Review: McEnnedy American Style Pizza, Spicy Pepperoni, from Lidl

Browsing the shelves and freezers of Lidl the other day my eye was caught by a frozen pizza. Made by McEnnedy, it was an American Style Pizza, Spicy Pepperoni and was about 10″ in diameter. I will often use a variety of pizza bases, or naan breads, to make pizza, but this one caught my eye because it said “spicy” and it was only £0.89. Yes, unbelievable isn’t it.

I saw this as something that could be kept in the freezer that’d make a great base that I could add my own toppings to – and with tomato sauce, cheese and pepperoni already on it, for £0.89 it seemed too much of a bargain to not try it! 

So, two days ago, out it came. You cook these from frozen – you’re supposed to put it into a pre-heated oven, but I stuck it in cold. I was expecting it to take 16 minutes, but as time wore on I realised that because I’d put a frozen pizza into a cold oven it’d take a bit longer than I’d expected.

The box gives you two cooking time options:

• 10-12 minutes for a soft/fluffy base
• 16-20 minutes for a crispy base.

The cooking temperature said 220°C in an oven and 200°C in a fan oven – I skimped on this too, putting it in at 195°C. By this time obviously I’ve made a few basic errors, but you can’t really go wrong with pizza so it didn’t matter.

With me not pre-heating it and not really having the oven on at the right temperature, I decided I’d waited long enough after 20 minutes and ate it anyway 🙂

Review:
As a pizza it’s nice enough. I really should pre-heat the oven next time as it does make a difference to the cooking time (I get bored if it’s too long) and it’d have become browner on the top. It was fine for a £0.89. Obviously at this price it’ll never set the world alight. This McEnnedy frozen pizza could really do with some additional toppings though, so I’d add some more cheese and maybe some oregano or sweet chilli sauce to it next time. But, it wasn’t “nasty”. It was a perfectly serviceable basic pizza with some toppings.

Clearly if you had more money you’d choose another brand, but at the price point it’s good value for money. I would definitely buy one again, but I’d not keep one in the freezer “in case” because I don’t have that amount of spare space.

440 grams, 10″ Pizza

Being 440 grams and a 10″ pizza, this is two meals really. The weight of the pepperoni was 29.9 grams. I cooked it and had half hot immediately – and the leftover half I ate cold the next day for breakfast. At £0.44 per portion it’s a better bet than the simple 40-50p small cheese & tomato pizzas you can get in the chiller, simply because it’s bigger and has the additional pepperoni on it.

Live Below the Line:
If you’re doing the Live Below the Line challenge and aren’t cooking from scratch, then consider this as two days’ meals, hot or cold!

Serves 2-3: This pizza would actually stretch to three meals, if you add other items to it – a nice filling potato salad maybe, or a cheap pasta salad!  Eaten hot or cold.

All that Nutrition Stuff:

From the box it says, for the WHOLE pizza:

• Calories, 994 kcal, 4177 kJoules
• Fat 33.4 grams (15.8 saturates)
• Carbohydrates 122.8 grams (17.6 grams sugars)
• Protein 44.4 grams
• Salt 5.5 grams

I’ve no idea what that means … I only focus on one figure – calories – but if you know what it means then that’s great 🙂  For the calories they say an adult needs 2000 calories/day, so this pizza is half of a day’s requirements.  Personally, I find if I eat more than about 1300-1500/day then I put weight on because I’m small.