Trader Joe’s Vegan Meatless Meat Eaters Pizza Review

Here at Club Trader Joe’s, we strive to eat all the vegan and gluten-free products we can to make sure you don’t have to spend money on them if they taste awful. There is plenty of awful vegan food out there. My whole problem with a certain sector of the vegan food market is that they keep trying to make fake meat and cheese that looks exactly like meat or cheese when you should just be coming up with interesting vegan food that looks vegan not meat. But I digress…

What we have here is a meatless pepperoni and sausage pizza parading as a real meat pepperoni and sausage pizza. From a distance, it looks exactly the same as the one you would find in any frozen food section.

This pizza features a regular wheat crust (why didn’t they just go for gold and go gluten-free for the win!?!?), tomato base, vegan cheese (made out of coconut oil? come on Trader Joe’s there are better fake cheeses out there), and vegan “pepperoni” and vegan “Italian sausage”. Ah but the devil is in the details.

From a distance, the pizza looks exactly like a pepperoni and sausage pizza, but if you get close things start to look a little different.

The “pepperoni” looks a little too perfect. It almost looks fake but considering it’s not made out of meat, I’ll give them a pass. The “sausage” looks like a sausage and maybe they should’ve just stuck to a sausage pizza instead. The “cheese” looks fake too. A little too glossy and translucent instead of a nice milky white color.

I fired up the oven and put the pizza directly on the rack as suggested and baked it for about 15 minutes. When it came out of the oven it had a nice pepperoni smell to it and it actually started to look pretty good.

The crust was nice and crispy as I wheeled the pizza cutter through the pie and cut it into quarters. Before I took a bite of the crust, I pulled off a “pepperoni” and ate it separately. It was kind of mushy. Normal pepperoni is a little firm like all salamis, but this just melted in my mouth. The flavors were spot on, but the texture was weird.

The sausage on the other hand was firm and had a bite to it and I think it’s much easier to make vegan sausage than pepperoni and it had a good Italian sausage flavor. So, I finally took a bite so I could have the whole thing in my mouth at once and the crust and sauce were great. I like my crust a little on the crunchy side and this didn’t disappoint.

Taken altogether, this wasn’t half bad! I could eat this on a regular basis and not miss having any real meat. The only off-putting thing was the weird texture on the “pepperoni” but when you take a bit of the crust and sauce and everything altogether, you don’t really notice it. At 750 calories, it’s too much for one person and not enough for two to split.

I wish it was either a little smaller or a little bigger. But either way, vegan pizza has come a long way in the past couple of years and I could probably feed this to my kids and they wouldn’t have a clue that they weren’t eating all vegetables!

I’m going to rate this  8 Bells!

Ingredients:

Pizza crust (wheat flour, water, sunflower oil, salt, yeast), tomato sauce (tomato puree, roasted garlic puree, black pepper, dried oregano, cornstarch, olive oil, salt), shredded mozzarella style cheese alternative (water, coconut oil, modified potato starch, contains 2% or less of salt, tapioca malodextrin, inactive yeast, yeast extract, natural flavor, citric acid [to preserve], beta carotene [color], powdered cellulose [anti caking]), meatless pepperoni style slices (water, soybean oil, isolated soy protein, gum blend [agar, konjac gum], carrageenan, salt, contains 2% or less of paprika, dried vinegar, yeast extract, methylcellulose, spices, citric acid [acidulant], garlic powder), meatless Italian sausage style crumbles (water, textured pea protein, rice brain oil, red bell peppers, mushrooms, pea protein isolate, spices, salt, contains 2% or less of methylcellulose, sugar, yeast extract, natural flavoring), meatless chorizo sausage style crumbles (water, textured pea protein, rice brain oil, poblano peppers, pea protein isolate, paprika, spices, mushrooms, contains 2% or less of methylcellulose, salt, sugar, dried vinegar, citric acid [acidulant], dried garlic, garlic, onion powder, yeast extract, natural flavoring), sunflower oil.

Contains soy, wheat, and coconut.

Cooking instructions:

Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Remove all packaging and place directly on the center rack for 14 minutes or until lightly browned and heated through.

Nutrition Facts:

Serving size: 1/3 pizza. Three servings per container.
250 calories per serving (750 calories per container).
Total per container:
Total fat: 22g
Cholesterol: 0mg
Sodium: 1790mg
Carbs: 116g
Dietary Fiber: 5g
Sugar: 10g
Protein: 22g
Vitamin D: 0mcg
Calcium: 60mg
Iron: 3.5mg
Potassium: 740mg