There are few pleasures quite like those offered by a tasty BBQ pizza. So when we discovered the BBQ Chicken Pizza at our local Trader Joe’s, we knew we just had to try it. While Freezer Meal Frenzy is definitely not the first frozen food review site to write about this particular meal, we thought it couldn’t hurt to share our own opinions with our lovely readers.
First of all, we’ll say that this is not a microwavable pizza, like many of DiGiorno’s and Lean Cuisine’s personal pizzas. This shouldn’t come as a surprise, but we thought we’d point this out anyway. While this cooks, it fills the kitchen with the scent of chicken and barbecue sauce, which will probably make your stomach start to growl in anticipation.
According to the directions, you can cook this for an extra minute or two to get a crispier crust. We did that, and the crust actually ended up far crispier than we were expecting. It was crispier than we would have liked, but that’s our fault; we should have followed the directions for a softer crust.
But the crisp factor doesn’t account for the flavor, and we weren’t fans of the way this tastes. The crust kind of tastes like saltine crackers, which isn’t a good flavor for a pizza at all.
While the chicken smells very good when this pizza is in the oven, it tastes a little off. In fact, there are fishy undertones to it, which we really didn’t expect. It’s also a bit dry, but our additional cook time might be a contributing factor to that.
The BBQ sauce tastes a bit off as well. There’s a nice, smokey flavor, but beneath that is a plasticy undertone that we found hard to ignore. That’s a real bummer, because some better BBQ sauce would have done a lot to mitigate the other flaws we mentioned.
The brightest ray of light here radiates from the red onions. Any bite you can get with some red onion bits on it will be quite enjoyable, as they seem to add some quality that this pizza would lack otherwise.
One serving of this pizza contains 340 calories (120 from fat) and 670 mg of sodium. That’s not bad at all, but keep in mind that a serving is only a third of a pizza. If you eat the whole thing, you’re looking at 1,020 calories and 2,010 mg of sodium. That’s a pretty hefty amount of calories, and an insane amount of sodium. While it’s always tempting to eat a full pizza on your own, even if it’s not that good, you’re probably best off finding a friend to split this with.
We’re just not fans of Trader Joe’s BBQ Chicken Pizza. There are plenty of delicious items in the Trader Joe’s line of frozen foods, but this simply isn’t one of them. If you’re looking for a better BBQ pizza than this one (and you don’t mind going with tofu instead of chicken), check out Amy’s Barbecue Pizza.
To learn more about the ingredients and nutrition content for this frozen pizza, check out our package scan below.
