“How can you use meat where it’s not the center of the plate but it’s actually part of something larger?” wonders Ben Turley in the opening moments of this pizza-heavy episode of Prime Time. Turley and his co-host Brent Young have arrived at Ops — a pizza restaurant in Bushwick, Brooklyn — along with smoked jowl bacon, guanciale, fennel and garlic sausage, pepperoni, mortadella, sausage, lamb bacon, and porchetta di testa — all from their butcher shop, the Meat Hook. The meat lovers are hoping pizzaiolo Mike Fadem will make their meat-pizza dreams come true.
It takes some trial and error, though, with Turley confirming that some meats just shouldn’t go on pizza. “We’re always thinking about how to get to something finished that’s totally balanced and hitting all the fat and acidity we want,” says Fadem.
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