip the ricotta.
Next up is just pick your fillings, okay? I'm going to use a little bit of all of them. For this size calzone, I would stick to a cup of fillings, no more than that, or you're going to be overloaded and you're going to have trouble sealing it. So the first thing I'm going to put on are some onions, and I'm just going to grab these with my fingers. Obviously, if you were having a party or something, you would want to use some kind of utensil, but this is just for me, so I'm gonna just use my fingers here. It makes it easy. So that was probably about two tablespoons of the onions. Same amount, maybe a little bit more of the spinach. It's probably about a quarter cup of the spinach. The mushrooms, so good. The red peppers, maybe a few more here. And it's beautiful too, isn't it? And then some olives. Doesn't matter if they fall off here, okay? It makes no difference. And then some kind of roasted garlic. Oh my, looks so, so good. Oh, the sausage, we need the sausage, right? So about a quarter cup or so of the sausage. Look at that. Okay, that looks really good. That's about all the filling that you want in there. See, as we pull this over, it's going to be nicely stuffed. If any of your fillings move towards the edge, push them back, okay? That is extremely important for sealing.
Then we're going to top with the rest of the ricotta and a little bit more cheese. Oh my gosh, I just cannot wait. This is going to be amazing. And then a little bit more of the cheese, just maybe a couple tablespoons. Again, make sure you've got enough dry dough here. All right, now for the moment of truth. Did I overstuff it? I don't think so. I think it's gonna be fine.
Pull your dough up and over and bring it to the other edge and immediately start to press down, okay? We're gonna fix this. See, it's a big mound. We're gonna kind of move it around, but we need our edges here to be sealed before we do that. So right along the edge, just take your fingers and press down, okay? Doesn't look pretty right now. Now move it around, get those fillings all the way through the calzone, and then we will go back in and get the air out because you don't want a bunch of air in there either, even though we're going to cut some slits, okay? So that's what it looks like right now. Now it looks a little bit more like a calzone. We've got filling all the way here, right? We've got a lot of air. Just take your fingers, go around and press it right where the filling, right where you feel the filling starting, press it again like that, like that, where you feel the filling, press it, press it, press it. All right. Oh my gosh, it looks so good. I still have a little bit of air, but that's going to come out. I'm not gonna worry about that. It's going to come out when I do the slits, okay?
Now that we've got it nice and sealed here, you could do one or two things. You can trim this off and cut some slits and put it in your air fryer, or you can do what I do, get a little fancy. I happen to like the pizza bone, as Jeff calls it. I'm sure other people call it that, which is the crust on the outside of your pizza. So I try to recreate that with the calzone, and I think that's kind of traditional because the calzone is basically something that is meant to be eaten by hand, or at least originally it was like street vendors would probably make little smaller size ones and you would just eat them by hand. It's like a pizza pocket, right?
All right, what I do to create this thicker crust with a little bit of a decoration is I take my crust now and I fold it and I push it again. And this actually just gives you a double seal, but just push it like this, push it. Try not to rip the dough that is going over the fillings as you go around. Like a fingernail could go through there pretty easy. So what I do is try to push and push in so I'm not like digging into the actual calzone, the fillings, I mean. All right, okay, there. Now we've got a nice seal there. And then I take it one step further, which you do not have to do, okay? But I don't. So I take a spoon, and this spoon is like a really inexpensive spoon, so it's kind of like sharp, and I push down and I take that sharp edge and pull, okay? So I'm just pulling this away like that. Make sure though that you don't go up into where the fillings are, or you'll, you're going to end up leaking out. So just make sure you're going in the thick part. And then what I do is I take each one of these and I just sort of twist them. It just gives a little bit of, I don't know, a little bit of a design. They're going to kind of cook together, but I just like the way it looks, and I don't make calzones that often, so when I do, I want them to be pretty.
Thing I didn't do, it's gonna make life a little bit easier for you. I forgot to tell you, once you're done rolling out your dough, go ahead and put it on the parchment paper so you don't have to, like, move it around after you get it all ready. Now I'm just going to tuck those in. So you can see I am right there. I, I'm almost too big. That's how easy it is to go a little bit too big. So definitely put your dough on here so that you know that you've got the right size.
Next thing that I like to do is brush with olive oil. It's a brush. You don't need to worry about doing the bottom, okay? But brush all over with the olive oil. This is going to give a really nice look and crunch to the calzone. Now, while I was making this up, if I was doing this off camera, I would have my air fryer preheating with the basket or the cooking surface in at the hottest temperature that your air fryer goes for a full 10 minutes, okay? But because I'm doing a video, I didn't want that competing with me talking, so I haven't done it yet. So I need to get that going.
Last, well, second to last, put a few little holes. They don't have to be big. You can cut slits if you prefer, okay? I'm just not going to do it that way today. I'm going to just cut little, little holes like that. That is going to allow, first of all, any trapped uh air that's inside to come out, and it allows the steam to come out so you don't end up with this big puffy looking calzone.
The final thing, salt the dough. This is just a fine grind sea salt. You could use a coarser salt if you wanted. You don't need a lot, probably about a quarter of a teaspoon. Just lightly go over the top with the salt. What that does is when you first bite into the calzone, it gives you this burst of flavor with the dough, okay? So don't skip that. It's really, really delicious.
Now I'm gonna go ahead and preheat my air fryer. I'm using the Ninja Foodi. The basket is in, of course. The parchment paper is not, because it would blow up into the fan. Then on the Ninja Foodi, the hottest setting is broil. So I'm going to go and broil for 10 minutes. Once it's preheated, we'll get the calzone in, and we're gonna air fry at 400 degrees for about 10 to 15 minutes, okay? Go more by looks than time, but usually it takes about 10 minutes.
The air fryer is preheated now, and I'm just gonna put a little bit of seasoning on top. You do not have to do that, it's totally optional. I just like put a little Italian seasoning there. Pop this into the air fryer. Set the air fryer temperature to 400 degrees. You can leave 20 minutes on, but it doesn't take that long, so I'm going to take it down to 14. Usually I'll just do 12. It takes about 10 minutes. That's usually what it takes, but sometimes depending on how your air fryer works, sometimes towards the very end I will flip it over if the bottom's not getting a nice crust to it, okay? In the Ninja Foodi though, I've had pretty good success. However, because I put the olive oil on and let it sit for a full 10 minutes, it should, olive oil should go on as you're putting it into the air fryer. I might have created some issues with the bottom of the crust, so we'll see. We'll find out.
It's been about seven and a half minutes, and now is a really good time to check on things, make sure we're not burning or anything like that. Let's go ahead and open this up. That is beautiful. Oh my gosh, that's pretty much done, but I do want to check the bottom here. Just let's see. Well, no, we're good. We're good to go. Now, can I get it back over here? We're good to go. All right, I'm gonna go just a few more minutes, um, just to make sure all the cheese is melted and everything. So you could tilt it over now. Keep in mind, we've got the slits, so if you turn it over and you want the bottom to be crispier than it is, um, you're gonna have some leak out. The other thing you can do is pull your parchment at this point, let it sit on the bottom of the hot basket, and just go another minute or two. So we've been going about seven and a half minutes now, so this is only taking, you know, eight minutes, nine minutes tops. Oh my goodness, that is gorgeous. I love it.
Now, I did get a little smushed over here, and because I let it sit so long, my little decorations don't look so good, um, and that's because I did it and then I had to preheat. So like I said, ordinarily I would be preheating as I'm assembling it because it doesn't take that long. So look, oh my gosh, I'm so excited. But let it sit and cool for just a little bit before you cut into it, okay? And I do that on a cooling rack so that we allow airflow to hit the bottom. If you just put it on a plate, it's gonna steam on the bottom and it's going to create a soggy bottom, right? We don't have a soggy bottom, that's wonderful. So, so it did. All right, so there we go. This certainly could be considered an individual size calzone for like dinner with a side salad, but Jeff and I always split them. So I'm gonna go ahead and cut it in half that way you guys can see the center. Oh my gosh, I'm so excited about this. Look, it's beautiful and it's perfectly stuffed. There's enough stuffing to get some in every bite. I think that's so important. I went to a restaurant the other day and ordered a calzone, mainly because I was testing this recipe and I wanted to kind of compare how they did it, and I was very disappointed because this, it was mostly bread, you know? So this will really give you a nice bread to filling ratio.
All right, doesn't matter what it looks like though, it matters what it tastes like. So let's go ahead and cut into it. Oh my gosh, it smells so good. Um, oh, it's delicious. These flavors are so wonderful with the ingredients that I use for my fillings, but remember, fill it with whatever you want. Now, what I do, there is a reason for this. I take this off and dip it in my sauce. So it's like having a calzone and a little breadstick. Um, absolute perfection from the crispy bottom, the crispy top, the fillings, everything's warmed through completely. Oh, one thing I wanted to mention, bring whatever fillings that you're going to put into your calzone out of the refrigerator a good 30 to 60 minutes before you assemble your calzone because if not, they might be too cold. And see how quick it air fries. The other thing you could do if you weren't sure if it was going to be like warmed all the way through, lower your air fry temperature and cook longer, okay? So those are the options. Anyway, enjoy your homemade calzone.