REVIEW: DiGiorno Deep Dish Pepperoni Pizza

Chicago, I know you’re still celebrating your Blackhawks winning the Stanley Cup, but I want to bring something negative to your attention that would probably get lost if I mentioned it while your anger from the Cubs not winning a World Series for the 103rd straight year erupts.

I just want to let you know that DiGiorno has a new deep dish pepperoni pizza. Well, at least they’re calling it a “deep dish pizza” because if you saw it for yourself, you would boo it hard, just like you do every time Brett Favre steps on Soldier Field.

Chicago is the birthplace of the deep dish pizza and as someone who has had a Chicago-style deep dish pizza from Giordano’s Pizzeria (and thinks it’s frickin’ awesome), I believe the Windy City should be appalled at DiGiorno’s poor attempt to create a deep dish pizza. I also believe the Second City should use the most powerful person in the Free World that comes from the great state of Illinois to stop DiGiorno from tainting the greatness of the deep dish pizza.

No, I’m not talking about President Zombie Abraham Lincoln, I’m talking about Oprah.

For those of you who haven’t had the pleasure of experiencing a deep dish pizza, it’s like a large bowl that’s made of crust that’s filled with tomato sauce, cheese, sausage and other ingredients. However, the DiGiorno Deep Dish Pepperoni Pizza isn’t at all like that and is basically a Pizza Hut Pepperoni Personal Pan Pizza, except slightly smaller, with a less crispy crust, with a slightly better tasting sauce and would probably make the late Linda Lovelace say, “I know deep, and that’s not deep.”

While I believe the DiGiorno Deep Dish Pepperoni Pizza isn’t a good deep dish pizza because there isn’t enough filling in it to be considered a deep dish pizza, I do think it’s a good microwaveable pizza. The cooking tray does a decent job of making the pizza’s bottom crust a little crispy. On top of that crust is a few pepperoni slices that are cut into fourths, not enough cheese and a decent amount of sauce, which I thought was quite tasty and had a slight spiciness.

Overall, the DiGiorno Deep Dish Pepperoni Pizza is a fine microwaveable pizza, but calling itself a deep dish pizza is a stretch, just like it’s a stretch when anyone on a New Jersey-based reality show calls themself a celebrity or nicely tanned.

(Nutrition Facts – Whole Pizza – 590 calories, 33 grams of fat, 16 grams of saturated fat, 1 gram of trans fat, 45 milligrams of cholesterol, 950 milligrams of sodium, 52 grams of carbohydrates, 4 grams of fiber, 6 grams of sugar, 24 grams of protein, 15% vitamin A, 2% vitamin C, 35% calcium and 20% iron.)

Item: DiGiorno Deep Dish Pepperoni Pizza
Price: $3.00 (on sale)
Size: 7.5 ounces
Purchased at: Safeway
Rating: 6 out of 10
Pros: A good microwaveable pizza for one. Tasty sauce. My ability to learn about Chicago though Wikipedia. Nice source of calcium, iron, and protein. Cooking tray does a decent job of crisping the crust. Oprah. President Zombie Abraham Lincoln.
Cons: Not a true deep dish pizza. It’s basically a Pizza Hut Personal Pan Pizza. Not enough cheese. Awesome source of saturated fat and sodium. Contains trans fat. Linda Lovelace would probably not approve of its deepness. Spray on tans that make you look orange. The Chicago Cubs’ futility.

REVIEW: DiGiorno Tuscan Style Chicken Crispy Flatbread Pizza

If you don’t skip past the commercials in your DVR recordings, you probably know DiGiorno’s (or if you’re Canadian, Delissio’s) slogan is, “It’s not delivery. It’s DiGiorno.”

I’ve had many DiGiorno frozen pizzas over the years and pizza from either Pizza Hut, Domino’s, Papa John’s and I’ll just throw in Little Caesars for the hell of it, and I’m pretty sure no one will confuse a DiGiorno pizza with one of those other restaurant pizzas. I’m sure with one look, most people can easily tell the difference.

Besides, why would they want to be confused with a delivery pizza because there are way too many negative connotations with being a delivery pizza.

For example, delivered pizzas have a tendency to be greasier than a Wall Street financial analyst and can provide enough oil to power a biofuel car. Do they really want stigma of being confused with delivery pizza and all the porn references that go along with it? Those references involve pizza being delivered by a strapping young lad to a house that contains either a sexy cougar, teen babysitter, sorority girls, horny housewife or, in certain European countries, sheep.

Not even the new DiGiorno Tuscan Style Chicken Crispy Flatbread Pizza could be confused with a pizza delivered by someone with an insulated pizza case.

This flatbread pizza is made with grilled white meat chicken, spinach, oven-roasted tomatoes, garlic and a creamy red sauce. It smells nice, but the pizza is 11 inches in diameter, which is kind of small. The flatbread turned out crispy, but thankfully not like a cracker. Its flavor is bland and it tastes like diet Cheez-Its, which is surprising because I’ve enjoyed all of the DiGiorno pizzas I’ve tried in the past. Also, it seems like there isn’t much sauce on the pizza. I guess the saying “pizza is like sex, because it’s never bad” isn’t true because eating this pizza is like having drunk sex with a sheep — you thought it would be fun at the time, but later you’ll regret it.

If that’s not considered bad, I don’t know what is.

The only positive item I found with the DiGiorno Tuscan Style Chicken Crispy Flatbread Pizza wasn’t the pizza itself, but the plastic wrapping around it, which is extremely easy to open. Just grab the tab and pull it apart. The folks who work on the plastic packaging at DiGiorno really need to focus their attention on women’s bras.

(Nutrition Facts – 1/3 pizza – 14 grams of fat, 6 grams of saturated fat, 1 grams of trans fat, 35 milligrams of cholesterol, 680 milligrams of sodium, 25 grams of carbohydrates, 2 grams of fiber, 2 grams of sugar, 14 grams of protein, 10% vitamin A, 25% calcium and 6% iron.)

Item: DiGiorno Tuscan Style Chicken Crispy Flatbread Pizza
Price: $6.49 (on sale)
Size: 14 ounces
Purchased at: Safeway
Rating: 3 out of 10
Pros: Plastic wrapping is super easy to open. Flatbread was crispy. Pizza porn. DVRs. Being able to skip through commercials.
Cons: Bland tasting. It’s like a diet Cheez-Its. At 11 inches, it doesn’t seem too big. European sheep pizza porn. Unhooking bras in the dark. Drunk sheep sex.

REVIEW: DiGiorno Microwave Rising Crust Pizza

DiGiorno Microwave Rising Crust Pizza

Phew. Thank goodness it’s over.

We decided to lift the self-imposed ban on food reviews here at the Impulsive Buy, because we would like to get rid of all these empty boxes and bottles of food products that we couldn’t review because of the stupid ban.

So that means food reviews up the wazoo for the next few weeks.

Also, sorry about yesterday’s “review.” We know it really wasn’t a “review.” We just wanted to be political like many other blogs, so we pretended to be interested in politics, like Ben Affleck does.

We know. We know. If all the other blogs jumped into a volcano, would we jump into the volcano too?

No we wouldn’t.

So we’re back to real reviews and the subject of today’s review was requested by Impulsive Buy groupie worshipper follower, Alisa.

She asked if we, in her own words, “review geniuses” could review the new DiGiorno Microwave Rising Crust Pizza. After consulting with each other to determine if she did an adequate amount of sucking up, we decided to go though with the review and picked up the Three Meat Pizza version.

Just to let you know, microwave foods aren’t our best friends. From the exploding TV dinners to burnt microwave popcorn, we haven’t been successful whenever using the microwave. Oh, and let’s not forget the microwave pork grinds. Man, that smell lingered for days.

Although, we have to admit we’ve had some recent successes, like this one, but 99 percent of the time we screw up somehow.

Included with the DiGiorno Microwave Rising Crust Pizza was a…Um…Crisping contraption, which we think is a black paint job and a few spikes away from being a S&M collar, but that might only be us.

After putting the pizza in the crisping contraption, we put all of that into the microwave and baked it for the recommended six minutes on HIGH. We wanted to watch it to see if the crust would rise, but we remembered what our moms said growing up, “If you stare into the microwave, your palms will grow hair.”

Or was that something else.

Anyway, we let the pizza sit for the few minutes after it was done baking. After tasting it, we have to say that this is the best microwave pizza we ever had that we didn’t screw up. It was like we baked it in a conventional oven and didn’t screw up.

The only major problem we had with it was the price. Spending $4.29 for a seven-inch pizza (don’t ask how we measured it) seemed a bit expensive. If they were on sale or cheaper, we would definitely buy them more often.

We wonder if Alisa will reimburse us.

Item: DiGiorno Microwave Rising Crust Pizza: Three Meat Pizza
Purchase Price: $4.29
Rating: 8 out of 10
Pros: Crisping contraption worked well. Oven baked taste. No, really, it had an oven baked taste. We didn’t cause it to burn, melt, or explode.
Cons: Outer crust was kind of hard. Expensive.