Naples and Sicily can go fuck themselves.
Sometimes I blot, but I also confess that sometimes I will tear a corner of the slice’s crust off and blot/chow down that, and/or use the crust from the first eaten slice to blot the 2nd - especially pepperoni slices. Don’t knock it till you’ve tried it.
No kidding.
A more straightforward approach, throw that garbage away and get some good pizza.
Umm, I guess that I’m the only one who uses the parmesan to soak up the grease and keep it on the pizza?
I blot pizza, but not for any calorie saving benefits. I’m more worried about stains on my shirt rather than calories.
What they serve at Chuck E. Cheese doesn’t deserve to be called “pizza”.
I don’t remember where I saw it, but I remember reading a well-regarded source saying that any calories savings from blotting pizza were minimal at best. Googling it right now, I see a lot of places repeating OP’s claim (without much critical analysis) and then an article pointing out that the oft-cited study was done at the behest of a paper towel company. Draw your own conclusion.
Anyways, whenever I get NY-style pizza I blot, but only to try and avoid my hands (and shirt) being covered in grease.
I’m just worried about the grease running down my chin. I don’t blot, I just sprinkle it with parmesan. Soaks it right up.
I’ve started blotting the extra grease. I don’t miss it. But using crust is an amusing idea. Fat = flavor.
" Cheese Sweat " - awesome bans name 
My wife blots my pizza. The tiny tidal pools of oil bother her.
I don’t care as long as she doesn’t leave the napkin on too long. Otherwise it picks up most of the cheese, rendering the slice useless.
“Stella . . . STELLAAAAA!!!, more pizza, Stella!”
We used to do that when I made pizza in a convenience store. The customer never knew just how greasy the pizza was as they never saw the grease.
I should point a thing out:
Y’see, one of the reasons cheese EXISTS is a little thing called “milkfat.” This is fat. This is what sweats out when you heat the cheese.
Mozzarella isn’t a fat free food, not by a long shot, but it’s not all that greasy a cheese.
However, pizza joints seldom buy their mozzarella in wheels or blocks. The handiest way to have it delivered is in bags where it has been “cubed,” that is, cut into tiny cubes. That way, the pizza guys can simply scoop it out and sprinkle it on the pizza crust, after ladling down the sauce. It can also be bought shredded, but is easier to handle when cubed. Place I worked, back in the day, we used cubed.
…now here’s the thing: Food retailers discovered long ago that the cheapest food additives include air, water, and fat. And y’know what? Fat blends with white cheeses EXTREMELY well, and unless you’ve got some serious tastebuds, you can’t tell the diff from just tossing some in your mouth.
When the place I worked tried a different cheese distributor, the results were disastrous. You’d put a beautiful pepperoni pie in one end of the conveyor oven, and out the other end would come this… sodden… swampy… THING. Not unlike the Chuck E. Cheese abominations I described above. And our regular clientele dropped us like a hot rock. We wound up buying a great deal of shredded mozzarella and making up the difference by gently blending small amounts of the horrible fatty stuff in, about a quarter cup per cup of actual cheese, until the Fatty Cheeselike Pizza Product was all gone. And even then, we had to add parmesan to blot up the puddles.
Life is too short to make pizza with fatty cheeselike blended food product. Unless you like puddles in your pepperoni.
(Leave the gun, take the pizza.)
Interesting, I’ve never heard of this practice yet so many people seem to do it. And since it only takes a few seconds I might give it a try on the next pie.
Best pizza I ever had wasn’t in New York or New Haven or at any of the DC-area ‘gourmet’ pizzerias, but at Truby’s in Whitefish, Montana.
I tried a slice of pizza in New York a couple of weeks ago for the first time ever since I’d heard it was supposed to be so great. All I have to say is that New Yorkers must like pizza with cold toppings and burnt crust. Worst slice of pizza I’d ever had.
Meh. New Yorkers are about pizza the way Texans are about chili or salsa. Neither state invented them, but you’d best not bring that up in that particular locality.
The upshot: yes, if you remove grease from your pizza, it is lower calorie and healthier to eat. I’m just questioning how much grease belongs in a pizza to begin with.
My ghod.
…at one point, Kellogg’s repurposed Pop Tart technology to make… TOASTER PIZZA.
Not sure how I feel about that. Damn things look just like Pop Tarts…
That and Pepe’s are two of my personal bucket-list pizzas. Unfortunately, the only time I was in New Haven, back when I was 20, I was unaware of the glorious reputation of New Haven pizza. I’m tempted to visit New Haven just to finally sample those pizzas.