How to cook frozen pizza in the microwave

Pizza seems like a staple dish in almost every home. It’s quick and easy, and seriously, who doesn’t love pizza? Microwave pizza is super easy to make and only takes a few minutes, so you can heat it up whenever you need a quick fix.

The best thing is that you can buy a multitude of frozen pizza products, with different sizes, crusts, ingredients, etc. Now you can even buy keto-friendly, gluten-free, or diet-restricted pizzas. You can even make your own frozen pizza from scratch and save it.

When push comes to shove, you may need a solution to cook that frozen pizza.

Can you cook it in the microwave if that’s your only option? Yes, you can cook frozen pizza in the microwave. The cooking time depends on the power of the microwave you have at home. One thing to keep in mind is that the crust will not be as crispy as oven-baked pizza.

In this guide, we’ll walk you through the steps to cook your frozen pizza in the microwave. Many packages have instructions for this process, but it is not guaranteed. We want to make sure you have the best tools available for any type of pizza.

One thing you’ll really want to have in the future, though, is a microwaveable crispy pan. This is a pan that absorbs microwaves and heats up like a skillet to give your pizza a crispy crust.

Read on to learn how to microwave frozen pizza and more.

Your guide to reheating frozen pizza in the microwave

Frozen pizza comes in many shapes, sizes, and variations. Without even taking into account the multitude of brands on the market, there are hundreds of options.

To give you an idea of how broad the spectrum is, here are some examples. 

• • brick oven
  • thin crust
  • self-raised crust
  • stuffed crust
  • skillet crust
  • cauliflower rind
  • gluten free crust
  • Chicago style

This listing only includes the crust options. In addition to the crust options, you have a variety of brands to choose from. From there, you’ll choose flavors and toppings. You can even find pizzas made with natural ingredients and designed to be healthy options.

Most people have a few select types of frozen pizzas that they use as their preferred options. This usually happens when they try a few and determine that a particular brand is the one they like best because of the texture of the crust.

Let’s face it, no two brands or types of frozen pizza are truly the same when you break them down. There are also several serving options. From single slice pizzas to family size pizzas and everything in between.

In addition to all these options, you can make your own pizza and freeze it to use for the same purposes.

The process of making frozen pizzas

To give you an overview of the overall process, we want to walk you through the process of making your own frozen pizza. Next, we’ll move on to cooking your frozen pizza in the microwave and what you can expect in the process.

Here’s a simple instructional guideline for making pizza ahead of time to freeze and have frozen pizza available:

1. Start by gathering the ingredients and choosing the toppings you want for your pizza.
2. You can buy pizza dough or make your own pizza dough recipe.
3. Leave the pizza dough at room temperature. Do not try to cold extend it.
4. Roll out the pizza dough in the size and portion you want to make.
5. Bake the dough. This part of the process helps set the dough so you don’t have to worry about it getting soggy or flattened in the freezer. Store-bought frozen pizzas have been put through similar processes.
6. To prebake, heat oven to 450 degrees. Bake for 3-5 minutes. The dough should be puffy and dry on top, but still pale in color.
7. Add the sauce, cheese and toppings to the pizza crust. You can also freeze the dough and add the ingredients later.
8. Freeze the pizzas on an uncovered baking sheet for about 3 hours.
9. Wrap the pizzas first in a layer of plastic wrap and then in a layer of aluminum foil.

It’s pretty easy to make your own frozen pizzas ahead of time if you prefer to do it that way. Then just cook them straight from the freezer when you’re ready to use them. You don’t need to go through the thawing process, which is one of the best things about frozen pizza.

Cooking frozen pizza in the microwave

There are so many possible ways to cook your frozen pizza that it’s unreal. Here are a few options to give you an idea.

• Kiln
• Microwave oven
• Microwave oven
• Pan
• Iron

Most pizzas come with instructions for 1 or 2 methods of heating the pizza. The most common way to heat frozen pizza is to use the oven, but the microwave is still an ideal solution.

Microwaving frozen pizza is relatively easy and only takes a few minutes. If the crust is thick, it can take up to 8-10 minutes to heat through. 

Here’s the trick to heating up frozen pizza in the microwave. The microwave is not designed to brown the pizza crust . This can make the crust appear soggy or mushy instead of crisp. This is something you should keep in mind.

If you have some sort of microwaveable stoneware or browning dish, this would be the ideal setting to help your crust brown properly in the microwave.

Rather than give you the specific steps for microwaving pizza, we thought it might be more beneficial to give you a reference guide for the type of pizza and approximate time in the microwave.

Before you begin, be sure to remove any plastic wrap or packaging from the pizza and place it on a microwave-safe plate.

Here’s a quick reference chart on size and microwave cooking times.  These microwave times assume either the high setting or a medium power of 1100 watts is used. 

Keep in mind that if you’re microwaving a store-bought pizza, there may be instructions on the box. If there are specific instructions on the packaging, you should follow them for the best results.

Cooking frozen pizzas with other methods

There are too many methods to cover each of them in this guide. Today we are mainly focused on cooking frozen pizza in the microwave.

However, we want to make sure you know that this is not the ideal solution for cooking your frozen pizza. Most other methods of cooking frozen pizza take about the same time.

The best method for heating frozen pizza is in the oven, simply because it cooks the crust well and crisps it up in the process.  The air fryer and microwave oven are also great tools.

However, we fully understand that sometimes they are not an option. Not everyone has these tools and you may simply need a workaround or quick fix at the time. That’s why we share the method and instructions to help you be as successful as possible when attempting the process.

If you are a pizza lover, we are sure that this process will be the perfect solution to have that piping hot pizza in your hands in no time.

Related questions

We hope you find this guide satisfactory for cooking your frozen pizza in the microwave. We are sure that you will have a delicious pizza if you follow the simple steps indicated in the guide. Good luck in the kitchen!

We invite you to take a look at our questions and answers section to see if there is more information that could be an additional resource for you.

Is it bad to thaw frozen pizza before cooking it?

Frozen pizzas are designed to be cooked from their frozen state. However, it’s not necessarily a bad thing to defrost it if you want to. If you let your frozen pizza thaw before cooking, make sure you don’t try to refreeze it. 

Also, you run the risk of having a soggy pizza, and the texture of the dough may be compromised by the defrosting process. It doesn’t have to hurt the pizza, but you do need to be aware of the possible results.

Can you eat a frozen pizza without cooking?

The best thing about frozen pizzas is that the ingredients on top are already cooked . The crust dough is even slightly pre-cooked, so it’s not a completely raw dough. You can eat the pizza cold and uncooked, although it may taste better if you warm it up in some way.