Its So Hot In Phoenix These Enterprising Souls Cooked A Frozen Pizza In The Sun

That old dad joke about frying an egg on the sidewalk? Some Phoenix journalists took it a step further yesterday.
Phoenix, AZ, has been seeing some warm weather this week, and it’s been causing some problems. It was too hot yesterday for smaller aircraft to physically get aloft, so flights were cancelled. The KFC sandwich remains earthbound. And, in yesterday’s 120-degree heat, an enterprising group of newspaper reporters (a profession known for its love of pizza) set a frozen supermarket pizza outside, in a parking lot, on a bed of aluminum foil to see whether it was hot enough for the pizza to cook in the sun to an edible state.
It did.
Reporter Antonia Farzan kept the world posted in real-time via Twitter on the Phoenix New Times’ pizza experiment.
113 degrees in the @phoenixnewtimes parking lot. Let’s see how long it takes this frozen pizza to cook. cc: @aleksandrasks, @rachelleingang pic.twitter.com/PKtiNkPkGV
— Antonia Noori Farzan (@antoniafarzan) June 20, 2017
118 degrees. Cheese is melting nicely. pic.twitter.com/pVAgKTdFZa
— Antonia Noori Farzan (@antoniafarzan) June 20, 2017
Reviews are in. @rachelleingang says it “tastes like gas station breadsticks.” @_KECampbell noted that “it doesn’t taste like pollution.” pic.twitter.com/TNbe6mlhc7
— Antonia Noori Farzan (@antoniafarzan) June 20, 2017

It took about two and a half hours for the cheese to melt and the crust to puff. “If you eat just the cheese, it’s really good,” said one intrepid and hungry newspaper employee. ”It’s not as poisonous as I expected. I’m not tasting the pollution,” commented another.
The overall verdict? Not bad, they said.
The parking lot pizza prepared by @phoenixnewtimes was still better than like half of the fully cooked frozen pizzas I’ve had in my life.
— Katie Campbell (@_KECampbell) June 20, 2017
A Fresno, CA paper’s rival attempt to bake cookies on a car dashboard did not go as well, however.

Cookies on the dash for 3 hrs yielded salmonella lumps so i think phx wins the misery challenge @antoniafarzan @phoenixnewtimes @FresnoBee pic.twitter.com/3zDcTlRUE0
— Aleks Konstantinovic (@aleksandrasks) June 21, 2017

About the author

Kathryn Maier

NYC Food & Drink Editor

Kathryn has eaten her way around the globe, seeking out local delicacies in more than 40 countries and counting. After receiving a Master's degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, she began writing about travel, food, and drink, and has held editorial roles at luxury publications including Conde Nast Traveler and the Robb Report. When she's in NYC, she can generally be found on a barstool at one of the city's best cocktail bars or at home sipping fine wine with her cat on her lap.