Tag: DiGiorno

It seems to me that in recent years, more food companies have been embracing Thanksgiving dinner as a collective meal to put in other foods. Sandwich shops have been offering turkey, stuffing, and cranberry sandwiches for a while. And this year, DiGiorno has pizza-fied the classic November meal!

DiGiorno’s version omits the stuffing, however, and combines turkey with the ingredients of a green bean casserole. The pizza features roast turkey, green beans, crispy onions, dried cranberries, and gravy. The non-Thanksgiving elements are mozzarella and cheddar cheese, all topped on a Detroit-style crust. Just bake for 23 minutes, and you have a warm meal ready.

Let’s start with the star of the show: the turkey. I was worried the turkey would be gristly or rubbery. But nope, it has a pleasant chew and flavor. It’s not quite what you pull out of the oven on Thanksgiving, but it’s close.

The green beans are fine. They’re slightly crispier than canned green beans. If you don’t like green beans, you will wish they weren’t there. For me, I could take them or leave them.

I don’t really notice the onion’s crispiness, but I can taste their presence. The savory flavor I associate with green bean casserole permeates the pie.

The dried cranberries impart a bit of sweetness to the otherwise ultra-umami dish. I’m glad cranberries got represented. But if you don’t like pineapple on pizza, maybe they’ll be too much for you. At least they’re tarter than pineapple.

The gravy has a nice texture, but there’s something about the seasonings in it that tastes a little odd to me. Not bad, just weird. Maybe my palate is just too unsophisticated. The oddness might also come from the crispy onions.

I’m picky about cheese, so I’m glad they opted for the tamer options of cheddar and mozzarella. That way, it can keep the feel and definition of pizza, even though it’s Thanksgiving, without being too tangy. And the crust might be the best part: soft, slightly chewy, just a little sweet.

I love to eat leftover pizza cold, and I’m happy to report that DiGiorno Thanksgiving Pizza is at least as good cold as it is heated.

I’m really happy this pizza exists. Your family will be mad if you serve it instead of an actual Thanksgiving meal (and it would break the bank to serve a crowd), but it’s a fun product to eat on a random cozy November night or bring to a Friendsgiving. It’s only available at Kroger-affiliated stores, but I hope it will expand to other retailers in the future.

Purchased Price: $9.99
Size: 20.6 oz box
Purchased at: Smith’s Marketplace
Rating: 7 out of 10
Nutrition Facts: (1/4 pizza) 400 calories, 21 grams of fat, 6 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 25 milligrams of cholesterol, 480 milligrams of sodium, 40 grams of carbohydrates, 2 grams of dietary fiber, 5 grams of total sugars including 3 grams of added sugars, and 12 grams of protein.

As a lifelong X-Men fan, I have a bone (claw?) to pick with DiGiorno. Over his fifty-some-odd-year publication history, Wolverine has been many things, but “spicy” isn’t one of them. Now, if they were to release a Spicy Gambit Pie with Cajun seasoning, that would be thematically appropriate and fairly innovative for a frozen pizza. Why not opt to do this? The concept was right there!

“But Karen,” you say, “The movie being promoted is called Deadpool & Wolverine. Gambit is probably not even in it.” Oh, you think you’re so smart. Did you know that Gambit was in Wolverine: Origins back in the day with both Wolverine AND Deadpool? Did we get any pizzas for that movie? I think, after sitting through that, a Gambit-themed pizza is the least Marvel can do for me.

Nevertheless, the Wolvie Pie is the one we were given, thus the one I will review. If you’re interested in these Deadpool & Wolverine DiGiorno tie-ins, there are actually four to choose from: The Wade Special (pineapple and black olives), Gimmi Chimi (spicy cumin sauce, beef topping, jalapeno and cheddar and mozzarella), Maximum Pep (lots of sliced and diced pepperoni), and the Spicy Wolvie Pie (pepperoni, chorizo and bacon.) The idea behind the Wolvie pizza is that Wolverine likes eating meat, so you should too. Clearly, Wolverine also likes sodium.

All varieties come with a Deadpool mask except the Spicy Wolvie. Why wasn’t a Wolverine mask included? That’s just lazy.

I was a little confused about the toppings. It’s obvious what the pepperoni is, of course, but which of the tiny little bits of meat were the bacon and which were the chorizo? The taste of the chorizo was dominant, so if you’d told me all the little bits were chorizo, I would have believed you. Not a lot of bacon flavor here.

The chorizo gave the pizza a nice level of heat. It was more than a “subtle” level, but definitely not as spicy as something like Wendy’s Spicy Nuggets. I kept trying to decide whether or not this pie was spicy enough; sure, there’s some spice there, but “Spicy” is literally in the title. I think it should have been pushed a little further.

That said, it’s still an enjoyable meal. If you’ve had any DiGiorno pizza before, you’ll know exactly what to expect here, but the funny branding adds a little bit of joy to the proceedings. If you find you enjoy role-playing Wolvie and mirroring his eating habits is not enough, you could always go out and hit on a few redheads, although I doubt DiGiorno would take responsibility for that.

Hey, that makes me think about what a Jean Grey pizza would be like. Maybe a strawberry dessert pizza to honor her color scheme? Or a much more spicy Ghost Pepper pie to allude to the universe-scorching heat of the Phoenix Force? DiGiorno, when the MCU finally starts churning out X-Men movies by the dozens, you really have no excuse not to go down this road. Just get on making that Spicy Gambit pizza, and maybe I’ll give you my ideas for the perfect pizza incarnations of all twelve million X-Men characters.

Purchased Price: $6.49
Purchased at: Shop Rite
Rating: 7 out of 10
Nutrition Facts: (1/4 pizza) 350 calories, 17 grams of fat, 7 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 35 milligrams of cholesterol, 810 milligrams of sodium, 34 grams of carbohydrates, 4 grams of sugar, 2 grams of fiber, and 16 grams of protein.

Convenience, accessibility, price… there are so many reasons to love frozen pizza, and lots of people might also consider a crispy, cracker-like crust to be one of them. But buyer beware, that is not what you’ll get with DiGiorno’s new Fully Stuffed Crust.

I bought the Double Pepperoni variety, which, truthfully, I had cynically assumed was just a marketing gimmick to make run-of-the-mill pepperoni sound twice as exciting. I was pleased to realize that the name does, in fact, refer to two distinct types of pepperoni, “sliced” (the usual rounds) and “diced” (little chunks that reminded me of the julienne-cut Canadian bacon from Papa John’s Triple Bacon Pizza). If you prefer your pizza with an additional exciting adjective, you can also opt for Ultimate Three Meat.

I don’t think I need to dwell too long on the standard elements here: the cheese on top is mild and chewy, the pepperoni is greasy and aggressively meaty-tasting (I found the diced bits to be notably tender too, almost melt-in-your-mouth), the sparingly applied red sauce is flavorful if a bit watery, and the crust is yeasty and satisfying. My particular pie actually reminded me of Pizza Hut’s The Edge, with the toppings extending right to the end of every slice. I’m not sure if that’s a core part of the Fully Stuffed Crust brand or if I just got lucky, but either way, I’m happy! I sometimes find eating a dry, hard pizza crust a bit of a chore, but this was its own pleasure, reminiscent of focaccia bread, thick and luxurious.

Speaking of thick and luxurious, let’s get to the star of the show!

Unlike traditional stuffed crust, which merely crams cheese along the pie’s paltry perimeter, this ambitious new entry into the DiGiorno canon boasts, according to its box, “A FULL LAYER of cheese” on the inside. After some careful peeling (the pizza lent itself oddly well to being separated into layers), I can confirm that this is no joke! The inner cheese really does span the entire pizza, meting out an extra mound of mozzarella in every mouthful.

This is where my warning about the lack of crispiness comes in: often frozen pizzas are so brittle they snap if you look at them wrong, but the bonus layer of cheese makes this whole shebang seriously smooth and supple. I’d even go as far as to call it “fluffy.” That being said, the fluffiness is buried under an avalanche of sauce, toppings, and surprisingly soft crust, all jostling for your taste buds’ attention, so “extra cheesiness” does not necessarily jump out as part of the flavor profile. During my aforementioned peeling experiment, I was able to isolate the inner cheese and enjoy its buttery, slightly sharp taste — and the very comforting joyfulness that stuffed crust inevitably induces in me — but it was still a little bland.

If you particularly appreciate a silky texture or are just a passionate pizza patron, I would fully recommend this Fully Stuffed Crust. If your primary concern is taste, the extra cheese layer might not be stuffed with enough bang for your buck.

Purchased Price: $10.49
Size: 31.2 oz
Purchased at: Target
Rating: 7 out 10
Nutrition Facts: (1/6 pizza) 370 calories, 19 grams of fat, 10 grams of saturated fat, 950 milligrams of sodium, 30 grams of carbohydrates, 3 grams of sugar, and 19 grams of protein.

DiGiorno’s pizza is my go-to dinner on nights when “Mommy is too busy to cook,” or sometimes, “Mommy has gone to a dark place.” So I’m quite familiar with the DiGiorno product line, specifically the DiGiorno croissant crust.

Now, at the request of no one, DiGiorno has decided that it needs to break into the breakfast market and create a sweet pizza. This is hardly unprecedented: Pizza Hut sells an Ultimate Chocolate Cookie that could claim the title of “Dessert Pizza,” plus you can find recipes for them on various food blogs. But this is an indulgent breakfast pizza! Does this really go with your morning coffee, or is it just weird?

It’s an attractive, if unusual, dish. The light dough-colored balls taste vaguely like cookie dough, and the dark swirls are pockets of cinnamon goodness. The rest of the pizza topping is made up of what I will call “sugary gunk,” a highly technical term used by professionals.

Okay, so I felt lazy leaving it at that and looked up what the sugary gunk is. According to DiGiorno’s website, the topping includes cinnamon cream sauce, cream cheese crumbles, and churro pieces. The cream cheese crumbles are likely those little bland pieces, in which case this component is really missing the tang of cheese. The churro pieces did not make much of an impression.

The pizza really does taste a lot like a cinnamon roll, though, and the fact that it’s a flat pizza means a much higher sugary-stuff-to-bread ratio, making it arguably better than most cinnamon rolls. I get this information from my husband, who hits the Cinnabon at every rest area on the highway, so he knows his stuff.

What doesn’t quite work here is the DiGiorno croissant crust. I would be happily eating my faux-cinnamon roll when I would get some of the crust in my mouth and suddenly be reminded of a sausage-laden Supreme Pizza, and it led to a weird feeling of disconnection with the product. The sweetness is strong enough that it’s not that noticeable for most of the pizza, but when you get to the end crust, it doesn’t seem to go with what you’re eating.

Now did I have this problem because the crust genuinely clashes with the flavor profile, or is it just because I have such strong associations with the DiGiorno crust? I’m not sure, but I’m pretty sure the crust is something DiGiorno can improve, at the very least. Another crust-related problem was the fact that the croissant crust did not fully expand in the oven; however, this may be because of how we cooked it. After nearly destroying my oven with one of these pizzas (to the point where my Dad had to come by with professional-grade tools to clean it), I wasn’t taking any more risks, and I put this thing on a tray in the oven, as God intended. So you probably will get a crispier, flakier crust if you follow the directions and put the pizza straight onto the rack. That is, assuming the pizza doesn’t bend while cooking, pour its tasty filling onto the bottom of the oven, and rapidly become carbonized sludge. If you want to attempt it, you’re braver than me.

When it’s not destroying kitchen equipment, the Croissant Cinnamon Roll Pizza is a largely successful breakfast outing for DiGiorno, and I recommend giving it a try. Just keep in mind there’s definitely room for improvement here.

Purchased Price: $9.99
Size: 21.5 oz
Rating: 7 out of 10
Nutrition Facts: (1/4 pizza) 460 calories, 20 grams of fat, 8 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 10 milligrams of cholesterol, 550 milligrams of sodium, 60 grams of carbohydrates, 2 grams of fiber, 17 grams of sugar (15 grams of added sugar), and 6 grams of protein.

My background with breakfast pizza is best described as inexperienced. I’ve had it, both fresh and frozen, but if I had to estimate how many times, I’d say six. Compare that with how many times I’ve had pizza (964) and how many times I’ve eaten breakfast (12,573), and you have a pretty insignificant number relative to breakfast and pizza consumption. In other words, cheese=MC².

This is DiGiorno’s maiden voyage into breakfast pizza, and it’s doing it with three new varieties -— Sausage and Gravy, Cinnamon Roll, and Eggs Benedict. All are served on a croissant crust, something the brand has previously employed on regular pizzas. (But I haven’t had.)

Here’s my next startling confession: I’ve never had eggs Benedict. The thing is, I don’t like English muffins. Like, at all. Their texture is abrasive, they smell like feet, and biscuits exist. I mean, there’s just no earthly reason to eat them. And seeing as how I’ve never encountered eggs Benedict involving anything but, well, here we are.

But again, the base layer of this pizza is a croissant. And how is DiGiorno’s croissant? It’s decent. It’s a little buttery and a little flaky, but it’s not on par with Pillsbury croissants from a can. But it makes a sturdy base and is marginally more interesting than DiGiorno’s traditional crust.

On top of the OK Croissant (my favorite Radiohead cover band composed entirely of pastry chefs), you’ve got “cheddar and mozzarella cheese, scrambled eggs, diced ham and hollandaise style sauce.”

So, there was some cheese, but not as much as on a normal pizza, and that’s fine because of the “hollandaise style sauce” I mentioned previously. It tasted like cheese sauce. And as established, I’ve never had eggs Benedict. So it should come as no surprise that I don’t really know what hollandaise tastes like. Then I Googled it up, just to see what hollandaise is supposed to be. And most things I read describe it as a “rich and decadent egg based sauce” with a “buttery flavor” that can range from “sweet to tangy” preparation depending. Or, in DiGiorno’s case, “cheese sauce.” And don’t get me wrong — I love cheese sauce! But if you’re looking for a true hollandaise, this probably isn’t it.

The ham was good. Smoky, evenly distributed bite-sized rectangles. My only complaint is that I could have used twice as much. The eggs were a bit rubbery and indistinctive. At one point, I said, “I wish this thing had more egg,” but then I remembered the whole “rubbery and indistinctive” thing and wondered why I’d want more of that.

As I was typing this out just now, I was wondering if I should give this a 7 or an 8, and I was also kind of wondering how I could justify an 8 when most of the review seemed to suggest that I didn’t like it; but that’s not the case. I really liked it, despite the sad egg and “meh” crust. This thing shined on the totality of its parts instead of failing on the weakness of its pieces. Did it taste like eggs Benedict? I mean… I don’t know. I suspect not. Did it taste like someone turned a Ham and Cheese Hot Pocket into a pizza? Weirdly, yes. But I kind of love that. And in that spirit, I kind of loved this. (Except for the price tag. $10 is insane for a frozen pizza, inflation or not.)

Purchased Price: $9.99
Size: 23.4 oz
Purchased at: Hy-Vee
Rating: 8 out of 10
Nutrition Facts: (1/5th of the pizza) 330 calories, 14 grams of fat, 7 grams of saturated fat, 40mg of cholesterol, 690 mg of sodium, 36 grams of carbohydrates, 4 grams of sugar (including 1 gram of added sugars), and 10 grams of protein.