DiGiorno Three Meat Pizza Dipping Strips

I like my food to be interactive. Of course, there's only so many ways you can jazz up lift food, insert in mouth, but that doesn't mean I haven't tried to make it more exciting. I blame it on my parents, whose authentic airline-related commentary while flying the fork plane into my mouth as an infant would have made any TSA agent proud. So these days, where a spoon would suffice, I'll stick a straw in. I like arranging plates to have as many condiments and dips as there are items on the plate itself, and a dinner just isn't a dinner unless it has at least one experimental cocktail.

DiGiorno sent over some of their pizzas last week, in a bizarrely paradoxical "is it delivery or is it DiGiorno" situation. In this case, it was both, which seems to defy the laws of time and space, but whatever. Funny story: sometimes the press kits companies send over can be very convincing. In this case, I got a text from Miss Love while on my way home from work. "digiorno sent 1 pizza just put in freezer." Curious to hear more, I called her, and we both expressed our confusion at having received one pizza in what she said was such a large box.

I came home later and found this in the freezer, with these inside.

Yup, they made their press kit so convincing that it fooled my poor girlfriend. Shit is crazy like a Foxwoods, I tell you. Luckily, thumbdrives can take a licking, so despite the fact that these were frozen, they turned out just fine. I also need to point out that this is one of the most impressive press kits I've recently received. They made a thumbdrive that's meant to resemble a Dipping Strip. The operative word here is "meant," as it errs more toward the side of skin disease demonstrative display ("Pepperonitis Simplica") but it's still freaking awesome.

I ran to the store and grabbed the Three Meat pizza for my first test. Maybe I'm just used to the slender, compostable Amy's boxes we usually get, but this pizza was hefty. I swear I saw my triceps cry when I lifted it out of the freezer case. The Three Meat Pizza is topped with pepperoni, sausage, and beef, and comes with two tubes of garlic and marinara dipping sauce. I can understand the former, which seeks to deliver a certain pizza restaurant's certain magical sauce to a certain masses, the likes of which rhymes with "Ploppa Han," but the latter baffles me ever so slightly. I've never known anyone to add extra sauce to a pizza.

I've always liked DiGiorno's pizzas, and this one was no exception. While I find the crust a little too thick and dense, the flavor is tasty without being oversalted and the toppings are generous. The execution of the dipping strips is a little unwieldy, though. The cheese extends and separates in a net-like form, leaving small pieces of beef and sausage in its wake like the children of divorced parents. As the cheese breaks off, they ultimately fall by the wayside until you plop them back on the pizza. The toppings are fairly nondescript- the pepperoni is gamey and fatty, distinctly reminiscent of packaged Hormel sausage or the cold slices you'd get in a Lunchable, and the sausage and beef are virtually indistinguishable. But still, meat toppings FTW. The real fun is in the dipping.

Both sauces feature easy-to-tear pouches and a slightly greasy exterior as well as the heady implications of explosion should you microwave them. Once again, I'm reminded of Lunchables. This pizza feels more and more like the adult version of the deep-dish pizza creator you were jealous about in the 4th grade. You know, the one with cold cheese and an animal-based crust that you'd have given a kidney for. Now it comes in 1 lb increments and has garlic sauce. You're all grown up, baby. The marinara sauce was surprisingly, my favorite condiment, likely because it served as a zesty lubricant for the craggy pizza strips. The garlic sauce was congealed with oil and it had a thin, watery texture. It had a salty, non-garlicky texture and I ended up throwing it out.

This is a pretty successful frozen pizza, and it's definitely a fun, easy way to portion out food. Many an argument has broken out chez nous over the last slice of pizza, and this way you can divide up your strips as evenly as we divided up land back in the 1800's. While I'd love to see a thinner crust and some more diverse toppings and dips, it's delicious, moderately nutritious, and better than the DIY version we had as kids.
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