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Life

24th Jun 2020

Ranking every pizza topping from worst to best

JOE

pizza topping ranking

Brought to you by Momenti Pizza from Dr. Oetker

Because a pizza is nothing without its toppings, here’s our ranking of some of the best… and some of the worst.

One of the upsides of lockdown is that it has brought out plenty of creativity in kitchens across the land.

Few dishes offer such simple scope for creativity like a pizza, as, with just a few toppings and ingredients, it can be transformed from a base with tomato and cheese to so much more.

Personal preferences for those toppings, however, tends to vary wildly from one person to the next.

In fact, few topics in culinary conversations incite as much debate and often, argument, as toppings on a pizza.

If in doubt about that, throw this grenade into the mix the next time you’re in conversation with more than two people and watch it explode: Pineapple on a pizza, yay or nay? (More on that later).

Thankfully, experts like Dr Oetker know what balance to strike when it comes to pizza toppings, as they have with their new Momenti range.

Perfect for a tasty quick dinner or lunch, the Momenti pizzas are packed full of flavour and are healthy too, containing 441 calories in the Salami pizza and 422 in their Tomato, Pesto & Mozzarella pizzaAnd if you feel the need to add something else into the mix, they go down really well with a crisp salad or some sweet potato wedges.

Salads nor sweet potato wedges don’t feature on our ranking of the best and worst pizza toppings below, starting with some we feel shouldn’t be near a pizza before ending on a high note with our favourites, the mere mention of which will have you salivating for a pizza by the time you finish reading this sentence.

Tuna

Some people just want to watch the world burn.

Green Olives

Olive lovers aren’t going to be happy to see their beloved fruit near the bottom of the list but hear us out.

There’s nothing wrong with green olives on their own, but a topping should complement a pizza and its blend of ingredients, not overwhelm it.

Get a strong enough green olive and you’ll barely be able to taste the cheese, tomato and whatever base you’re having yourself.

Extra cheese

Extra cheese is ranking low here because of the lack of originality involved.

Instead of a choice of other flavoursome toppings, you opt for an ingredient that accounts for the bulk of the pizza already.

Boring.

Egg

Such monstrosities actually exist…

Broccoli

We’re all for healthy ingredients on a pizza but… no.

Pineapple

There’s a reason we’ve put pineapple bang smack in the middle of our ranking as there is truly no more divisive topping than the tropical fruit.

Wars have been fought over disputes less heated than the ones that emerge over the suitability of pineapple on a pizza and in an effort to keep the peace on this occasion, we’re going to firmly sit on the fence

Ham

Now we’re getting to the good stuff.

Off the top of your head, think of some of the most popular pizzas with meat – the Pizza Speciale and Pizza Hawaii in the Dr. Oetker Ristorante range, for example – and now think of how many of them have ham on them.

There’s a good reason for that.

Onion

Solid, dependable, never going to let you down. The Denis Irwin of pizza toppings.

Mushroom

The mushroom ranked high in recent surveys on popular pizza toppings (such surveys do exist, we checked) and we would heartily endorse its lofty status.

It’s rare that a mushroom won’t suit a pizza and the majority of them are all the better for their presence.

Salami

Salami, pepperoni (a variety of salami), however you want to describe it, is the undisputed champ, the top (ping) dog, the pizza de resistance, if you will.

Put it this way, can you think of many other situations where you would eat salami apart from when it is spread generously across the top of your pizza? We didn’t think so.

Dr. Oetker’s new Momenti Pizza is a small, great-tasting frozen pizza. The two flavours – Tomato, Mozzarella & Pesto and Salami Calabrase – contain up to 450 calories. They are just the right size for a quick lunch or tasty dinner for one. Available in Tesco, Dunnes Stores, Supervalu and BWG. For information, visit the Dr. Oetker website.

Brought to you by Momenti Pizza from Dr. Oetker

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