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.
Here I am again, next morning, Christy. I got out my old black 3-ring cookbook that I have been writing my favorite recipes in for 40 years, and found my recipe for Cheese Boats. They are like your pizza rolls, but with a more Southwest flavor. There was a drive-in years ago in the Globe-Miami,Az. area that made these. This isn’t “my” recipe, as I stated above. It is just in my book. These are so good to have in the freezer, if you can actually get them IN the freezer before we eat them, and a good sandwich to have stashed for a lazy day.
Cheese Boats
1 small (4oz) can of diced green chiles
1 1/2 lb. grated longhorn cheddar cheese.
1 small can chopped olives
1 bunch sliced green onions
8 hard-boiled eggs, peeled and chopped.
1 8 oz. can tomato sauce.
Garlic salt to taste.
French rolls, cut almost half the way through, and a little bread pulled out of the center.
Mix all the ingredients together, then stuff french rolls. Roll sandwiches in foil. Put in the oven about 15-20 minutes at 400 degrees. Enjoy!
Maybe frozen before heating in the oven.
Christy, I love your blog and am so glad I found it. You cook like I like to eat! And it may be “unhealthy” to some people, but not to Southerners or Okies! My Mom and Dad were both from Oklahoma, and she cooked just like this and so did my Grandma and NO ONE left their tables hungry. If there wasn’t food left on the table, that meant someone didn’t get enough to eat, OR (Heaven help you) you were a picky person. Regardless which, if there was no food left, they both would get up and fix something else, or give you more pie, cake, banana pudding, whatever. You were going to be satisfied when you left the table! But in those days they were working in the fields from before daylight until after sundown, and when they ate, there was no complaining about the food! Women sure
didn’t expect praise for their cooking, but they didn’t need any words to feel the gratitude when all you could hear was forks hitting plates and chewing. So that was just the way people cooked and ate then. Most of us don’t work in the fields now, (and thank God for the ones who do!) but we still have that ingrained memory of good food going along with hard work and still want it no matter if we do sit in an office and do computer work all day. So keep up the good work Christy! The ones of us who love what we eat can sure enjoy every recipe you give us, and those of us who want to watch our weight and worry about all that stuff, can just go to one of those other websites and enjoy those recipes. I have a recipe to send you on the order of these delicious pizza rolls at another time. I apologize for rambling, but can’t help it when I think of my Mama’s and my Grandma’s cooking. Thank you for that.
Barb
Hey Christy,
Does the bread get soggy ???
I made a test batch of these tonight (including your boiled beef process) and my husband and I really enjoyed them. I put them in hot dog buns and it worked out perfectly.
This Will be great for myfamily when we have softball the weekend for the whole weekend
Made these earlier in the week in anticipation of having one of those weeks when there’s a hungry family and no time to cook. (Evening meetings almost every night this week.) Husband and 15 year-old loved them. I added bell peppers, onions, and celery. Daughter took them to school for lunch 2 days and this morning she hid the last one in the back of the fridge so she can have another one on Friday. I’d call that a hit.
Did have some questions: Do you microwave them in the Saran wrap or unwrap before heating? Since you are such a lover of generics, is there something special about Saran? (Piggly Wiggly was out of Saran so I bought Reynolds). Are there some brands of plastic wrap that you find work better for certain things? Are some brands more microwavable than others?
Since my family actually LIKES peppers and onions and such, I may try this with larger chunks of veggies added later in the cooking process to give it a little more crunch next time. Overall a fabulous meal idea that I will definitely do again.
Hi Christy! I came over from the Butterfinger Cake recipe (after checking out the Elvis Presley Cake). I’m making a cake JUST LIKE the Butterfinger Cake this week, well except I’m using toffee bits instead of Butterfinger, and. no, just kidding about the “and”. not kidding about the toffee bits.
And your E.P. Cake is very similar to a cake my mom forced on us about 30 years ago called, (no, really) Cake Better Than Sex.
But the point of this is to tell you that the pizza rolls sound really yummy! I can’t wait to try them on my coworkers when I volunteer to take lunch. They are such guinea pigs.
and finally. What’s up with Anonymous? That was rude. Besides, I’ll bet you already knew all that.