Which Is Better: Totino's Pizza Rolls Or The Aldi Brand?
Pizza rolls run that perfect middle ground between snack food and easy micro-meal. While Totino's isn't the creator of pizza rolls, few brands are as popular as Totino's which can be found in both grocery and convenience stores everywhere. Even if you haven't had Totino's pizza rolls, there's a good chance you've had one of the incredibly popular microwaveable personal-sized Party Pizzas. But try and show a little restraint when your pizza or pizza rolls come out of the oven or microwave — the pizza core tends to resemble hot lava right after it's been heated, and is notorious for burning the mouths of those with the impatient munchies.
With a snack as beloved as pizza rolls, it was really only a matter of time before ALDI created a version of their own to compete with the name brand. ALDI fans know that the grocery store is famous for recreating name-brand food products and selling them at a lower price than you'd find in a typical grocery store. While you'll find some nice prices in the store, it comes with a few quirks that you either embrace or hate. Either way, we had to know how the ALDI brand pizza rolls compare to the Totino's pizza rolls.
ALDI sells Mama Cozzi's Pizza Kitchen pizza snacks, the store-brand frozen food label. We picked up the "Combination" flavor of each of the pizza rolls to compare price, size, nutritional value, and of course, taste. Read on to see which brand is our winner.
Cost and size comparison
According to Totino's website, the brand makes 12 different flavors of pizza rolls, which is impressive, even though not all stores stock all of the flavors. The ALDI brand, on the other hand, is only available in two flavors: Pepperoni or Combination. So for consistency, we chose the combination flavor of each for this taste test. The Mama Cozzi's-branded pizza rolls are sold in one size, 45-ounce which the bag claims contain about 90 pieces. Totino's are available in a wider range of sizes, including 15, 50, 100, 130, and 140-piece bags. Due to availability, we chose the 50-piece bag. The Mama Cozzi's bag cost us $6.39 before tax, and the Totino's bag cost us $4.99 before tax — although the bag was on sale, with a reduced price from $8.19. Keep in mind that prices may vary from store to store.
Ultimately, the ALDI brand pizza rolls shake out to about .07 cents per pizza roll. The Totino's rolls cost us about .10 cents per pizza roll on sale and would have cost us .16 per roll if they hadn't been on sale. So it turns out that sale or not, the Mama Cozzi's-brand pizza rolls are a better deal per piece than Totino's. Out of curiosity, we checked Instacart to see what the price for a 100-count of Tostino's would be, and at $8.24 each piece would still run us about .8 cents each — still more than the ALDI store brand.
Nutrition comparison
Before we get too deep into this section, we'd like to point out the obvious — which is that pizza rolls are not widely considered to be a nutrient-dense food. But that's not really what we're here for anyway. All the same, it doesn't hurt to see how the two brands stack up against each other, and where you may find a nutritional advantage where you can get it. Each brand lists one serving as six pizza rolls, which weighs in at 85 grams each so we know we're dealing with pizza rolls of the same size. We immediately noticed that the Mama Cozzi's pizza rolls pack 180 calories per serving, while the Totino's run 220 calories per serving — a nearly 20% difference. For more insight, we checked out the rest of the nutrition facts. The Totino's pizza rolls have slightly more fat, sodium, carbohydrates, and protein, which all add up to a snack with 20% more calories.
The ingredients lists for each of the pizza rolls are massive, which is a little surprising given how simple of a snack they seem to be. Both pizza rolls have the same major ingredients though, including flour for the crust, imitation mozzarella cheese, tomato paste, and pizza toppings. Both pizza rolls contain pork and chicken sausage, as well as pepperoni, although it's difficult to tell from the ingredients list alone what the ratio of each might be. Ultimately, you're getting a noticeable nutritional advantage with the ALDI brand pizza rolls.
Pizza roll taste comparison
If you've been keeping score up to this point, you'll have noticed that the ALDI brand Mama Cozzi's Pizza rolls have beaten the Totino's pizza rolls in both the price and nutrition comparisons. But we're not ready to write the name-brand snack off just yet. Because we all know that the most important consideration is the taste, which we think is weighted a little heavier than some of the other comparisons.
We reheated both of the pizza rolls in the oven, per the instructions on the bags, although they can also be cooked in a microwave or air fryer. Once cooked, both of the pizza rolls looked nearly indistinguishable, except for one flaw. The Totino's pizza rolls were more likely to burst while heating than the Mama Cozzi's, with filling spilling out onto the tray instead of staying neatly inside the pizza roll.
While tasting the pizza rolls, we also noticed that there seemed to be more marinara sauce inside the Mama Cozzi's rolls. Just to be sure it wasn't a one-off, we ate a dozen of each — for science. The flavors of the fillings tasted the same, there just seemed to be more in the ALDI brand. And who doesn't want more? We're not really sure how ALDI managed to stuff more of the good stuff into the pizza rolls, all while keeping the calorie count down, but we're not going to question it.
The overall pizza roll winner
Before giving it our close attention, we probably wouldn't have assumed that anything could match the ultimate snacking appeal of Totino's pizza rolls. But now that we've tried the ALDI store-brand knock-off of the popular pizza rolls, we don't think we can go back. Not only are our wallets a little happier, but we're happy knowing that we can eat 20% more of the Mama Cozzi's pizza rolls for the same overall calories as the Totino's pizza rolls. Not only are we keeping more cash and making those calories stretch a little further, but somehow we're also magically getting more filling per bite, with the same delicious flavor as the name-brand pizza rolls. So there's just no doubt in our minds that the ALDI brand pizza rolls are the winner in our match-up with Totino's.
If you're still not sure, we get it. It's hard to ditch a favorite brand for one that's less popular. But ALDI makes that easy to do, by offering the "Twice as Nice" return policy. If you buy the ALDI brand and don't completely love it, you can return it for a full refund, no questions asked. Even if you've eaten most of the bag of pizza rolls just to be sure.