Mama Cozzi’s Indian Style Butter Flavor Chickpea Pizza

Fewer things are more convenient and tasty than popping a frozen pizza in the oven after a busy day. You can have a hot meal ready in about 20 minutes or less. The toppings are customizable. You can up the nutrition factor by serving it with a side salad. And pretty much everyone likes pizza.

I was in need of a quick and easy late dinner this week after a day of shuttling kids to and from activities and meeting teachers at school open house. I had several standard cheese frozen pizzas from Aldi in the deep freezer.

I passed up the traditional pizzas for something different: an Indian butter chicken-style pizza topped with chickpeas. Everyone in my family likes Indian food — chicken tikka masala, samosas, paneer, and so on — so a butter chicken pizza sounded like it would hit the spot.

Unlike most Aldi Mama Cozzi’s pizzas, the front of the box doesn’t say what this is topped with. A glance at the ingredients list indicates it features a “butter chicken style sauce” with mozzarella cheese, seasoned chickpeas, red onion, and tomatoes.

Mama Cozzi’s Indian Style Butter Flavor Chickpea Pizza is an Aldi Find. It’s in stores for just a short time. Each store receives a single shipment, and after that sells out, it’s gone unless Aldi decides to bring it back later. Aldi does not offer online ordering for products that are sold out at your local store. When this is in stock, you’ll find it in the Aldi Find freezer aisle.

This cost $4.99 for a 19.65-ounce pizza at the time of publication. That’s about 25 cents per ounce. With four servings per pizza, that comes out to about $1.25 per serving.

If you’re looking out for allergens, this contains milk, soy, and wheat.

One pizza serves four people. One serving has 290 calories, 9 grams of total fat (12% DV), 4.5 grams of saturated fat (23% DV), 580 mg of sodium (25% DV), 41 grams of total carbohydrates (15% DV), 2 grams of dietary fiber (7% DV), 5 grams of total sugars, 1 gram of added sugars (2% DV), and 11 grams of protein.

The box has directions for baking the pizza in a conventional oven. Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Remove the pizza from all packaging. Place the frozen pizza directly on the middle rack in the oven. (I put mine on a pizza pan.) Bake for 14-16 minutes or until the cheese in the middle is melted and the edges are golden brown.

This pizza has a classic savory, mildly spicy flavor that actually does remind me of butter chicken and other Indian dishes. The chickpeas sit on top of the pizza and get a little dried out during the baking process, but otherwise I liked this pizza. It has a thicker crust, and the diced red onions and tomatoes are a nice touch. It’s also got a good amount of mozzarella cheese.

The Verdict:

Mama Cozzi’s Indian Style Butter Flavor Chickpea Pizza features a thicker crust topped with butter chicken-style sauce topped with mozzarella cheese, chickpeas, diced red onions, and diced tomatoes. It’s on the mild spicy side and really does taste similar to Indian dishes we’ve had. Our only minor complaint is that some of the chickpeas are a little on the dry side. This is one of the more unique pizzas we’ve seen at Aldi, and we like it.