The Best Frozen Pizzas for Families

Boxes of frozen pizza — Simply Recipes / Nick Evans

Here at Simply Recipes we are all about creating delicious homemade meals that are accessible for busy home cooks. But there are times when you just have to get dinner on the table, and in those times is there anything more iconic than frozen pizzas?

A quick trip to the freezer aisle at most grocery stores reveals dozens upon dozens of frozen pizza options to choose from. Which got me thinking: Does one brand have a better crust? Or a well-seasoned sauce? Or is the cheese more delicious on one pie compared to the rest? I decided to find out—but I didn’t want to be the ultimate judge of the pizzas. I wanted my kids to judge too since if they won’t eat the pizza, then the whole point of the pizza is lost.

Over the course of a few weeks, I cooked 10 frozen pizzas from a variety of brands and had some interesting results. Here are the top picks for both kids and adults!

Kid eating frozen pizza — Simply Recipes / Nick Evans

How I Chose the Pizzas

I had some rules for choosing the pizzas for this test. For starters, they had to be available in most supermarkets. I didn’t want to pick something too niche that wasn’t nationally available. Second, I picked pepperoni as a base pizza for testing. My kids both generally like pepperoni and I figured every pizza maker probably would make a version of pepperoni pizza in their arsenal. Finally, I asked my kids what pizzas looked good using some online pictures. They tended to pick bright, colorful packaging and so I made sure to include some of those as well.

The 10 Pizzas We Tested

We tested 10 different pizzas over two batches of testing. It turns out that putting 10 different pizzas in front of kids is too much and they give up, so doing two batches of five worked well. I cut the pizzas into small slices so my kids could try each piece and report back on their favorites.

Here’s the list of pizzas we tested:

Frozen pizzas — Simply Recipes / Nick Evans

My Kids’ Top Picks

While I thought my kids would like the pizzas that are marketed to kids (like Totino’s), they kind of surprised me with their favorites.

My son (age 7) thought classic DiGiornos was best. He said he liked it because “it’s puffier” which I think translates to it has a really soft crust without being too doughy. It should also be noted that my son doesn’t like cheese so he sometimes won’t pick a pizza if it is too cheesy.

Meanwhile, my daughter (age 5) chose Home Run Inn pizza, which was a brand I hadn’t tried before. She chose it because “it’s the cheesiest!” So yeah… this is a subjective taste test. I had one child who loved a pizza because it wasn’t cheesy and one who was judging based almost solely on the fact that it was the cheesiest. So it goes!

That said, while I didn’t agree with their picks, their picks did make sense based on their criteria.

Frozen Pizza — Simply Recipes / Nick Evans

The Adult Top Picks

As for adults, there were two pizzas that really impressed me, both of which I hadn’t tried before. Newman’s Own pizza was really good. The crust got very crispy and the toppings were ample. While some frozen pizzas skimp on toppings, Newman’s Own pizza was jam-packed with pepperoni.

My absolute favorite pizza though was the Screamin’- Sicilian pizza. This also happened to be the most expensive of pizzas I tried, but it was very good. The crust tasted like a good delivery pizza and the toppings were on point. If it were me, I would pretty much only buy that brand if I were choosing frozen pizza. But, both of my kids thought it was too crunchy.

Good Sides for Frozen Pizza

No matter which frozen pizza I’m making for dinner, I always try to serve it with something healthy, like a good salad. Something like this Wild Rice salad would be really nice and you could make it in advance. And if you wanted something green, this Harvest Salad with Butternut Squash is a winner.