We Found the Single Best Frozen Deep Dish Pizza to Buy (and a Few Good Runners-Up)

I don’t want to get into a fight. Let’s just agree that, for the purposes of this article, deep dish pizza is actual pizza and not some sort of casserole or savory pie. Capeesh? Great. With that out of the way, let’s talk about the ultra-filling, scale-busting innovation known as deep dish pizza—specifically, let’s talk about how there are actually good frozen deep dish pizza brands out there. I know because the Sporked team recently sat down to 11 frozen deep dish pizzas in search of the best. Pro tip: Never attempt to eat more than two slices of deep dish pizza, let alone 11. 

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What we look for in the best frozen deep dish pizza: 

• Thick, tall, buttery crust. Deep dish frozen pizza should be deep. The crust should be tall. And it should be buttery, a little crumbly, and sturdy enough to hold the heavy toppings. 
• Bright, zesty sauce. Deep dish pizza is rich as hell with all that cheese and buttery crust, so you need the sauce to taste like fresh, acidic tomatoes. 
• Lots of cheese. Lots. Of. Gooey. Cheese. Please. 

After baking 11 frozen deep dish pizzas in our trusty countertop oven, we tasted them all and found one jaw-droppingly good frozen deep dish pizza along with a couple of darn good runners-up and a few pies that’ll do in a pinch. Here they are.

Best Frozen Deep Dish Pizzas, Ranked

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Best Cheapo Pepperoni

Red Baron Pepperoni Deep Dish Personal Pizza

Instacart

Red Baron frozen deep dish pizza scratches a very particular itch. While we cooked ours in the oven, this is microwave fare. The crust is surprisingly buttery. It’s deep enough. The sauce is plentiful, the cheese is gooey, and the pepperoni is peppery. Should you give this to your homesick Chicago expat friend and expect them to be transported back to the Bean? No. But it’ll satisfy you at 2 a.m.

Credit: Liv Averett / Instacart

Rating:

8/10

Sporks

Best We Don’t Know What It Is

Red Baron Deep Dish XL Ultimate Pepperoni Pizza

Instacart

Red Baron’s new Deep Dish XL frozen pizzas are not deep dish pizza. They’re more like garlic bread pizzas. And, hey, that’s good. The crust is crispy on the outside and fluffy on the inside, and it tastes like cheesy, parmesan-dusted garlic breadsticks. Have you had a really bad day? Drown your sorrows in a Red Baron Deep Dish XL. 

Credit: Liv Averett / Instacart

Rating:

8/10

Sporks

Red Baron Cheese Deep Dish Personal Pizza

Best Cheapo Cheese

Instacart

There’s plenty of pizza sauce and plenty of cheese. The crust is crispy and just a little bit chewy. This is definitely the best frozen deep dish pizza for one. While some of my colleagues have positive nostalgic memories of this frozen pizza, I hadn’t experienced it until first trying it at work. And so you can trust me that it’s genuinely good—it’s not just childhood talking. 

Credit: Liv Averett / Instacart

Rating:

9/10

Sporks

Best Refrigerated

Uno Chicago Style Deep Dish Cheese & Pepperoni

Kroger

Yes, this was supposed to be a ranking of the best frozen deep dish pizza. But we couldn’t discount this refrigerated duo from Pizzeria Uno. You get one cheese and one pepperoni. And they’re both delicious. The sauce is so zippy and acidic, it really tastes like fresh crushed tomato. And there’s a good amount of melty, stretchy cheese. Our one complaint? The bottom was a little soft—but that’s nothing cooking these babies on a pizza stone can’t fix. I was convinced this was the best deep dish you could get at a grocery store until we had our winner.

Credit: Liv Averett / Kroger

Rating:

9.5/10

Sporks

Best of the Best

Gino’s East Italian Sausage and Pepperoni

Vons

When it comes to frozen Chicago deep dish pizza, you cannot do better than Gino’s East. The crust is tall and nearly impenetrable, but that’s good. That means it can hold the sloppy, gooey, oozy filling of so much cheese and super-fresh tomato sauce. Even managing editor Gwynedd Stuart, our resident ex-Chicagoan, was impressed with this deep dish frozen pizza. This is one of those products that I’ll buy again with my very own money. It’s that good. It’s for sure the best frozen deep dish pizza you can buy. Full stop. 

Credit: Liv Averett / Vons

Rating:

10/10

Sporks

Other frozen deep dish pizzas we tried:

Kroger Cheese, Red Baron Supreme, Kroger Pepperoni, Red Baron Deep Dish XL Supreme, Red Baron Meat Trio