How Scotland Takes Fried Pizza To The Next Level

So there's fried pizza and then there's fried pizza in Scotland. And considering that I, the writer of this article, am Scottish by birth and raised in Italy, I'd say that makes me (unofficially) qualified to say: These are two very different things. In Italy, pizza fritta (fried pizza) is soft, pillowy, and delicate. It's pizza that's been sort of kissed by a frying pan, not drowned in oil. In Scotland, however, we say "no thanks" to delicacy and run fast in the opposite direction — straight into the fish and chip shop. (Chips here being, of course, a reference to fries and not potato chips.)

Fried pizza in Scotland goes by the name "pizza crunch," and really, it's as obnoxious and ridiculous as it sounds. It's made by taking pre-cooked pizza slices and dunking them in chip shop batter — yes, the stuff that is used for fish — before deep frying until the outside is golden and crispy and the cheese inside has melted. Scotland is known for its more unique approach to food — its national dish, haggis, is actually banned in the U.S. — so deep-fried pizza totally checks out. After deep-frying, it's typically served with chips (yes, with even more fried beige food) and plenty of salt and vinegar (or sauce, depending on where you are in Scotland). To do it right, chip shops know to be wary of common deep frying mistakes, so if you ever want to recreate it yourself, you should also get in the know.

Pizza crunch, you may be surprised to learn, has a rich origin story. Okay, maybe not pizza crunch itself, but if you know anything about the origins of deep-fried foods, you know that even ancient civilizations like the Greeks and Egyptians were frying dough and fish in hot oil. And then fast forward to the early 20th century when Italian immigrants settled across Scotland and opened up fish and chip shops. They blended Scottish appetite with Italian ingenuity and turned it into something kind of strange but pretty special, probably beaten only by another Scottish invention, the deep-fried Mars bar. We'll get into that another day.

To think that once someone stared at a slice of leftover pizza as they worked the deep fat fryer and thought "I should put that in here" really tickles me. And we should honestly thank them for it, because pizza crunch might not be classy, but it is definitely an iconic Scottish staple. It's a food for after football (soccer), after school, after the pub, after heartbreak. And despite being pizza at its core (literally), it doesn't pretend to be Italian. No, this is Scottish fare at its best: loud, comforting, and a little bit off the wall. Which is exactly why it works.