The Best UK Supermarket Pizzas

Let’s be honest, pizza is one of the most common favourite foods. Yet there is so much variety within it. Not just toppings, sizes, bases, meat or veggie, etc., but quality, country of origin and all sorts of extremely important factors. I’ve always loved pizza, and as a kid this would usually mean one of two things – a birthday tea at the local “Italian” restaurant (you know the type of restaurant I mean, where the ham and pineapple is never called “Hawaiian” but instead named after the restaurant), or a slice of shop pizza as part of a buffet, or where one pizza is shared between the whole family, but this is apparently acceptable because there is an accompaniment of salad. I tried to reason with my mam many times that at the restaurant I would have a whole pizza to myself and an accompaniment of curly fries but to no avail. As an adult, I now know and of course respect the pain she must have been going through and I don’t even have any kids yet. Anyhow, the shop-bought pizza was always disappointing anyway.

Anyway, my opinions on pizza changed quite drastically on my second visit to its country of origin, and probably the best country in the world, Italy. To be fair, the first time I visited I was a foetus, so my memory is a little hazy and I didn’t have any pizza first hand. But, wow, you haven’t had pizza until you’ve had pizza in Italy. Stone baked with a layer of mascarpone under the surface was the best I had, and my usual Anglo-Italian of four scraggly bits of parma ham became a COATING of parma ham. I returned to the UK and any offering in an Italian restaurant sadly couldn’t compare. And as supermarket pizza was already beneath that on the scale, pizza just wasn’t what it was. I also won’t even consider discussing Domino’s because it’s just a different category altogether for so many reasons that we simply don’t have time for.

But, it would appear the world agrees, because a pizza renaissance has seemingly been born. Suddenly, dedicated pizza restaurants have been popping up, and I don’t mean pizza hut or Frankie and Benny’s, I mean the glorious options that commit themselves fully to the fine art of real, elite pizza (shout out to Pizza Punks, Flint pizza, Scream for Pizza, Slice and the Wood Oven in the North East). I am happy to indulge once again, but the best part is that the supermarkets appear to have joined in. Suddenly, I have discovered quite accidentally, you can get cracking, mouth-watering luxuries in the shops for very reasonable prices. So without further a-dough, here are the top 5:

5. ASDA stonebaked (topping of choice - four cheese) RRP: £1.65

I will be honest, despite everything I just said, a smart price four cheese pizza from ASDA was always a joy throughout my life. Maybe because it was 31p, or maybe because my friend and I would buy them on a Friday and for once I could have a whole pizza to myself despite not being in a restaurant. Whatever the reason, I quite liked it. And, yes, I know the chilled pizzas where you make your own in ASDA are very popular (and also good value), but chilled pizza just doesn’t do it for me from supermarket – goes cold too quickly. This bad boy is ASDA’s update on the pizza of my memory with a touching of pizza revolution sprinkled in. And it just makes the pizza cut.

4. Co-op Irresistible (topping of choice – chilli salsiccia) RRP: £3

Allow me to contradict what I just said yet again, as this offering is chilled. Maybe it’s available in frozen; if it is I haven’t seen it, but this one makes the cut as it was the trigger for my discovery that the supermarkets were on board with the revolution. One Saturday night with nothing to do, I swung by a Co-op garage and picked it purely because I saw the words “wood fired” and what looked like some Italian lettering. And have never looked back. I think the unique size and shape meant that it was nice chilled, as alternatives further down the list didn’t match up to the standard in their chilled alternatives.

3. (Various) Dr Oetker Ristorante (topping of choice – mozzarella) RRP: £2.50

An option that has been around forever to be honest. Maybe I’m realising the narrative of this blog is a little shaky and constructed out of thin air. Or … maybe one day I realised that my memory of this pizza is a little misty and constructed out of thin crust. A pun nearly as terrible as the actions of Dr Oetker during the Nazi regime (Google it). Anyhow, my rediscovery of how amazing this supermarket staple homage to proper Italian pizza might be because there are many varieties of it, and when younger I always falsely believed that more is more, but it’s not true. Less is more, and the original is the best (it’s the same reason why Maccies is more successful than burger king – in my unbiased view).

2. (Various) Chicago town tiger crust (topping of choice – double pepperoni) RRP: £3.50

Another rogue choice (honestly just forget the narrative), but modern pizza restaurants do often score highly with their rogue choices. Whoever’s idea it was to infuse everyone’s favourite bread with everyone’s favourite pizza was a genius. It doesn’t look the part sitting there on the freezer shelf, but it is brilliant. The Yankee (inspired?) option very quickly usurped Dr Oetker’s number one spot for me. And it also meant I could stop funding hate. Phew.

1. Morrisons the best (topping of choice – spicy milano salami and ‘nduja) RRP: £3.25

Maybe, much like the Americans after the second world war, Chicago town captured Nazi scientist Dr Oetker and used his expertise to make their superior creation, but Morrisons, working independently, must have their own scientists who have built something far more powerful. This beats all the others. The crust – perfect. The toppings – perfect. The cheese – spot on. It really is nearly as good as your modern restaurant offering, and it’s better than any takeaway. It’s changed my life. But you better hurry, because it’s very popular. So much that I think people are buying multiple in advance. ‘nduja know what? That’s fine by me. For this is the king.

Here's some links to some of my restaurant shout-outs: