Tag: Pizza Hut

Pizza Hut’s Stuffed Crust Pizza was a mind-blowing idea when it first came out. Pizza fanatics rejoiced. Nutritionists cried. Dairy farmers pumped their fists and shouted, “Ka-ching!” And dairy cows yelled, “Moo!”

I was super excited about it. But after eating a slice I realized the problem with the Stuffed Crust Pizza was the fact the cheese inside wasn’t different than what’s on the pizza. So if you were to take a bite of it with the pizza, it would pretty much taste like a normal pizza with a double dose of mozzarella cheese.

But Pizza Hut is doing something different with their new Grilled Cheese Stuffed Crust Pizza. There’s a little mozzarella in there, but the big cheese is, um, cheddar.

Yeah, I don’t know what uppity artisan sandwich shop the folks who work at Pizza Hut’s test kitchen eat at for fancy grilled cheese sandwiches, but for us regular folks, our grilled cheese sandwiches have good ol’ U.S. of American cheese that’s as American as the idea of a grilled cheese stuffed crust pizza. So why doesn’t the orange goo contain it?

The crust is also topped with butter and breadcrumbs. Not a sprinkling of breadcrumbs, but enough to make some slices look like they’re connected to a chicken cutlet. They also provide a satisfying crunch that the actual crust does not.

The ends were quite flat. I don’t know if my pizza was made the right way, but it looks like a bean bag chair that lost a war between it and the butts of an entire football team’s offensive and defensive lines. I thought there wouldn’t be a lot of cheese in it, but as I pulled a slice away, a crown of orange goo peaked out from the crust.

The flavor combination of cheese, butter, crust, and breadcrumbs, doesn’t remind me of a grilled cheese sandwich, but then again, my grilled cheese sandwiches don’t use cheddar or mozzarella. But with the added garlic in the butter, it tastes more like cheesy garlic bread than a grilled cheese sandwich. That’s not a bad thing. I liked its flavor even though it was not what I was expecting. Maybe cheesy garlic bread is what grilled cheese sandwiches at uppity artisan sandwich shops taste like.

While I enjoyed the crust, I thought combining bites of it with the pizza were odd. Not gross, just different because of the cheddar. The pizza itself was typical Pizza Hut fare, so I won’t go into any further detail about that.

The whole point of Pizza Hut’s Stuffed Crust Pizza is to encourage us to eat the crust, and I think it was successful with this pizza. The crust was saltier than the pizza itself and I wish it came with a container of tomato soup as a dip, but I have to say this is the first time I felt like eating the end crust and throwing away the pizza, instead of eating the pizza and throwing away the end crust.

Purchased Price: $17.99*
Size: Large pizza
Rating: 7 out of 10
Nutrition Facts: (1 slice) 400 calories, 20 grams of fat, 10 grams of saturated fat, 0.5 grams of trans fat, 60 milligrams of cholesterol, 860 milligrams of sodium, 35 grams of carbohydrates, 2 grams of fiber, 1 gram of sugar, and 18 grams of protein.

*Because I live on a rock in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, things are a bit pricier here. You’ll probably pay less than I did. These are being advertised for $12.99 for a one topping large pizza at participating locations.

When it comes to garlic, I like enough of it on whatever I’m eating to make folks stay out of my personal space. Close talker…smell the garlic. Vampire…smell the garlic. Hugger…smell the garlic. Dentist…smell the garlic.

I thought I’d be getting a lot of garlic on the end crust of Pizza Hut’s new Stuffed Garlic Knots Pizza, but unfortunately, or fortunate for those who invade my personal space, there wasn’t a lot of the pungent ingredient.

Each pizza has 16 stuffed garlic knots around the edges. Wait…did I say “knots”? I meant to say “not knots.” They didn’t have the distinct look of the garlic knots Google Images showed me. They’re more like balls or puffs, and they’re kind of big. They take up enough space on the large pizza to make the inner part of it look more like a medium.

Each not knot was topped with a combination of garlic, herbs, butter, and parmesan cheese. A toasted parmesan cheese flavor stood out, but, as I mentioned earlier, I barely noticed the garlic. The cheese inside the not knots tasted like the standard stuff that’s in their regular Stuffed Crust Pizza. It wasn’t gooey when I bit into it and most were filled with more air than cheese. Because there isn’t a lot of cheese, its flavor gets lost in the dough and whatever little garlic and herb flavor there was.

The pizza is similar to Pizza Hut’s Twisted Crust Pizza in that the appetizer doesn’t make up the entire end crust. Instead, it’s like a sheet of stickers. You know, the ones you put on your Trapper Keeper or composition book. Once you peel off the stickers, you’re left with something that has no redeeming qualities, so you just throw it away. Once the garlic knots are peeled away, what’s left behind is unappetizing, mostly unflavored bread. Mine was particularly unappealing because it was slightly undercooked.

Thankfully the pizza comes with two containers of marinara sauce for dipping. It gave the not knots a bit more flavor, which they definitely needed. But, depending on your double dipping disposition, it might not be enough for dipping the not knots AND the crust that lies beneath them.

As for the rest of the pizza, it’s a typical Pizza Hut fare. My pizza could’ve used more sauce under the cheese, but it was fine. The pizza itself was much more enjoyable and flavorful than the not knots attached to it.

Overall, the Stuffed Garlic Knots Pizza wasn’t horrible, but I wouldn’t order it again. If I want a pizza with a garlicky crust stuffed with cheese to prevent folks from coming into my personal space, I could just order a regular Stuffed Crust Pizza with their Garlic Buttery Blend crust flavoring.

(Nutrition Facts – 1/8 Pepperoni Stuffed Garlic Knots Pizza – 460 calories, 170 calories from fat, 18 grams of fat, 8 grams of saturated fat, 0.5 grams of trans fat, 45 milligrams of cholesterol, 1120 milligrams of sodium, 54 grams of carbohydrates, 3 grams of fiber, 3 grams of sugar, 19 grams of protein.)

Item: Pizza Hut Stuffed Garlic Knots Pizza
Purchased Price: $17.99*
Size: N/A
Purchased at: Pizza Hut
Rating: 5 out of 10
Pros: Marinara sauce was the sugar that helped the medicine go down. Lots of pepperoni on my pizza. Inner pizza was more enjoyable than the outer pizza.
Cons: Stuffed garlic knots are more like stuffed garlic balls. Bad air-to-cheese ratio. The garlic knots’ size make the pizza look smaller. The crust under the garlic knots was unappealing bread. Not enough marinara sauce to dip garlic knots AND undercrust. Undercrust being a made up word.

*Because I live on a rock in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, things are a bit pricier here. You’ll probably pay less than I did.

To me, getting a Pizza Hut Hot Dog Bites Pizza was like getting GoBot for Christmas. Sure, they’re vehicles that transform into robots, but they’re a lame ripoff of other vehicles that turn into robots. They’re no Transformer, robots in disguise.

In my eyes, the Transformer equivalent of a Pizza Hut hot dog pizza is the Pizza Hut Stuffed Crust Pizza that other countries, like Canada and the U.K., were sold. It was a pizza that looked like a normal Stuffed Crust pizza but instead of the crust being stuffed with gooey cheese, they had significantly not gooey at all hot dogs in them.

Why didn’t that come to our shores? We’re America, dammit! We’ve done so many things with our hot dogs. We’ve wrapped them in bacon. We’ve injected them with cheese. We watch people eat dozens of them one after another for sport. FOR SPORT! I don’t want a GoBot, I want a Transformer! But I have to settle for the GoBot version of a Pizza Hut hot dog pizza.

Each Hot Dog Bites Pizza has 28 pigs in a blanket as the outer crust. Half the slices have three bites and the other half have four. The crust around them…ugh, I can’t delay it any longer. I have to talk about how they look. I don’t know about you, but there’s something disturbing about the way these bites look. Some folks have said they look like toes, and the photo below helps prove that. But my active imagination sees a few other things that probably aren’t appropriate for a food review. But let me just say these things are seen below the waist.

Now back to the review.

The crust around the hot dogs were toasted nicely, giving them a slight crispy outside. And the dough inside was soft and had a slight chewiness. But the hot dogs themselves don’t look like hot dogs or taste like them. Instead they look like Vienna sausages and have a flavor that reminds me of those little smokies cocktail sausages. As someone who had eaten a lot of cocktail sausages wrapped up in Pillsbury Crescent dough, I liked the familiar flavor of the hot dog bites. But, again, they don’t taste like hot dogs.

Each pizza comes with a container of French’s yellow mustard to use as a dipping sauce. Because, you know, hot dogs. After trying them with ketchup, mustard, and a combination of the two, I have to say going with mustard was the right choice. Ketchup seems too close to the sauce on the pizza. Even with mustard, the smokiness of the meat was still noticeable.

Combining the two super junk foods, pizza and hot dogs, into one bite isn’t going to open a portal into Awesomeland. Together, without the mustard, they’re okay. But I think they’re best left separated.

I will admit, although it’s not exactly the Transformer I wanted, this GoBot is kind of cool and it still makes me want to eat the crust more than a cheese-stuffed crust would. Also, I found that one slice with four hot dog bites was enough to fill me up. Maybe it was the extra protein. But I now know I can never eat hot dogs for sport.

(Nutrition Facts – Not available on website.)

Item: Pizza Hut Hot Dog Bites Pizza
Purchased Price: $17.99
Size: N/A
Purchased at: Pizza Hut
Rating: 6 out of 10
Pros: Makes me want to eat the crust more than cheese-filled crust. It’s still pizza with hot dogs in the crust. One slice is filling. Enough mustard for dipping all 28 hot dog bites. Transformers.
Cons: Not as cool as getting a Hot Dog Stuffed Crust Pizza. Hot dogs don’t taste like hot dogs, more like cocktail sausages. For those with active imaginations, the hot dog bites look a bit disturbing. I can’t eat hot dogs for sport. GoBots.

I loved sriracha before sriracha reached the consciousness of anyone beyond a noodle house. That iconic squeeze bottle with the green plastic nozzle and the rooster, strutting like those idiots who wear Ed Hardy t-shirts. I first broke my cherry with sriracha when I was an undergrad at the University of Florida scarfing down “fakeasian” food at Maui Teriyaki. I’m sorry, but I love me some good fakeasian as my uncle General Tso knows. Those smoky teriyaki chicken bowls drenched with sweetened soy sauce and careless ribbons of sriracha…oh how I still think of you fondly.

After law school, I rediscovered the sauce when I was shopping at my local Asian market for cans of earthy fried dace and jars of pickled radish. Less like rekindled love and closer to falling off the wagon, my obsession raced to unhealthy standards. I starting dousing everything from cottage cheese to steaming bowls of white rice with the deep reddish condiment.

So, of course, I was excited when rumblings of the Thai counterpart of Tabasco started making its way out of Asian kitchens and into things like mayonnaise or popcorn. However the danger of becoming popular is the inevitable dilution by lame and poorly conceived products like Lay’s sriracha-flavored potato chips that tasted more like cheese puffs. I once went to a “trendy” place where they placed dollops of sriracha into rosemary flecked mashed potatoes. Disgusting!

Yet, I have not given up and while a bit skeptical of Pizza Hut’s new pizza recipes, I’d be lying if I told you I wasn’t interested in the Sweet Sriracha Dynamite Pizza. Most of the new pizzas have names that pretty much describe what the flavor is such as Buffalo State of Mind (buffalo wings) or the one I’m reviewing.

On the other hand, there are terribly named ones like Cock-A-Doodle Bacon or Pretzel Piggy. Neither alerts me to a creamy parmesan sauce and instead, they sound more characters from Japanese anime hentai. No, I don’t care how many tentacles you can stick in that orifice, hentai is weird.

And yeah, I’m sorry. I’m not going to actually pick up the phone and say, “I’d like one Cock-A-Doodle Bacon Pizza.” Never going to happen. I would rather read the list of ingredients and make the other person on the end say, “Oh…you want the Cock-A-Doodle Bacon Pizza?” “Cock-a-yes please.”

What intrigued me the most was the base sauce, honey sriracha instead of the dependable marinara sauce. The warmth of the pizza box that dropped in my lap felt better than a stripper with a “two hands size” butt. It smelled like an ordinary pizza and while I was entranced by the scent, it had me worried because I was wondering if it would taste like one as well.

Upon opening the warm box with the slightly damp tippy top lid, the smell of roasted jalapeño and melted cheese infiltrated the air. I popped open the box and I had to exclaim this was one of the prettiest pizzas I have ever seen. The deep red hues of the Peruvian cherry peppers just popped out of the pizza.

The honey sriracha glazed crust had that new tire shine, although it was off-putting to grab a sticky crust. It was also annoying because every time I grabbed a slice, it felt like I was grabbing a cinnamon bun.

On the first bite, I could taste the sweetness of the roasted peppers which complemented the sweeter pineapple chunks. The jalapeños were thankfully not the pickled kind or if they were, I didn’t taste it. The grilled chicken pieces, although large, were spongy in texture but imparted a smokiness. However, the sweet sriracha sauce lifted the pizza to another level.

Nowhere as intense as mango habanero wing sauce from Buffalo Wild Wings but it definitely packs more heat than a stick of Big Red cinnamon gum. The sauce was really nice. It was very much balanced and despite sriracha overload, this was a thoughtfully created pizza. Furthermore, the cheese just brought the entire pizza together like a satisfying science fiction film without the tentacle sex.

Essentially, the pizza is like a bolder version of the Hawaiian pizza. I would never say sriracha pizza, let alone from The Hut, is the best pizza in this multiverse but this is as close to a standing applause I can give to a chain pizza.

The sriracha has the characteristics of lingering heat with a slight sweet tang. I could make that out but it ain’t no Huy Fong Sriracha. I overlooked this because the pizza was put together so well.

Now some variances, I ordered mine with the pan crust because I felt a thicker crust would carry the honey sriracha glaze better. Also, mine didn’t come with the strange sweet honey sriracha drizzle and it appears you have to ask for it (or my neighborhood Pizza Hut person said). That’s fine, I don’t like soggy ass pizzas and would rather not overload the pizza with sweet syrupy gunk because the pizza was really tight in its flavors.

Another serendipitous moment, the pizza reheats well in the oven, so much so that my taste buds were tricked into thinking “we got ANOTHER pizza?! Hell YEAHHHH!” No dummy. It may be the base sauce, the toppings or the pan pizza crust. Damn, it may be all of the above. The pizza made me curious enough to try the rest of the “new recipe” line.

(Nutrition Facts – 1 slice (large pizza) – 320 calories, 100 calories from fat, 11 games of total fat, 6 grams of saturated fat, 40 mg of cholesterol, 940 mg of sodium, 41 grams of carbohydrates, 2 grams of dietary fiber, 6 grams of sugars and 15 grams of protein.)

Item: Pizza Hut Sweet Sriracha Dynamite Pizza
Purchased Price: $14.99
Size: 14 inches (large)
Purchased at: Pizza Hut
Rating: 8 out of 10
Pros: weet, spicy and smoky. Good heat from a pizza. If you like Hawaiian pizza, this is a good try. Sexy anime Cosplay.
Cons: Sticky crust. Spongy chicken. Sriracha overexposure. Tentacle sex.