Are Rao's Frozen Pizzas Any Good? I Tasted Them All To Find Out

If you, like most people, can’t get into the brick-and-mortar Rao’s in New York City, you’re gonna need to settle for the grocery store version. The iconic red sauce joint started selling its pasta sauce in the early 90s, and in 2022, it debuted a line of frozen pizzas that tout a "brick oven crust."

Curious how Rao's pizza stacks up in the competitive world of frozen pies? I tasted all four options and ranked them based on flavor and similarity to fresh pizza. Here are all of Rao's frozen pizzas, ranked.

Rao's has brick oven instructions printed on the back of the boxes. So yes, you can make these in a brick oven, though I can’t help but wonder why you’d do that.  

I feel like if you’ve gone so far as to have purchased a brick oven, you’re probably not out here buying frozen pizzas for it. Something tells me you’re trying to make your own pizza in that situation, but that is neither here nor there.

Just heat your brick oven to around 700 degrees and toss the pizza in for about five minutes. Add two to three more minutes if you’ve got Rao's Meat Trio. 

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Leave Rao's five cheese pizza in the oven a few minutes longer than the suggested 12, and you’ll have something really special on your hands. This is among the better frozen pizzas I’ve eaten. The first bite I took brought with it a wicked cheese pull that had me hooked immediately. That sucker stretched out like freshly melted cheese. 

Cheese pizza is undeniably a good vessel for Rao’s to showcase the famous pizza sauce that got us here in the first place. It’s tangy and peppery, and really provides a killer backbone for the mozzarella, Provolone, Fontina, Romano, and Parmesan cheeses that make up the rest of the pizza. 

Oh, and the crust is nice and crunchy too. Really solid team effort all around.

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The pepperoni pizza that Rao’s has put together truly looks like it came out of a restaurant. Maybe not the actual Rao’s restaurant, but a restaurant nevertheless. I love the little breaks in the cheese where you can see the sauce seeping through. Best of all, the tops of the pepperoni are dusted with cheese sprinklings. It’s a gorgeous touch.

The meat itself is forgettable, but that’s alright. Everything else is going so well, why spoil things? If you want a frozen pepperoni pizza, it should probably be this one.

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Friends, this is a great frozen veggie pie. We’ve got mushrooms, peppers, red onions, and tomatoes on top of an excellent cheese blend, but I have to ask: Does this pizza really need vegetables? The cheese pizza is so good on its own, that to throw some second-rate (high-quality for frozen pizza, but low-quality for real life) frozen veggies on here feels like overkill. You’re better off slicing up your own onions.

You’ve got to do a bit of assembly with this guy, too, since the veggies are loose on the top of the pizza. This is always a fun part of heating up frozen food, pretending like you’re a chef who made any impact at all. It's perfect for the person heating this pizza up in their brick oven.

Related: Rao's vs. Carbone: Which Fancy Jarred Marinara Is the Best?

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To be clear, I do like this pizza. I would choose it over most other frozen options outside of Rao’s. That said, I’m not really much of a “Meat Lovers” guy. I like pepperoni, sausage, and bacon just fine, but I’m rarely ordering more than one meat on my pizza.

As for this Rao’s frozen pizza, the meats didn’t really do much for me. The pepperoni is OK and passed my most important test, which is to make sure a pizza slicer can get through it easily. The bacon provides a nice crunch and is ultimately a bit too fatty, and the sausage had a sweet, maple flavor that sort of reminded me of breakfast sausage.

If it’s 3 a.m. and I’m raiding the fridge after a boozy day, sure, you better believe I’m gonna fire up a Rao’s Meat Trio. Beyond that, I’m going with the other ones.

Related: The 10 Best Frozen Lasagnas To Try in 2023