The Definitive Frozen Pizza (And More) Rankings

A few nights ago I stood waiting as one of my healthy yoga babe roommates pulled three fat, juicy, farm fresh chicken breasts from the oven. They were sprinkled with fresh thyme, mint from our garden, sea salt and crushed black pepper. I had a bite and, real talk, it was delicious."

“Leave that oven on for me," I said, pulling a cardboard box from the freezer.

"What are you making?" she asked.

"A Red Bizzle frizzle pizzle," I replied, pulling a frozen disc of carbs, cheese, pepperoni and gray sausage from its plastic sheath. I doused the pizza with sriracha and slid it into the 400 degrees.

She chuckled, taking another bite of her succulent chicken.

"I don't need you judging my poverty food," I said, extremely defensive.

"Do you, baby boo," she replied as I sulked to my room to cry and masturbate for 20 minutes while my pizza cooked.

What"s the point of this story, besides showing that I'm low-key thriving hard and you're not? It's that, of course, we all appreciate fine foods. Living luxe is goal #1 here at Four Pins, but you can only appreciate the dankest of classy snacks if you've dabbled extensively in the realm of strug food. And what item represents the strug more than a sad, cardboard-y frozen pizza? My Italian forefathers were probably SMFHing in their graves as I crushed an entire spicy, delicious Red Baron from the comfort of my bed, but sometimes you gotta sacrifice in some areas to flourish in others. Since you obviously haven't made it yet either, join me in breaking down the highs and lows of the frozen pizza aisle.

Angelo Spagnolo is a writer living in Brooklyn. You can follow him on Twitter here.

First Things First: Sriracha

Before you can begin to talk about frozen pizzas, you must acknowledge the sauces and condiments we lap on these depressing meals to make our lives seem slightly less depressing. There must always be one in-home contribution to the meal. My go to is Sriracha, squirted all over the pizza before going into the oven so it bakes in real good. Packets of red pepper flakes and parmesan leftover from an actual pizza place fall into the same category.

15. Totino's

Totinos is the most ghetto of all nationally available frozen pizzas. Consequently, it’s the pizza I’m consumed most often in my lifetime. Let’s dive into an overlong personal anecdote. As a lad I was lucky enough to have semi-Italian parents who occasionally made dank homemade pizza. Fresh dough and all. So when I got paired with Derrick and Rod for a sixth grade presentation about Italy I was like “I got this,” despite knowing Derrick and Rod were both Dub-T as shit. But shit went awry when I procrastinated, per usual, and asked my mom the night before the presentation if she could make pizza for the class. “No,” was her response. “It takes like four hours to make the dough. I can’t just whip up pizzas on the fly.” Well shit. So I can Rod on that emergency shit. “I got this,” he says confidently. But again, Rod is even more ghetto than me. I’m not feeling great. I show up to class the next day and, of course, we’re first to present. My teacher Mr. J walks up to me and says from the side of his mouth, eyeing Rod at the microwave, “I thought your mom was making pizza.” “Plans fell through,” I said, eyes to the floor. “Rod brought Totinos,” he said, disappointed. So that’s what we served the class at like 8:30 am, a soggy, microwaved Totinos, cut into 1-inch squares. The Tino’s is great when cooked in a proper oven though I ain’t even mad #yolo.

14. DiGiorno

DiGiorno has rode its clever “Not Delivery,” tagline to the best brand-recognition in the frozen pizza market space. A more realistic tagline would’ve been “It’s not delivery, because I’m too broke for a $25 pizza and having to tip some asshole teenager for walking to my door,” but I give them credit for marketing. Also DiGiorno crust is too thick. Too much bread. We on our Atkins shit DiGiorno get with the times.

13. Stouffer's French Bread

Speaking of too much bread, I wouldn’t even include Stouffer’s cheesy bread in this list but for some reason my editor suggested it. If you’re buying this product, you’re obviously high AF, so why wouldn’t you just slide 10 feet to the left and get a delicious frozen pizza? Usually I’m down to talk Stouffer’s though because I have a hilarious anecdote about being stoned and eating a half-frozen lasagna but FUCK I’ve already used that one on tha pinz before.

12. Freschetta

Look at you Big Dick Swanging with your fancy Freschetta. Only people buying Freschetta are people whose parents send them monthly grocery store gift cards in which case can we date and can I borrow your grocery store gift card?

11. Pizza Rolls

Honestly I haven’t eaten Pizza Bites since before I started blazing herbs aka before I was like 8, so I can’t really judge them accurately. We didn’t even have a microwave until like 1999 fam. Pizza Bites were a luxury reserved for friends’ houses. I think Emily around the block had Pizza Bites on lock. She also had a pool and free ice cream because her dad worked for Darigold and also she had a cotton candy machine at her birthday party and also I’d trade all my blog success for a time machine rn.

10. Bagel Bites

Pizza bagels are not pizza. They go against all the laws of nature. As Newton best put it, “Pizza is a flat circle.” You simply cannot remove the center of a pizza. If a pizza cannot be cut into triangular slices, it is not a pizza. Bagels, you’re doing fine in your own lane why you gotta encroach on Italy?

9. Boboli

The ultimate divorced-dad struggle-dinner, Boboli is for people too lazy to make a real pizza but too prideful to stoop to a frozen pie. Boboli eaters don’t want to make a pizza, but they do want to spread some shitty sauce on a hard disc of bread and waste their own damn cheese pretending to make a pizza. Might as bake this shit in a n Easy Bake Oven, lil sis. I do give half a prop to Boboli for almost rhyming with Ginobili, though.

8. California Pizza Kitchen

Fuck outta here with this bougie shit son. If I was stoned to the bone and bae brought out a steaming hot California Pizza Kitchen white-sauced bbq chicken with rosemary sun dried tomato bullshit I wouldn’t even eat it. Okay that’s a lie, but I would passive aggressively bitch about it the entire time I was crushing said pizza.

7. Pepperoni Hot Pocket

I haven’t eaten a Hot Pocket since college but I remember the primary feature of this snack: being way too fucking hot. Nothing worse than being Tarantino stoned, waiting a grueling two and a half minutes for this fucker to cook in the microwave, then biting too aggressively into a burning hot, squirting sack of scalding hot tomato-like-sauce. Props for the thick pepperoni chunks, though, but I’ll leave these to suburban middle schoolers.

6. Tony's

Sadly I must admit Tony’s is one mainstay of the freezer sections I’ve never fucked with. And I have a reason. Too long have my Italian brethren been plagued by racist caricatures. Like the often misrepresented Mexican sombrero, the chef’s hat has come to symbolize a singular view of Italians as cartoonish pizza tossers and Mario clones and...well, okay this portrayal is accurate and fun so whatever. I still ain’t checking for no Tony’s at the Safeway though.

5. Little Caesar's Hot-N-Ready

Though not technically a frozen pizza, Lil’ Caesar’s Hot ‘N Ready pizzas are usually sold in strip malls, and they regularly sell for less than the average price of their frozen competitors, so they basically count. I know they don’t have Lil’ Caesar’s everywhere anymore, but if you were blessed to have one in your college town, you’re familiar with the HnR. For awhile these fuckers were $4.99 on Tuesdays. Got a kid feeling rich. Don’t worry bros, pizzas on me. Lil Caesar’s accepts food stamps now.

4. Pizza Combos

Yo as long as we’re stretching the pantheon of pizza-related snacks, who here rides for Pizza Combos? The only Combo variety I fux with tbh. Now, true, this snack does taste like the plain Gardetto’s dipped in store-brand tomato paste, but I still enjoy them. Besides, Combos were voted no.1 snack by adult dudes who roll up on a stolen BMX bike, so they’re good enough for a simp like me.

3. Tombstone

Yo Tombstone is like the less successful little brother to Red Baron; it’s like a Duke or a whatever is a step below Baron. And unlike most points I argue, I can back this one up with quantitative data. Two times this past week I asked people what their favorite frozen pizza was (#research #journalism). And two times, scout’s honor, motherfuckers asked said “Tombstone..no wait, Red Baron.” You can’t argue with science bruv.

2. Red Baron

As the intro alluded, I’m most intimately familiar with Tha Baron of frozen pizza, my homie Red. Tha Baron stays hovering right around the crucial $5 threshold, making his pies the most perfect balance of being really cheap and not being the most terrible thing to have for dinner. My one knock on Red Baron is the motherfucking mushrooms dog. They’re too thick. Hit the mandolin Baron I know you can afford it!

1. OG Convenience Pizza Pockets

There exists in rare convenience stores the best non-real-pizza pizza-type-product. They’re known simply as pizza pockets. These pizza pockets are hard to describe, — no the delicious, sweet and spicy, flaky crust and saucy inside is easy to remember— but literally they have no brand name so they’re hard to describe. They had them at the local ____ mart in my 1,200 person town growing up. The blank is a racial slur I’ll write about when I get a gig at a serious publication. But these pizza pockets are, sorry mom, the only reason I ever visit my home town. They also had them at the Wayside Market in High School. The point it, these rectangular gems are elusive, but if you’re at a small-town mart with a heated deli window, the kind with jojos and fried chicken, grab one. Don’t be persuaded by inferior “pizza sticks.” The crust on these fuckers, if you can find them, is like literal pie surrounding a pocket of gooey, cheesy sausage and sauce that is actually better than 95% of the world’s pizzas.