Frozen pizza is the pinnacle of the 21st-century meals. Dinner prepped and cooked in less than thirty minutes. It’s safe to say that pizza is one of the MVPs of frozen dinners and with so many frozen pizza brands to choose from at your local grocery store, we decided to select SIX of the most popular frozen pizza brands. We blindly rated and reviewed each pizza to find out which frozen pizzas reign supreme!
The Brands:
DiGiorno Hand-Tossed Cheese Pizza:
A familiar name from most advertisements you see for frozen pizza. “It’s not delivery, it’s DiGiorno!”
Red Baron Four Cheese Pizza:
A very affordable frozen pizza I grew up with when my mom was at work and we had to fend for ourselves for dinner. Tastes great on the grill.”
Screamin’ Sicilian Cheese Pizza:
It was the most unfamiliar of the bunch, but still a noticeable brand design on the frozen pizza box.
Signature Select Five Cheese Pizza:
Another affordable frozen pizza originating from the Albertson’s brand.
Home Run Inn Classic Crust Cheese Pizza:
The Chicago brand frozen pizza that not everyone may know of outside the Midwest that I’ve adored since the day I tried it.
Gino’s East Deep Dish Deluxe Cheese Pizza:
The oddball out of the bunch it’s still a popular pizza brand we found in the frozen foods section. Another Chicago-branded deep dish pizza that deserves a spot in the taste test.
The Blind Taste Test:
We tasted all six slices of these pizzas with no prior knowledge of which slice was which. With the help from our colleague each pizza was baked according to manufacturer instructions, sliced into pie pieces, and labeled one through six for her to identify which pizza was which.
Screamin’ Sicilian
At first glance, this looks quite appetizing with a slab of fresh mozzarella glistening with seasoned tomato sauce. The flavor was very well-balanced from the tomato sauce to the crust. A perfume of garlic hits your tastebuds as you take your first bite. It had a homemade/restaurant-style quality to it. The crust is cracker-y, but nothing spectacular on its own. A blend of fresh and pressed mozzarella makes it especially cheesy, but I wonder how these amenities affect the final cost of each pizza. I thought there was too much sauce on my slice.
Home Run Inn
This slice looks noticeably thicker than the other slices. The cheese melts more uniformly instead of sliding off the pizza, it congeals on the slice. From the first bite, you notice the flavor from the dough immediately. It tastes cracker-y, flakey, and buttery leaving you wanting another bite. The sauce is thin with just enough flavor between the layers. Mark noted that the cheese has a bit of an artificial flavor. Claudia noted the cheese being a bit too loaded for her. I grew up eating this pizza like this and maybe I’m biased, but this frozen pizza is perfection for me.
Signature Select
This was a noticeably thinner slice of pizza when you picked it up to eat. It reminds me of that pizza your mom baked for you and your friends when you were kids. It tastes very cheesy on first bite but lacks any flavor. The crust is cracker-y and crispy with a tiny line of sauce throughout. The sauce should be a huge balance of flavor here and it felt missing. In a pinch, this pizza would do a great job feeding a crowd for cheap.
Digiorno
A THICK slice of pizza at first glance. It looks doughy and the first bite confirms that it tastes doughy. The cheese has a slightly funky flavor making me think one of the cheeses used has to be pecorino or provolone. The lack of sauce barely balances the doughiness of the pizza and in the worst way reminds me of cheap restaurant pizza. Not my first choice of takeaway pizza and my last choice personally.
Red Baron
Another thin slice of pizza that feels high quality. A good balance of sauce to cheese with a noticeably plain flavor. When I imagine frozen pizza this is what I think about. The crust is crisp, but very plain tasting. It tastes familiar and I would eat it again.
Gino’s East
Easiest slice of pizza to guess by far. A thick crusty pizza with lots of cheese and sauce oozy over the slice. The bread is very mealy and doughy which is not a familiar texture for deep dish pizza. The sauce has a zesty flavor bursting with dried herbs. Not my favorite frozen deep-dish pizza, but a solid pizza choice.
So, which frozen pizza reigns supreme?!
The Final Verdict:
After a huge glass of water and a nap on the couch, we finally decided which our favorite frozen pizzas were. We voted on three distinct components of each pizza; cheese, sauce, and crust flavor. The votes were not unanimous as Mark’s favorite frozen pizza from the group was Gino’s East deep dish deluxe cheese pizza. Mark thought Home Run Inn’s pizza was delicious and a close second, but the cheese had too much of an artificial taste to it. Gino’s East deep-dish cheese pizza covers all the bases for him and is the most craveable. Claudia and I voted for the same pizza. We determined that the flavor of the crust, the sweetness of the sauce, and the gooeyness of the cheese from the Home Run Inn cheese pizza checked all the boxes.