Pizza With Caramelized Onions, Ricotta and Chard

By Martha Rose Shulman

Total Time: 1 hour 30 minutes
Rating: 5(604)
Notes: Read community notes

This luxurious pizza is topped with tender caramelized onions spread over a creamy mixture of ricotta, Parmesan cheese and chopped Swiss chard.

Featured in: A Versatile Vegetable for a Chilly Spring

Learn: How to Make Pizza

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Ingredients

Yield:One 14-inch pizza (eight slices)

2tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1¼pounds onions, sliced
1teaspoon chopped fresh thyme leaves
2garlic cloves, minced
Salt
freshly ground pepper
½pound chard, stemmed, leaves washed
114-inch pizza crust (½ batch pizza dough)
¾cup ricotta (6 ounces)
2ounces Parmesan, grated ½ cup, tightly packed
1egg yolk

Ingredient Substitution Guide

Preparation

Step 1
Thirty minutes before baking the pizza, preheat the oven to 500 degrees. Heat the olive oil over medium heat in a large, heavy skillet. Add the onions. Cook, stirring often, until tender and just beginning to color, about 10 minutes. Add the thyme, garlic and a generous pinch of salt. Turn the heat to low, cover and cook another 10 to 20 minutes, stirring often, until the onions are golden brown and very sweet and soft. Remove from the heat.
Step 2
While the onions are cooking, stem and wash the chard leaves, and bring a medium pot of water to a boil. Fill a medium bowl with ice water. When the water comes to a boil, salt generously and add the chard. Blanch for one to two minutes, just until the leaves are tender, and transfer to the ice water. Drain and squeeze out excess water. Alternatively, steam the chard for two to three minutes until wilted, and rinse with cold water. Chop the chard medium-fine.
Step 3
Roll out the dough, oil a 14-inch pizza pan and dust with cornmeal or semolina. Place the dough on the pan.
Step 4
In a medium bowl, combine the ricotta, egg yolk, Parmesan and chard. Spread over the pizza dough in an even layer, leaving a 1-inch border around the rim. Spread the onions over the ricotta mixture.
Step 5
Place in the hot oven, and bake 10 to 15 minutes until the crust and bits of the onion are nicely browned. Remove from the heat, and serve hot or warm.

Tip

Advance preparation: The cooked onions and the blanched or steamed chard will keep for three or four days in the refrigerator.

Ratings

5 out of 5

604 user ratings

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Cooking Notes

Julie6 years ago

Made this tonight with arugula instead of kale and it was lovely. Adding some green olives gave it a nice salty touch. Our pizza only needed about 6 minutes in the oven before it was perfectly crisp, so keep an eye on it, don't trust the 15 minutes automatically, or you could end up with burnt pizza.

dimmerswitch6 years ago

Our CoOp having "Chard-a-palooza" with abundance of chard options. Fun to have all these great chard recipes with which to experiment; this one a 'keeper' for sure. Made as written with the exception of eliminating egg from ricotta...held without it...and add of fresh grated nutmeg and black pepper to same. Dusting of additional grated Parmesan over the top of the pizza and some crushed red pepper too is a nice touch out of oven. Onions in this are particularly good.

Gabrielle6 years ago

Switched the chard for spinach and it tasted wonderful. Didn't have a pizza pan, so used the bottom of the cast iron pan I cooked the onions in. Using this method it definitely needed the full 15 minutes to cook, but it still came out really well!

Brooke5 years ago

Made the recipe as instructed. I thought this was tasty but needed an additional kick of some sort of acid/spice. We topped with some red pepper flakes and a balsamic drizzle and that was great. Next time I think I would add lemon rind to the ricotta mix.

Grandmadoc6 years ago

And, while making the caramelized onions, I'll make enough for soup too!

DrDre20083 years ago

Lovely pizza, but the recipe has waaaay too many pans & bowls. I simply caramelized shallots (what I had on hand), then tossed in chopped chard with a couple cloves of roasted garlic. Skipped the egg yolk. Just drizzled the crust with olive oil, put fresh ricotta around the crust, tossed the sautéed chard and shallots on top. We have tons of tomatoes, so I put slices on top than tore ovalini mozzarella to toss on top. Best COVID pizza so far!

jessica2 years ago

Added drizzle of balsamic glaze on top — a delight!

Ann B2 weeks ago

Excellent. Followed recipe except for a sprinkling of olive-soaked sun-dried tomatoes for the one who won’t eat a pizza without some red in it.

Julia5 months ago

fried off some bacon, sautéed chopped chard stems in the fat until soft, then added chard leaves & fried bacon back. mixed all with ricotta, parm & lemon zest (omitted the yolk). made onions as directed other than splashing pan w white wine to deglaze. delicious!

Laura9 months ago

I also cooked everything in one skillet, with good results - no need for the extra steps to cook the chard separately. Added sliced up mushrooms to the onions and chard, and topped the pizza with some diced up spicy coppa. mmmm.

Marianna11 months ago

Made this today but was a little disappointed as it seemed a little bland. Saw one of the comments mentioning using balsamic glaze, and that really took it up a notch.

Bhagirathi1 year ago

Delicious when adapted, but components tasted too mild so adjusted per suggestions and to try and get closer to an old Greens recipe-escarole and fontina pizza. Used arugula but a more bitter green like escarole would have been better. Chopped red wine plumped raisins since I didn’t have currants and added that and red pepper flakes to the ricotta. Toasted some walnuts and sprinkled the top with gruyere and Parm. Wouldn’t make this as written-old Greens recipe has more flavor and less effort.

Liza1 year ago

Not too bad, followed some suggestions and added lemon zest, red pepper. If I make it again I might add some bacon. I used a vegan ricotta and it turned out all enough, just a bit heavy.

andra1 year ago

This was delish! I used Whole Foods ancient grains pizza dough with it. Just make sure the dough doesn’t get too thin. You want a healthy ratio of dough to topping.

smiles1 year ago

Bland. Needs top of salt & spice of some kind on top as well as in the ricotta. The swap of arugula would be helpful.

Jane1 year ago

Max’s Version: (1) slice 1 sweet potato into 0.25inch circles. (2) Bake at 400 for 20 minutes coated in oil, S&P. (3) Include stems with chard, total weight equally 0.5lbs (separate and blanched). (4) Cut down on onions, maybe slightly under 1lb. I used a mix of white and red instead of yellow; white goes best. (5) Top with some parm-reggiano for aesthetics and bite.

jessica2 years ago

Added drizzle of balsamic glaze on top — a delight!

JPH2 years ago

Made this tonight and baked in our outdoor Ooni pizza oven. Absolutely delicious! Didn't add the garlic and thyme to the onions, but added some thyme to the ricotta mixture. A major hit!!!

VP2 years ago

Made this tonight, and it was super tasty! IMO just a few adjustments are needed, namely that the cheese/chard mixture needs seasoning. I added salt, lemon juice, lemon zest, and some red pepper flakes. I used the Jim Lahey sheet pan pizza dough recipe and the toppings were a little thin, but it ended up being great. I also had some leftover balsamic glaze that we added to the top - maybe wouldn't have needed it if I had seasoned the cheese mixture even more though. Will def make again!

Kim A2 years ago

This was really good with the added lemon peel and also a bit of lemons juice in the ricotta mixture. (Salt needed as well) I also used the food processor to chop up steamed baby kale and spinach and mix it with the ricotta.

DSA2 years ago

This is an excellent recipe! I made it on the grill with a pizza screen and sautéed the chard rather than blanching it. I also added some red pepper flakes.

TobyCat2 years ago

Meh. I used raw (not blanched) arugula and used mozzarella as the base rather than tomato sauce. The cheeses congealed and it just wasn't particularly tasty. Love Martha's recipes but won't make this one again.

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