Welcome to the ultimate showdown of frozen delight, where taste buds tango and wallets weep with joy: it’s the top ten frozen pizzas at Trader Joe’s! It’s 2024 and I’ve updated the list to reflect some new pizzas from last year. Before you scoff and say, ‘It’s just frozen pizza, how good can it be?’ hold onto your pepperoni-loving hats. We’re about to embark on a cheesy journey through the freezer aisle, where the pizzas are stacked high, and the expectations are, let’s face it, moderately low. But fear not, dear reader, for I have braved the cold (literally, it’s freezing by the frozen foods) to bring you the crème de la crème of quick dinner solutions. So, grab your grocery carts and let’s roll – this isn’t just a taste test, it’s an adventure in culinary convenience!
What I really like about Trader Joe’s pizzas, in general, is that they have a wide variety of them. They have frozen ones, they have ones in the fridge section ready to bake and they also carry pizza dough, which is one of their best selling products. Obviously, Trader Joe’s is not stupid, it’s one of the most popular foods around the world and comes in all different styles shapes, and sizes. It has transcended all cultures at this point. If you want evidence of how popular pizza is in the United States, just walk into any mainstream grocery store and behold the amount of space taken up by the frozen pizza section. You literally have hundreds of pizzas to choose from.
The last time I went to Trader Joe’s, I counted about 20 different pizzas options in the store (if you include the fresh dough options). That’s an incredible selection of pizzas and even I don’t know what to pick sometimes. This list below is purely subjective for my tastes, but let me know which is your favorite in the comments! Some of these pizzas seem to disappear and reappear which is typical of Trader Joe’s.
10. Trader Joe’s Vegetarian Meatless Cheeseburger Pizza
Trader Joe’s Vegetarian Cheeseburger Pizza is a frozen pizza that aims to satisfy the taste buds of both vegetarians and meat-lovers alike. This pizza comes loaded with classic cheeseburger toppings, such as pea protein crumbles, cheese, onions, pickles, and “burger sauce”, all resting atop a crispy crust made with traditional wheat flour.
I don’t know who dreams up these whacky ideas at Trader Joe’s headquarters but whoever dreamed up this product is clearly delusional and doesn’t like pizza. I’ve heard of cheeseburger pizza before and why not? California Pizza Kitchen came up with the crazy idea to make a Thai Chicken pizza why not a cheeseburger pizza? I’m a traditionalist when it comes to pizza, but as a dedicated foodie, I am always open to new and interesting flavors. Trader Joe’s definitely likes to go to new and interesting places with their food. It’s why we shop there! It was much better than I thought!
9. Trader Joe’s Garlic and Pesto Deep Fried Crust Pizza
Trader Joe’s Garlic and Pesto Deep Fried Crust Pizza Review – I am a sucker for a new pizza at Trader Joe’s so when I saw this one, I knew I had to get it right away. At first glance, it looks like any normal pizza that Trader Joe’s sells in the frozen section, but it’s not. The crust is deep-fried before they put on the toppings. You might say, “Deep fried pizza???” and you would be correct. It is a thing and it’s delicious!
If you’ve ever heard of Frybread, it’s essentially the same thing except the pizza dough is only fried for a couple of minutes in a light vegetable or olive oil and then topped with pizza toppings and baked in the oven for a while. This creates a pizza that is super light and airy with a nice crust crunch.
Trader Joe’s says on their website that they worked with their supplier in Sicily to come up with a frozen version of this pizza and I think they’ve knocked it out of the park!
8. Trader Joe’s Organic Cheese and Tomato Pizza Family Size
Like their other pizzas that come from Italy, these come with a pretty thin crust. This one looks thinner than the round pizzas, but I think in this case that’s a good thing. They mention on the back of the box that you should use this pizza as a starting place for whatever you can think up and I think that’s a good idea, but for this review, I kept it simple and just added a little bit of mozzarella since the cheese looked a little sparse.
7. Trader Joe’s Meatless Meat Eaters Pizza
Taken altogether, this wasn’t half bad! You wouldn’t know this was a vegan pizza. 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!
6. Trader Joe’s Gluten Free Cheese Pizza (Cauliflower Crust)
First, the crust is a little soft in that it doesn’t hold its structure as well as a wheat based crust. Since there is no gluten, there is nothing to hold it together and form holes as you see in bread. But it held together with good enough for me to lift it and take a bite out of it. It tasted almost exactly like every other American frozen pizza out there. Which I guess is a good thing. Trader Joe’s obviously didn’t want to stray too far from an American classic. The sauce and cheese are a step above the cheap stuff in your normal American grocery store frozen section. They have a nice flavor. The crust is weird though. It was soft and chewy but in a gummy way. It was almost like uncooked wheat dough. It got a little crispy on the bottom, but the main part of the cauliflower crust was gummy. I think that just comes with the territory of a gluten free crust. You give up one thing for another.
All in all, if you really don’t want gluten (I for one, love gluten), then this is a great alternative to a wheat based pizza crust. Even my kids ate a couple of slices before figuring out something was different. Which can’t be all bad!
5. Trader Joe’s Organic Wood Fired Sicilian Style Pizza
For a frozen pizza, it doesn’t get much better than this for a frozen pizza from Trader Joe’s. If you like your pizza on the spicy side with no meat, this is for you. This pizza comes with a little pouch of spicy, flavored olive oil that you can drizzle on the pizza after it comes out of the oven.
4. Trader Joe’s Uncured Pepperoni Pizza
These pizzas are made in the USA as opposed to many of their Italian made pizzas. This one is thicker and has more sauce than the Italian ones. The crust is crunchy on the edges and bottom but has a fair amount of chewiness in the center. There is ample sauce and it has a nice tomato flavor with a nice rich complex base. There is a fair amount of pepperoni on it. IMHO, there is never too much pepperoni on a pizza, but if I were a real pepperoni lover, I would add more if I were you.
I have to say this is one of the better frozen pepperoni pizzas out there on the market and for $4.99 a pizza, you can hardly go wrong. I usually buy two at a time because one of my sprouting teenagers can eat a whole one by himself. I personally don’t know where he puts it but there isn’t much I can do to stop him.
3. Trader Joe’s Pizza Parlanno
Trader’s is obviously trying to compete with the Celeste and Red Baron’s of the frozen pizza world with this pizza and I think they do a great job (for frozen pizza). This is the kitchen sink pizza. It’s got pepperoni and sausage. Onions, Red and yellow bell peppers. It’s all on a thin, cracker like crust that has a really nice crunch when you bite into it. There is a fair amount of sauce and cheese and it all seems to work together. They are pretty simple to make, pull them out of the box and put them right on the wire rack in the oven. That makes sure the crust is very crunchy. Something I don’t strive for in my own pizzas, but from a store-bought pizza it ain’t half bad.
You have to remember that this isn’t anything near a real pizzeria style pizza, but something you can have a quick meal or something to feed the kids in a hurry. There isn’t a lot of pizza here so you would need 2-3 of them to feed a growing family like mine.
2. Trader Joe’s Tarte d’Alsace
Not technically a pizza, but a flatbread what the hell it looks like a pizza? I had the joy of traveling in the Alsace region of France a few years back and tastes the real thing on several occasions. While this is quite as good, it’s a worthy replacement for the real thing. In the Alsace, they are mainly used for appetizers and that’s how we use them too. But, it makes a good meal, especially with a nice salad on the side. The crisp, thin dough and lack of tomato sauce are a nice contrast to the typical pizza.
1. Trader Joe’s Fresh Pizza Dough
How can you go wrong here? Trader Joe’s has been selling pizza dough for as long as I’ve been shopping there. We are all for it. With a few simple steps, that I lay out in this blog post, you can make wonderful pizza with the equipment you already have in your kitchen or you can bump it up a notch if you have a pizza stone or even a dedicated pizza oven as I do. The sky is the limit here. You can also make calzones or Chicago-style stuffed pizza. You can choose between the herbed and plain dough.
**** From Scratch ****
I included this because if you have the time and equipment, this is by far the best way to make pizza. Even better than using Trader Joe’s fresh pizza dough. Although I like Trader Joe’s fresh pizza dough, it isn’t exactly the type of dough I like to use. I like Neopolitan-style pizza and I have a dedicated pizza oven where I bake 90% of my pizzas, but even I don’t always have time to make my dough fresh. If you are interested in making pizza dough from scratch, I suggest you read my post on how to make the best pizza you’ll ever make. You can buy everything at Trader Joe’s and it’s really not that hard. You just need a couple of extra pieces of equipment that you may or may not have.
Next time, please order it as Title of pizza, photo, and then description. The way you have it ordered it is not clear without going back an fourth which description goes with which photo.
Thanks for pointing that out. I fixed it. Not sure why I did that!
Yesterday we baked a TJ’s Parlanno pizza directly on the oven rack at 450°F after it had already thawed. We pulled it out when the pepperoni edges were starting to blacken. I’ve never been impressed by TJ’s pizzas, but this one ranked right at the top of my list, right beside Shakey’s thin crust pepperoni. I’m hoping to re-create the experiment.
Please post link to scratch made pizza dough post.
Working on it.