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The Snack Attack: Pizza Hut's New Garlic Knots -- Might As Well Save Your $5 [TASTE TEST]

Pizza Hut debuted the iconic stuffed crust pizza back in 1995 and taste buds haven't been the same since. If you ask me, Pizza Hut is the holy grail when it comes to stuffed crust. By that logic, you would think that anything Pizza Hut makes with melty cheese hidden inside should be delicious, right? WRONG!

The Hut introduced the $5 Flavor Menu earlier this year and instantly I was drawn to the cheese-stuffed Garlic Knots. It's a spin on their Stuffed Garlic Knots Pizza, which featured 16 cheese-stuffed knots on the crust. I didn't really care for the pizza because the knots easily broke off, leaving it hard to hold onto a floppy slice without getting sauce all over my fingers. So when I saw these new knots being sold by themselves, I thought it would be a match made in pizza heaven.

Pizza Hut describes the Garlic Knots as being "stuffed with melted cheese and finished with a garlic buttery blend, grated parmesan and Italian herbs." Sounds good, right? Well, the order I got wasn't very cheesy and hardly even tasted of garlic. Major fail! Nothing is worse than biting into something that is supposed to be "stuffed" with cheese only to find a huge pocket of air inside.

Review: Pizza Hut's Stuffed Garlic Knots

Garlic Knots Pizza hut
The cheese to dough ratio is rather depressing. (Credit: CBSDetroit.com)

Appearance: The knots looked perfectly browned and crispy and were dusted evenly with parmesan cheese and herbs. But I knew things were heading downhill when I noticed about half of the knots had exploded during the baking process, leaving the cheese to ooze out of the dough and onto the aluminum baking tin. I also couldn't tell if the liquid in the tin was the garlic butter itself or grease from my unstuffed cheese.

Aroma: The scent of garlic and herbs was overwhelming. These things smelled so good, it took everything I had not to rip into the box and start eating them on my drive home from Pizza Hut. Mouthwatering indeed!

Taste: Despite its pungent aroma, I could hardly taste any garlic on these knots. The texture of the dough was a lot thicker than I was imagining and it took some force to bite through the entire knot. Then I found myself wondering "Um, where's the cheese?" Seriously. I cut some in half just to make sure I wasn't crazy and sure enough, there's hardly any cheese in these puppies. At least the flavor of the cheese was tasty, much like what's used in the stuffed crust.

Pros: I'm having a hard time coming up with any. They were cheap, but you'd be better served spending your money on regular breadsticks or even cheese sticks, which ironically probably have more cheese than these knots.

Cons: Where to begin? A faint garlic taste leaves much to be desired -- not exactly what you want from something that has the word garlic in its name. The knots are supposed to be cheese stuffed, but there's hardly any cheese. I feel like someone must have been really confused while making these.

Rating: 1 out of 10 -- This was a pathetic attempt to make stuffed crust in popable form.

The Snack Attack is a new daily feature on CBSDetroit.com that centers around all things food. Know of a new snack we should attack? Send an email and we'll be sure to add it to the list.

 

 

 

 

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