I Tried 5 Cheap Frozen Pizzas, and This Is the One I'll Grab Again

Stock your freezer with a few of these boxes for dinners on the fly.

For most, frozen pizza is a nostalgic food that harkens back to childhood when things were simpler and food tasted best when it came shrink-wrapped in plastic. But sometimes as adults, that need for a slice hits, whether you’re simply craving the trusty combination of crust, sauce, and cheese or you’re in a pinch for a quick meal. Frozen pizza can be a delicious lunch or dinner option—either straight out of the oven or with an upgrade or two to make it extra delicious.

But with so many frozen pizza brands to choose from, it can be hard to know which box to grab from the freezer aisle. Enter our cheap frozen pizza taste test.

How We Tested

To help you select the best pie for the price on your next grocery run, we tested brands that are available in most grocery stores and grabbed the cheese flavor to keep our competition fair. We purchased a handful of the most common frozen pizza brands, preheated the oven, and got to work—giving each a number score out of a possible 10.

Frozen Pizza Taste Test

DiGiorno Rising Crust Four Cheese Pizza: 4/10

This is the pizza I was most excited about coming into this test. It's the one I always wanted as a kid, and I remembered those commercials making it look so good. Unfortunately, the sauce, cheese, and crust were all misses. The crust was a huge, doughy mess–way too much bread for the amount of toppings. Because it was so thick, it created an extremely unpleasant layer of gooey, soggy dough between the sauce and the bottom crust. I cooked it for the maximum time the box suggested, and it still tasted gummy and undercooked. The sauce itself was inoffensive, albeit a bit bland and flavorless. The cheese tasted very processed, and with the first bite, it all pulled off the slice, an issue no other pizza had. An important thing to note as well is that this DiGiorno pizza is almost double the cost of the others on this list. This is the only pizza that went into the trash after a few bites.

Jack’s Original Thin Cheese Pizza: 5/10

Pizzas wrapped solely in plastic give off a certain vibe. One that says, “I know what I am. You know what I am. Let’s not think too much about it.” They’re the kind of pizzas you keep stocked in your freezer for tearing into after a late night at the bars or for when your kids are screaming at you for food. They’re not glamorous, they’re not special, they’re just pizza. And this pizza is that. It’s average. The sauce and cheese are mild in flavor. Nothing is awesome, but nothing is awful. All that to say, the crust was surprisingly crispy, a definite “plus” for tasters.

Tombstone Five Cheese Pizza: 6/10

Another contender in the “plastic-wrapped” category, this Tombstone pizza scored relatively well in our taste test. Perhaps the extra four types of cheeses helped its cause, but testers liked the flavor and the appearance of this pizza. The crust didn’t win big in flavor, but it was crispy enough that testers were able to ignore how boring it was. The biggest issue with the pizza was unwrapping it. As soon as I opened it, loose cheese seemed to fall everywhere. So maybe five cheeses is too much, Tombstone?

Red Baron Classic Crust Four Cheese Pizza: 7/10

This pizza was the sleeper hit; I found myself munching on an extra piece after the testing was done. The crust was one of the most flavorful; we liked the yeasty flavor that really reminded us of actual pizza dough, not just flour. The sauce was not sweet like DiGiorno’s and Tony’s and actually had a good savory note without tasting too much like canned tomatoes. The only thing that kept this pizza from snagging first place was the cheese. It tasted distinctly like whatever powder they put on shredded cheese to keep it from clumping. It didn't fully melt; you could feel the chalky, individual shreds in each bite.

Screamin' Sicilian Bessie's Revenge Cheese Pizza: 9/10

"Woah! This tastes like real pizza!" was the first thing said at the table after this pizza was passed around. The crust was crispy, with an oily-in-a-good-way texture. It was fluffy without being gooey and crunchy without being too cracker-like. The sauce was the saltiest out of all the pies tested, but it was a welcome reprieve from the bland and too-sweet sauces the other pizzas offered. It also has some distinct notes of dried oregano and basil. However, the crowning jewel of this pizza is the cheese. The first thing I thought when biting into a slice was how much it tasted like fresh mozzarella. All the other pizzas tasted like cheese in a general sense, but this one tasted the most like real cheese. The only downside of this pizza was that I could only find the small, square personal size at my local grocery store, which was about a buck cheaper than the Red Baron and Tony's pizzas, so the full size would be on the more expensive side.

The Bottom Line

Frozen pizzas are an excellent standby to keep stocked in your freezer for those “I have no idea what to make for dinner!” nights. Whether you polish off the whole pie or have extra slices to enjoy the following day (here’s how to reheat pizza so it’s as good as it was when it came out of the oven), it’s generally a universally pleasing meal–as long as you pick up a pie that’s tasty.

So here’s our bottom line when it comes to which affordable, frozen cheese pizzas to keep on hand in case of emergency:

• What we'll buy again: Screamin' Sicilian Bessie's Revenge Cheese Pizza and Red Baron Classic Crust Four Cheese Pizza

• What we'll avoid: Jack's Cheese Pizza and DiGiorno Rising Crust Four Cheese Pizza
  

Read the original article on All Recipes.