Make-Ahead Pizza Subs with Ground Beef
Picture opening the fridge on a busy weeknight and finding a dozen pizza subs already wrapped and waiting. This make-ahead recipe simmers ground beef in pizza sauce, spoons it into soft sub rolls under a heap of mozzarella and wraps each one up, so anybody in the house can grab one and heat it in about a minute. Some folks call them beef pizza rolls, and they eat like a pizza-flavored Sloppy Joe that actually stays in the bun. Four ingredients and about 25 minutes fill your fridge for days.
A Quick Look At The Recipe
- Recipe Name: Homemade Pizza Rolls
- Serves: 12
- Main Ingredients: ground beef, shredded mozzarella cheese, dozen sub rolls, 15-oz jars pizza sauce
- Why You'll Love It: These homemade pizza rolls are like Sloppy Joes with a pizza twist! In our soft sub rolls, we add ground beef cooked in pizza sauce and lots of melted mozzarella cheese.
My mama used to make these when she and Daddy went out of town. With a batch of these in the fridge and a little extra money for anything unexpected, she could leave for the weekend confident we wouldn’t starve. I still make them on Fridays and when the Super Bowl is coming up, because a fridge full of pizza subs means I get the weekend off from cooking.
Why These Pizza Subs Work for Make-Ahead Meals
Cooking the beef right in the pizza sauce until it’s bubbly gives you a thick, meaty filling that stays put in the bun instead of soaking through. I like a sturdy sub roll here for the same reason. Thinner bread gets soggy after a day in the fridge, but a good hoagie-style roll holds up for days.
Buying rolls that aren’t sliced lets you cut them like a hot dog bun, not quite all the way through, so the filling stays tucked inside when you wrap them.
Ingredients for Pizza Subs
- Sub rolls: Unsliced hoagie or sub rolls are best. Save the bag they come in for storing the wrapped subs.
- Pizza sauce: Jarred pizza or marinara sauce works, or use my quick pizza sauce from scratch.
- Ground beef: Italian sausage or ground turkey work too, and you can stir in chopped pepperoni once the beef is browned.
- Mozzarella: Mix in a little parmesan if you like.
You’ll find the exact amounts in the recipe card below. Halve everything for six subs.
Helpful Tips Before You Start
- Drain the beef well before the sauce goes in so the filling isn’t greasy.
- Sautéed onions and bell peppers are a good addition to the skillet along with the beef.
- Set up an assembly line: slice all the rolls, fill them all, top them all with cheese, then wrap.
- For a crisp bun, unwrap the sub, open it up and run it under the broiler or in the air fryer for a few minutes.
How to Make Pizza Subs
1Cook the Beef in Pizza Sauce
Brown the ground beef in a large skillet over medium-high heat, breaking it up as it cooks, and drain off the grease. Stir in both jars of pizza sauce and cook on medium until bubbly.
2Slice the Rolls
Slice each roll like a hot dog bun, stopping before you cut all the way through.
3Fill with Beef
Spoon the beef mixture into each roll.
4Top with Mozzarella
Pile shredded mozzarella over the filling.
5Wrap Each Sub
Wrap each sub tightly in plastic wrap and tuck the ends underneath.
6Store and Reheat
Slide the wrapped subs back into the bag the rolls came in and refrigerate. When you want one, unwrap it and microwave for about a minute.
What to Serve with Pizza Subs
A basket of parmesan oven fries turns these into a full supper, and something crunchy and cool on the side balances all that cheese. My go-tos are 3-ingredient vinegar slaw or a scoop of sweet and tangy burger slaw. Warm marinara or ranch for dipping never hurts either.
For a game day spread, set them out with a tray of pepperoni and bacon pizza pinwheels and a few more picks from my 40+ game day recipes.
Pizza Subs FAQs
How long do pizza subs keep in the fridge?
Wrapped tight and stored in the roll bag, they keep for up to 4 days, which covers a long weekend or most of a school week of lunches.
Can I freeze pizza subs?
They freeze well for up to 3 months. Thaw them overnight in the fridge, then reheat in the microwave, oven or air fryer. A little garlic butter brushed on before reheating gives them a garlic bread finish.
Can I use crescent rolls instead of sub rolls?
Crescent dough works for a smaller, thinner version if you’ll eat them right away. For make-ahead subs, I stick with thick rolls because the sauce doesn’t seep through in the fridge.
Make-Ahead Pizza Subs with Ground Beef
Equipment
Ingredients
- 2 lbs ground beef
- 2 cups shredded mozzarella cheese
- 1 dozen sub rolls
- 2 15-oz jars pizza sauce
Instructions
- In a large skillet, brown the beef over medium-high heat, breaking it into small pieces, until no longer pink. Drain off any grease.2 lbs ground beef
- Add both jars of pizza sauce to the beef. Stir and cook on medium until bubbly.2 15-oz jars pizza sauce
- Slice each roll almost all the way through, like a hot dog bun. Spoon in the beef mixture, top with cheese and wrap tightly in plastic wrap.2 cups shredded mozzarella cheese, 1 dozen sub rolls
- Slide the wrapped subs back into the bag the rolls came in and refrigerate.
- When ready to eat, unwrap a sub and microwave for about 1 minute.
Wow, Christy. These look great! I came over from the Butterfinger Cake recipe (which I will make soon) and found this one. These are on the list for the next time I need to take something for a church lunch or to a pot luck. I’ll keep a few for us (wink) and take the rest for sharing. Yum!
Keep up the great work. By the way, I love your cookbook too. It has become a ‘go to’ book when I need something good and fast.
These were for sure a hit at our house… Thanks for sharint your recipes Christy.
Oh, Christy I must tell you I shared these with my neighbor and she just had to have the recipe. They do a lot of camping and this would be great for them. I’m so glad to have stumbled across your website.
After reading many of your recipes, I went to the store, thinking of what to cook. My husband definitely liked the idea of Sloppy Joes, so we picked up a can of Manwich sauce — and then finished a long list of basic groceries, including sub buns and mozarella for our Sloppy Joes. Those of you who are laughing right now know that I mixed the Sloppy Joe recipe with the Pizza Rolls recipe. So here I am, ready to invent a “Sloppy Roll.” LOL. I’ll let you know how it turns out. 🙂
So I wandered over from The Butterfinger Cake recipe and got a kick out of the anonymous post! He/she definitely “ain’t from ’round here”. I will definitely try this recipe and use dh’s ground deer, “the original organic free-range meat” according to Rick & Bubba (radio show).
Those look good and would be a great Sunday in between church meal because I could make ’em on Friday or Saturday and just heat them up.
Love love love your recipes.I ordered your book this week and it came today! I love that book.
This is a great recipe for me to try. I am a one arm gal and I won’t have to fight the pizza dough now to have homemade pizza! I have a feeling you are related to my hubby. His family is from your neck of the woods. Glad I found your website it has been a joy to read everything.
Shirley
I made this and my family went ga ga over it! I added black olives because they love them and it was awesome! Thanks for the recipe, I’m sure I will make this often.
I made fried burritos the other day and it dawned on me that I could use this pizza mixture with mozzarella cheese and olives, instead of the taco meat, beans, cheese, olives, sourcream etc. and I could wrap it up in a tortilla and fry it in some olive oil and we would have pizza hot pockets. I think I will try that. Thanks for the idea!