Broccoli crust pizza. If those three words together don’t make you shudder in disgust, please keep reading! If those three words together do, I’m not sure why you clicked (but thank you for clicking, anyhow!).
Spoiler alert: It’s really darn good.
As I’ve mentioned previously on the blog, I’ve been trying to eat better by counting calories and actually eating better by eating chicken, seafood and drinking protein shakes, as well as adding in movement and exercising.
However, one thing that is hard to shake when trying to eat right is pizza! There is no such thing as bad pizza (including broccoli pizza, I shout to the people who clicked away earlier), only better pizza.
Fortunately for people like me who both want to watch what they eat and enjoy pizza, we live in a beautiful country full of options. I have previously reviewed cauliflower pizza and was jazzed about it. The crust was succulent as heck and made for a great pizza foundation. So, my thought was, what about broccoli?
Realgood Pizza Co. makes a frozen pizza with a crust made with broccoli. And their slogan seems even tailored made for my preference, “Real food you feel good about eating.” In addition, the pizza is jam packed with protein, offering 18 grams of pizza per serving, which is half the pizza. Each half is 340 calories.
There’s also only two grams of sugar and no added sugar per serving. Unfortunately, as with most anything, it is still packed with sodium, offering up 720 milligrams per serving.
Let’s compare to a frozen thin crust pepperoni pizza from DiGiorno. At first, I was shocked looking at the nutrition label: 300 calories per serving, with 14 grams of protein and 730 milligrams of sodium. It does have more sugar at four grams of sugar and less than a gram of added sugar.
And then I looked at the label again because I’m a dumb-dumb: That one serving represents 0.20 of the pizza or 125 grams. In other words, for an additional 0.30 of the pizza, I can eat the same amount of pizza with the Realgood Pizza Co.’s pizza for about the same amount of calories and nutrition (with less sugar) as a DiGiorno pizza’s .20 portion size.
And to put it another way, back in the day when I was bad and would easily eat one frozen DiGiorno pizza on my own? That was 1,500 calories. 1,500 calories! That’s 820 calories more than the entire broccoli pizza! In other words, I would have to eat two of these frozen broccoli pizzas in one sitting and still not be equal to one sitting of a DiGiorno pizza. I’d have another 140 calories to play with!
I’m blown away by the comparison.
Anyhow, so, yeah, the broccoli pizza is indeed a healthier alternative, if you’re looking to get your frozen pizza fix.
As for how they make it, the pizza crust consists of broccoli (duh), mozzarella cheese, rice flour, sorghum flour, liquid whole egg, dry whole egg, almond flour, avocado (oh, that’s interesting!), kale, peas and xanthan gum.
Also, for you gluten-free folks, the company promises that the flour used isn’t processed and contains no gluten.
On the back of the box, they boast, “They told us it wasn’t possible. They said it wouldn’t taste good. They were wrong.”
Indeed, they were!
Much like the cauliflower crust pizza, the broccoli crust pizza is succulent, thin and is easy to gobble up. After all, both cauliflower and broccoli are pretty watery (92 percent and 90 percent, respectively). That wateriness makes for great crust, though, especially if you like the thin cut, as I do (and I also like the thick cut and pan cut and handmade cut and and and).
And I mean, even if broccoli isn’t really your bag, there’s still freaking cheese, pepperoni and sauce here, the Holy Trinity of pizzas everywhere, to keep you chewing away.
To conclude, if you’re looking for a healthier, and still tasty, alternative to frozen pizza, I highly recommend giving this one (and the cauliflower crust pizza) a shot. I mean, look at this green yum:
Milam's Musings 