Dennis Lee has a real soft spot for Papa Johns Special Garlic Sauce, which he describes as good enough to make you want to eat all your pizza crust. So he studied the ingredient list and experimented at home to recreate it. His story tells us as much about the process food writers go through to reproduce food as it does about butter dipping sauce.
I can't tell you from personal experience how the taste of Papa Johns Special Garlic Sauce differs from a simple combination of garlic and butter that I've made at home, but there is no butter in it. It's a processed food product, and all the ingredients are processed food products. But with some trial and error, Lee achieved a garlic sauce that he claims is even better than Papa Johns. And it only requires two ingredients that you may already have in your house. But you'll want to see what he did wrong, and what turned out to be right in preparing it at The Takeout.
(Image credit: Dennis Lee)