Former Papa Johns Manager Shares Recipe For Dipping Sauce, Says To NEVER Order This One Pizza

Papa John's Pizza

Shutterstock / Ken Wolter


If I’m ordering pizza delivery it’s 99.999% going to be something local. If I am forced to eat from one of the main pizza chains in America I prefer Hungry Howie’s because they’ve got that awesome butter cheese and/or garlic crush add-on, but I can’t deny my love for Papa John’s. If I’m at an NFL/MLB game there’s a decent chance I’ll be ordering a personal Papa John’s pizza because of that crack sauce (garlic dipping sauce).

I was a bit worried when I came across a headline on Food&Wine saying there’s a Papa John’s pizza out there which a former PJ’s manager said you should never ever order. As it turns out, I’d never order this pizza to begin with so I’m cool. But I can’t speak for you and what types of pizza you eat. This former Papa John’s manager’s comments came in a Reddit AMA several months ago, here’s the Q&A exchange which caught my attention:

iwas99x:
What items are so seldom wondered that you wonder why they are on the menu?

sikkerhet:
Papa John’s has a spinach alfredo sauce that’s delicious but only gets ordered maybe once a week, and it hits its sell-by date 3 days after you open the bag but no one actually throws it out until it’s either gone or nasty looking. Dominos has a gluten-free pizza crust and I don’t know why they bother because if you actually have a gluten intolerance you shouldn’t be ordering pizza.(via)

Stay away from the Spinach Alfredo Sauce pizza? That won’t be too hard for me.

More importantly, he shared a home recipe for the Papa John’s garlic butter dipping sauce:

Because I’m getting this one a lot, to make a decent garlic butter sauce saute a few cloves of peeled/minced garlic until it starts to get soft, cut the heat to a really low simmer, add two entire sticks of butter, some basil, some parsley, and some salt. The heat should be just enough to melt the butter and not much more. If you prefer garlic powder skip the first step and mix in a lot of garlic powder with the spices. You’ll have to fuck with the amounts of everything to get it how you want it, I can just eyeball it so I have no idea how much of everything exactly. Put in a bit and taste, adjust, taste, adjust, taste, etc. until it’s right. If you’re using it on a crust/bread you’ll want to add parmasean to it.
Papa John’s uses margarine, not butter. Butter tastes better. It’s up to you. If you care, I’m reasonably sure PJ garlic butter sauce is actually vegan. (via)

There’s actually a ton of interesting info in the Reddit AMA, and you can read through all of it by following that link.

[h/t Food&Wine]