Forget Stuffed Crust, This Entire Pizza Crust Is Made Of Cheese

Welcome back to Nosh or Nah, a column where The Takeout staff reviews the best, worst, and weirdest new snacks and drinks hitting store shelves near you.

The food and beverage world continues to revolve around protein — this edition of Nosh or Nah, we've got protein pretending to be pizza and Cup Noodles pretending to be protein. First, Dennis Lee tangles with the latest novelty edition of Nissin's Cup Noodles: BBQ noodles inspired by the styles of two of America's smoked meat meccas, Kansas City and Texas. Will these noodles please BBQ purists? Of course not! But we'll let Dennis tell you whether or not they're worth buying anyway.

After that, Michael Palan taste-tests a new protein-forward frozen pizza offering: cottage cheese crust pizza from The Tattooed Chef. Sure, cottage cheese may not be the first thing one thinks of for making a crusty, bread-like product, but you can actually make pretty good cottage cheese crust pizza at home, so a frozen version has the potential to succeed. Read on to find out if you can maximize your gains in the gym by housing an entire frozen pizza after your workout (we can all dream).

Nissin's Cup Noodle brand comes out with surprise flavors on a regular basis, like three chicken wing varieties or dill pickle ramen, sometimes to mixed results. Its most recent release is a pair of barbecue flavors, representing Texas and Kansas City.

But how do the flavors of regional barbecue translate to Cup Noodle format? Results are mixed — the Kansas City BBQ version of Cup Noodles is sweet and sticky and tastes like barbecue sauce with fake smoke added. Unfortunately, it's sweetened with an artificial sweetener, sucralose, which I find mildly unappealing. The Texas version, on the other hand, is unapologetically savory, with a hardcore black pepper flavor — it even features a respectably spicy kick. You'll have to be tolerant of a chemical smoky aftertaste if you try either. Nissin's novelty Cup Noodles flavors can be hit or miss, but this Texas BBQ flavor is one I'd Nosh for the low price of $1.18 a cup — which you can get exclusively at Walmart. For the record, I actually finished that one, while the poor Kansas City cup languished on the counter, earning Nah status.

Protein crust continues to invade the frozen pizza aisle. New to stores are cottage cheese crust pizzas made by the Tattooed Chef, aka Sarah Galletti. There are four 11.25-ounce frozen pies available — Four Cheese, Killer Bee, Bianca, and Spicy Vodka, which contain anywhere from 20-23 grams of protein, are gluten free, and retail for about $9.99 a piece at grocery stores. I was sent two to try — the Four Cheese, which includes mozzarella, provolone, cheddar, and aged cheese, and the Killer Bee, which is topped with ricotta cheese, spicy red chili peppers, mozzarella cheese, and a drizzle of hot honey.

Out of the box, they look like any frozen pizza you've ever unsheathed before. However, flipping over to the crust's backside, its appearance is less crust-like and more like a fancy cracker with Italian seasonings embedded in it. Any skepticism about the pizza's taste evaporates the moment my teeth encounter the excellent crunch from the crust. I like the crust more with every bite — it reminds me of crisped up focaccia bread. Even after my pizza toppings go cold, the crust maintains its crispness. The Four Cheese one provides solid flavors, but I prefer the Killer Bee one; the hot honey and ricotta combo is a more interesting flavor profile. Both are definite Noshes.

Recommendations are based on firsthand impressions of promotional materials and products provided by the manufacturer.