Our Least Favorite Trader Joe's Frozen Dinner Is A Pizza Night Fail

As fun as it can be to make fancy meals in the kitchen, you don't always have the time. And, when you need something quick to whip up, frozen dinners can be a real life saver. While plenty of supermarket chains offer frozen dinners, Trader Joe's, a low-cost store with a unique connection to Aldi, offers plenty of delicious and affordable picks. Daily Meal taste tested 17 different frozen meals from Trader Joe's to find out which were the cream of the crop and which were best left on the shelf and ranked them in terms of flavor and texture. 

While there were a few notable choices, there was one option that was definitely not worth your money: the vegetarian meatless cheeseburger pizza. Just the name of this pizza doesn't bode well, as it claims to be a cheeseburger-flavored dish but there's no beef in sight. Pair that with the odd combination of toppings and the rather lackluster flavors and you've got a meal that you're best off skipping.

A pizza that doesn't live up to its namesake

First and foremost, when you snag a frozen pizza, you're looking for good flavors. Sure, it's not going to taste like a restaurant-quality deep-dish pizza from your favorite local joint, but that's not to say it should taste bad, either. With this pizza, unfortunately, the flavors just didn't work. Firstly, although it's advertised as a cheeseburger pizza, there's not much faux meat to give it that burger flavor. And, what's there is also fairly tasteless, with fans noting that "The vegan "meat" didn't have much flavor." This could be due to the choice of faux meat, which in this case, is pea protein crumbles. This particular type of meat alternative is known for having a bitter taste, rather than the rich, salty flavor you think of with beef.

The next issue was the cheese, another key factor in this pizza's name. The cheese has an odd texture and color and, although it's real dairy-based cheese, is more reminiscent of a nacho cheese sauce than it is of gooey, melty, shredded cheddar cheese. In fact, the cheese on this pizza much resembles the cheddar cheese included in canned nacho cheese sauce, although cheese sauce also includes additions of whey, vegetable oil, and food starch, among other ingredients.

It's not just the cheese and beef that are to blame

Beyond the cheese and beef, another issue with this pizza that fans have something to say about is the fact that it's loaded with pickles, noting on Reddit, "It tasted like pickle pizza." The pickles add a salty element to the pizza that, while some feel adds to the flavor, others told their kids "it was Happy Meal flavored." Plus, as you continue munching on the pizza, it can become overpowering and create an imbalance of flavors.

Furthermore, the pickles amp up the sodium content. In fact, this pizza claims to have more than 100% of the daily recommended value of sodium per pizza. That's a whole lot of salt in one slice and may speak to the brand trying to overcompensate for the bland flavors in the beef.

Looking past the pickles, this pizza also boasts burger sauce. The burger sauce is made of oil, sugar, vinegar, and spices such as onion powder. Unfortunately, while you'd think it would add some extra flavor to the 'za, fans report that it has an overpoweringly sweet flavor that tastes odd against the savory pickles and other ingredients on the meal. At the end of the day, while this pizza might sound enticing at first glance, it's one frozen dinner you're best off skipping.