English Muffin Pizzas, Two Ways

4 English muffins, split in half
1/2 cup of tomato sauce with meat chunks
olive oil
garlic powder or minced garlic
basil
mozzarella
red pepper flakes
salt and pepper

Put the muffin halves on a baking sheet, I usually line it with parchment paper. Spread the tomato sauce on four of them, dividing it up evenly. Drizzle olive oil over the other four, then sprinkle them with the basil, garlic powder, red pepper flakes salt and pepper. Top all of the muffins with cheese and bake at 500 for 8-12 minutes.

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So I made some tomato sauce with Italian sausage in it the other night to have with pasta. After dinner I had maybe half a cup leftover. The next day I was trying to think of what I could do with it when I remembered I had a whole pile of English muffins in the freezer. My mom used to make these when I was a kid sometimes and I never really felt it for them, but now I love them. Go figure. Of course, she didn't make them like this. Sometimes when I'm making pizza I like to have toppings under the cheese, as it lets it brown up more. Plus the heat is so high you could burn more delicate toppings like broccoli or thin slices of meat before the cheese got nicely browned. But this time the meat was already in the sauce, so that's just the way it had to be done.

English muffin pizzas couldn't be easier. All you do is take a bunch of English muffin halves and put some stuff on them and bake them. First, stuff on muffins. Please ignore the big smear of sauce in the middle of the parchment. Thanks.On some of these is the sausagey tomato sauce, on the others just some olive oil, basil, red pepper flakes, salt and pepper. Then cheese. My girlfriend isn't too into cheese. Can you tell which ones are mine? Heh. Now you just toss them in the 500 degree oven till they are all gorgeous. I love browned mozzarella. The best part is the little bits of crispy, browned cheese overflow.It hits the parchment and just crisps up. I could eat these things all day. And I probably will.