Steak Calzones

Jobina asked me for my recipe for Steak Calzones, so I thought rather than message her privately I'd share it here. For those unaware, a calzone is like a pizza pop; I decided one day to modify that into a steak filling instead of a pizza filling.

To start with, you need to make pizza dough. Whatever recipe you normally use should be fine; we have a breadmaker and I use that to make the dough.

While my dough is in the breadmaker, I take out a steak and get that cooked off. I like to barbeque the steak with Red Bull bbq sauce and some Mesquite BBQ seasoning, but feel free to season your steak however you like. Try to cook it between rare and medium rare; it's going to go in the oven inside the dough and will cook further then. If you cook it medium or medium-well the steak is going to get tough and become well done once you put it in the calzone. As to how much steak you need, I find that one large blade steak will give me enough meat for 6-7 calzones.

While I'm doing the steak, I also saute up some veggies on low heat. Really you can put whatever you like inside, but I find that mushrooms, onions, and peppers are the way to go. While sauteing the veggies in the pan I like to add some salad dressing in as well for some extra flavour; a greek salad dressing goes well with the steak. Saute until the salad dressing is gone from your pan.

The sauce can be made at any time, and it's flexible what you put in it. For example, the first time I made my sauce I used equal parts bbq sauce, ranch dressing, and mayo. Tonight, I used bbq sauce, mayo, sour cream, and some lime juice. The key is to think of flavours that will compliment the steak and veggies.

The other thing you need to prep is some shredded cheese. I like using mozzarella, but you could use cheddar as well, or a combination of both.

Now, once you have all of these components together, here is how to assemble your calzone.

1. Separate your dough into equal parts roughly the size of your fist.

2. Using a rolling pin, roll the dough out until it is thin and round. The dough needs to be thin otherwise the dough ends up overpowering any other flavours in the calzone, so I really recommend the rolling pin.

3. Spread a soup spoon or so of sauce in the middle of the dough.

4. Put a soup spoon worth of veggies, approximately 4-5 bite-size pieces of steak, and as much cheese as you'd like (don't be too skimpy or you won't taste the cheese later) in the middle of the dough.

5. Bring the sides of the dough together in the middle to completely seal everything inside. Twist or pinch together the ends to fully encase everything.

6. Use a knife to trim the extra dough away from the ends (I tried folding them on top the first time I experimented with these and it made for mouthfuls of nothing but dough).

7. Poke some holes with a fork along the tops of the calzones (you may be able to skip this step, I'm not a baker, but I find that I don't end up with bubbles in my dough this way).

8. Put the calzones on a greased baking sheet (I like to put tin foil down on the sheet for ease of clean-up, especially since the sauce will bubble out the sides), and cook for 15-20 minutes in the oven on 400 degrees

9. Enjoy!

If you can multi-task this doesn't take too long to prepare; a lot of things can be done simultaneously to get ready before you assemble the dish. I had the thought as I made these tonight that I should've taken pictures, but alas I didn't; now that I think about it, I think my camera is at work. I really should bring that home. Anyway...

Feel free to substitute ingredients as you see fit; I didn't have a recipe when I came up with these, I just started experimenting. Unlike baking, you can have a lot of fun cooking just by experimenting with different ingredients.