Mine is Jewel (midwest grocery store chain) Chef’s Kitchen thin crust sausage, believe it or not. They have the perfect balance of crust/sauce/cheese/meat, and always cook up crispy and delicious. Sadly, I had to substitute the pepperoni tonight because the were SOLD OUT of the sausage. They’re ok, but not the same. Feel free to just name it, or extol the virtues as well.
This is not to say that there aren’t excellent restaurant pizzas out there, but this is about your grocer’s freezer. Let’s hear it.
I have tried most of the national brands, both budget priced and high end ones (which can actually be as much as a pizza from a take out joint) but I like Red Baron the most.
Home Run Inn (although I’m generally a fan of actual Home Run Inn pizza) and Palermo’s ultra thin crust (once again, don’t like Palermo’s restaurant pizza, either) are the only frozen pizzas I could actually say I enjoy. Jewel’s old (we’re talking 80s/early 90s) pizza was really good, but they’ve changed it and I don’t like it as much anymore.
Funny, I remember eating the Jewel’s pizza in the 70s even, and it doesn’t seem to have changed much. What do you think has changed about it? For all I know it has, but I can’t tell, or won’t admit it to myself.
The sausage is different from what I remember it being. It just seems and tastes, I don’t know, “cheaper” than it used to. Like it’s leaner and slightly spiced differently. It’s still an okay pizza, but not what I remember it. Or perhaps my tastes have changed over time.
Jewel’s is still…something for an uninspired dinner, but what would people who know not of the REAL THING should partake?
For me, you might as well partake of some local, non-pizza, cuisine, though I always had a taste for Appian Way, which me mum served when dad was out of town. I think I might but some.
Seconding the Jewel Chef’s Kitchen sausage. Has to be the Chef’s Kitchen, though–there are non-Chef’s Kitchen Jewel pizzas, and those really suck. I also like Connie’s and Reggio’s.
Seconded. The quality of the toppings on the Ultimate Four Meat pizza is better than most pizza places and the crust is pretty good too. Very filling and well worth the 6 bucks.
The California Pizza Kitchen pizzas taste good if you are into the thin crispy cracker like crust. Not very satisfying though, the pizza seems more like a very tasty appetizer than a meal.
A lot of people say that the SAMS (or is it Costco- I always get them confused) frozen pizzas are good, but I haven’t tried them.
DiGiorno/Delissio (different names for different regions?) are pretty good as long as you steer clear of the varieties with veggies on them; in my experience they have a distinct “thawed frozen vegetables” flavor that I find off-putting. That said, the crust is pretty good, the meat is good, and the sauce is decent.
They kinda skimp on the cheese, but that’s nothing that a handful of grated mozzarella (added after the pizza is fully cooked and allowed an extra minute or two in the oven to melt) can’t fix. In fact, for some people this would be a plus, because you get lots of yummy melted cheese, but it’s not baked until it’s hard to digest.
Tombstone used to be so much better. About 10-15 years ago, it started to go downhill - the sausage and sauce got bland, they started skimping on the ingredients, and the cheese went cheap and nasty. Definitely not the same pizza anymore. Might have had something to do with Kraft taking over. Jack’s used to be edible as ‘snack pizza’, but it got worse, too. Most likely for the same reason.
I’m with the OP on Jewel’s Chef’s Kitchen pizzas, and I’m a huge pizza snob. True, the cheese is inconsistently applied from time to time, but the sauce is generally good.
I just add more seasoning & parmesan and occasionally chicken.
During a period where I was exiled to Michigan, I had to eat Jack’s & Tombstone–the best of the frozen offerings. After an excursion to civilization [Chicagoland], I was preparing a Jewel pizza and my sister said she could smell a pleasant difference.
