Aldi brings Chicago to the masses with frozen deep dish pizza

Aldi, is there anything you can’t do? I love your many varieties of cheese, your affordable dinner solutions (shoutout to the pork tenderloin in apples from the other week, that shit was good), and red bag chicken filets, which are a staple in our household now. My favorite part of an Aldi trip is when I look at my receipt and find out that I haven’t spent an entire month’s rent on groceries.

The big new thing coming to Aldi is—drumroll, please—a Chicago deep dish frozen pizza, labeled Mamma Cozzi’s Chicago Recipe. Thank you, Delish, for sharing the fun news. As a mostly retired pizzamaker, I am still fascinated by all things pizza, especially the frozen kind. I am curious to see if Mamma Cozzi’s manages to be any good, because you know for a fact that I’ll be all over it when I see it. None of the frozen deep dish I’ve ever experienced has ever quite held up to the real thing, with the exception of Lou Malnati’s frozen deep dish, which you can get shipped (or, if you’re local, you can pick up at a restaurant).

My biggest personal gripe about frozen deep dish pizzas is that there’s too much dough. The thickness and, well, depth of deep dish should come from all that good gooey stuff, like a lot of cheese and sauce, and of course, a metric assload of fillings. Not an inch and a half of crumbly dry dough with just enough cheese and sauce to cover the top. And don’t skimp on the entire meat puck of uninterrupted Italian sausage filling the center! I want to feel like I need to write my will after I have a slice. Mamma Cozzi, if you’re listening, please heed my call. For all my fellow Aldi fans, keep an eye out on the frozen pizza section around Inauguration Day, January 20, as that’s when this regional Chicago treasure is supposed to hit store shelves.