Pizza, it’s one of the easiest and tastiest dishes you can put together. And yet… it seems we’ll do almost anything to make sure we don’t have to make it ourselves. That includes everything from grabbing a slice from your favorite corner mom and pop pie shop to ordering delivery from the big chains to resorting to the frozen stuff. And you know what, the right frozen pizza gets the job done.
The quality of frozen pizza ranges from slices that taste like cardboard with cheese melted on top (if it melts at all — the really bad brands just burn) to slices so good they could fool you in a blind taste test. And Trader Joe’s has some of the best on the market.
Since you can’t buy all the TJ’s pies (you could, but think of the valuable freezer space that would eat up), let’s separate the truly great from the “just good.” That’s right, we’re ranking all nine frozen Trader Joe’s pizzas — paying special attention to the quality of crust, the presentation of the pie, and the execution of the flavors.
Let’s eat!
9. Vegan Meatless Meat Eaters Pizza
Presentation:
Depressing. I’ve never looked at a slice of pizza that made me sad until I laid eyes on this… thing. But I get it, it’s a vegan pizza — vegan cheese is never going to melt like the real thing.
All that matters are the flavors here.
Tasting Notes:
The flavors come on really strong. Everything feels over-seasoned, it’s very zesty and smokey. The “meat” is incredibly chewy — I’d suggest skipping it but it’s what packs all the flavor.
The sauce doesn’t have any flavor, it’s just wet, and the bread is too soft.
The Bottom Line:
It’s not great. If you’re not vegan there is absolutely no reason to buy this. If you are vegan… there is absolutely no reason to buy this.
8. Pizza Margherita
Appearance:
Terrible. What happened here, Joe? This pizza wins the award for looking least like the advertised picture on the box. This is practically a different pizza. I followed the directions closely, I placed this on a center rack and still needed to bake it three minutes longer to get the cheese to start melting. Expectations shouldn’t be high for a frozen margherita, but you never expect the results to be this bad.
The sauce has an off-putting chunky appearance to it, like some kind of strange tomato smoothie.
Tasting Notes:
Trader Joe’s Margherita Pizza markets itself as being handmade before being cooked in woodburning ovens in Italy. That’s great, but none of that effort translates in appearance or taste. Where Margherita Pizza is typically light and fresh this just comes across as sickeningly sweet.
The cheese is gummy and sticks to your teeth and the crust tastes flavored with artificial cheese powder, like a goldfish cracker.
The Bottom Line:
It’s like ordering a Margherita Pizza from Chuck E. Cheese. Skip it.
7. Wood Fired Naples Style Uncured Pepperoni Pizza
Presentation:
Fair. There isn’t nearly enough cheese here, you can see some of the sauce through it, which is a bad sign in my book. The cheese that is here is unevenly melted, or burnt and crispy. It looks pretty low quality, like you imagine a frozen pizza to look.
Tasting Notes:
Zesty bright tomato sauce-forward flavor on a flavorless dry crust with weirdly chemical-tasting pepperonis. The cheese provides only a mouthfeel, no flavor and the pepperonis are overly chewy. If you like pepperonis that crisp up on the edges, you’re going to be disappointed.
The Bottom Line:
The whole thing has a sharp artificial taste to it, nothing tastes very high quality or well-sourced. No single component of this pizza can be described as good. If you want a pepperoni pizza made easy, pick up TJ’s fresh dough, a jar of Rao’s pizza sauce, mozzarella, and some pepperonis and you’d have something eight thousand times better tasting.
It’ll take a bit more effort, but it’ll be worth it. This is a waste of money.
6. Brie Cheese And Tomato Flatbread
Presentation:
Trader Joe’s cook times on all of their pizzas are off. I cooked this for an additional two minutes and it still looked severely underdone. Appearance isn’t everything, but the lack of color definitely makes this come across as less appetizing.
The picture on the box shows a very appetizing and colorful pie, but this just looks flavorless and a bit soggy.
Tasting Notes:
Light and buttery with the occasional burst of bright flavor from the sweet cherry tomato and a bitter and herbaceous parsley-backed finish. The braided crust looks cool, and it’s crispy on the outside but once you chew through it gets really gummy and soft. If this retained its crispiness, we’d be willing to rank it higher.
The Bottom Line:
Light, refreshing, and crispy. This is something you should serve as an appetizer to a full meal. By itself, even a full pie would leave you wanting for something more.
5. Organic Roasted Vegetable
Presentation:
Beautiful, bright, and colorful veggies are haphazardly spread across a perfectly melted cheese base. The pizza even has a few air bubbles, which always make for an appetizing pie.
Tasting Notes:
Very delicious and fresh, the vegetables in attendance are sweet yellow bell peppers, spicy red onions, and salty eggplant, with chunks of tomato and zucchini providing juicy sweet, and vegetal bursts of flavor.
This is a very clean-tasting pie, what it lacks in savory notes it makes up for in its variety of vegetal flavors.
The Bottom Line:
A great all veggie pie. In a pinch, It’ll get the job done, but picking up fresh dough and a few veggies would result in a much superior result.
4. Mushroom & Cheese Flatbread
Presentation:
Another France imported pizza flatbread. But unlike the previous flatbread, the chunks of white and oyster mushrooms make this pizza a lot more appetizing to the eye. The cheese is also melty-er here, but the crust still looks a little too pale to be described as appetizing.
Work on that, TJ!
Tasting Notes:
Each bite is delicious, the cheese base is a sweet, salty, and nutty blend of Parmigiano Reggiano and Emmenthal cheese with small bite-sized chunks of umami-packed mushrooms. This is the savoriest meat-free pizza I’ve ever eaten.
The Bottom Line:
Light and crispy with rich savory flavors that keep this tiny thin-crust flatbread pie satisfying. There are a lot of great flavors to savor here, but a drizzle of pesto would take it up a notch. Add your own to transform the experience to something that surpasses your local delivery.
3. Pizza Parlanno
Presentation:
It’s beautiful. It’s pretty much the same as the Organic Roasted Vegetable Pizza but the ingredients are more evenly spread and abundant and there is some meat thrown across the top, making for a heartier slice.
There is also much more cheese here than on any of the pies, providing a great melt across and underneath the toppings.
Tasting Notes:
This pizza build features Italian sausage, pepperoni, two different types of roasted peppers, and roasted onions and each bite is a delicious bouquet of flavors of fresh flavors with a smokey and savory aftertaste that makes the overall experience much more satisfying than what the roasted veggie pie offers. The veggies are still roasted here, bringing a charred fire flavor that pairs well with the smokey and zesty pepperoni and sausage.
There is nothing to dislike here, this is one of Trader Joe’s finest pies, and the best tasting more traditional combination of flavors.
The Bottom Line:
It’s Trader Joe’s version of a Supreme pizza. All the best vegetables and meats on one very delicious pie.
2. BBQ Chicken Pizza
Presentation:
Easily the most appetizing-looking pizza sold at Trader Joe’s. Not only is this piled high with white meat chicken, and roasted onions but it’s also smothered in barbecue sauce with flecks of beautiful peppery cilantro throughout.
Tasting Notes:
It’s delicious before you even take your first bite. The flavors just leap off the pizza as it gives off this intoxicating aroma that makes the mouth water. The sauce is brown sugar sweet and smokey leading to sweet bites of chicken and a savory onion tinge on the aftertaste. Earthy cilantro adds a nice fresh peppery kick to the whole experience and keeps it from tasting too smokey.
Each bite is worth savoring — you’re not going to want this one to end.
The Bottom Line:
Sweet, smokey, savory, fresh-tasting, and incredibly filling. This rivals most of the big chain pies. Still, Trader Joe’s has one pie that’s even better.
1. Roasted Garlic & Pesto Pizza
Presentation:
It looks great! Flecks of roasted garlic peppered across a blend of melted cheese with dabs of pesto spread throughout. It’s not quite as much pesto as you want to see, but flavor-wise — it delivers.
When I took this out of the oven it had risen to a giant dough ball. I’m not entirely sure why that happened, but it deflated to a regular flat state once I took it out of the oven.
Tasting Notes:
A buttery roasted explosion of flavor in every bite, with nutty, grassy pesto notes on the backend. The sweet caramelized garlic is the perfect flavor to pair with this pizza’s four-cheese blend, which combines creamy mozzarella with provolone, nutty Parmigiano Reggiano, and rich and milky burrata. The pizza also features a deep-fried crust, which makes it a bit more oily than we want it to be but once you experience the crispy crunch it provides, it’s hard to hate on the decision.
Each bite starts off crunchy and crispy before settling into something more chewy and savory as you work through it.
The Bottom Line:
Trader Joe’s best pie — the cheese melts evenly across the pie, the crust is crispy, crunchy, and wonderfully chewy. The flavors are on point. This tastes so good you might find yourself opting for this over a fresh pie from the big chains. Often.