Deep Dish Cheeseburger Pizza Pie

I was inspired by my cousin Angelique today to do something with a pizza crust. She was in the process of making a beautiful dough for a couple of pizzas she was planning to make.  I wasn't feeling quite that industrious, having just returned home from a trip to East Texas, so I chose to go with "I don't have to do it myself" dough. 

I didn't actually have any specific thing in mind when I started out, so, as I often do, I thought about what my husband would like and hatched an idea from that point.  Here's what I came up with....

I'm calling it a Deep Dish Cheeseburger Pizza Pie!

I started out by browning the meat and a medium diced onion in a little olive oil, butter, salt & pepper, and Worcestershire sauce. This was about a pound of meat.

While the meat/onion mixture was cooking, I popped open the pizza dough container, unrolled it, and gently centered it down into my small cast iron skillet after coating it with olive oil. This is an 8 inch iron skillet, by the way...

This is the crust I used.  The regular crust wouldn't have worked for this thing, so I'm glad I grabbed the thin variety.

I just left it sitting like this while I finished up the meat mixture.

I added about 3/4 of a single packet of Velveeta Cheese Sauce to the meat mixture.

I just added it a bit at a time because I was concerned about the filling being too wet, thereby causing the bottom of the crust not to get crispy.

As soon as I had it all well mixed, I gently spooned it into the crust.

I had some sliced Mozzarella in the fridge, so, what the heck... I added a layer on top of the meat.

Then I topped that with a layer of finely grated Colby Jack.

Next, I used my kitchen scissors to remove all but about an inch of the dough hanging over the side of the skillet and began rolling it upward and inward towards the fillings.

This was the end result...

and I decided to brush the dough with olive oil...

all the way around, and sprinkle it with 

                  

          

a generous amount of coarse ground sea salt, Tuscan Herbs, and a little freshly ground black pepper.

As I was doing that, I pre-heated my oven to 400 degrees and when it was ready, put it in the oven and baked it for 20 minutes.

I had a little olive oil sizzle over the edge of my skillet into the bottom of the oven, which I wasn't happy about, but once I cut into this pie and had a piece of it, I didn't care about the oven anymore!

The filling held together beautifully.  I let it rest for about 5 minutes before cutting it with a sharp serrated knife and then lifted it out with one of my pie servers.

                           

I got a nice crispy result all along the bottom and sides of the crust, which is exactly what I was hoping for and I think that's a direct result of using the iron skillet. 

Here, you can see how nicely it cut, and didn't stick to the skillet.

I will certainly make this again, but next time, (and the next time, and the next time), I'm changing it up. For one thing, I'll make it when I have time to use my own fresh pizza dough for the crust.  Beyond that, I have no idea what I may be putting in it. You could stuff just about anything into one of these!