So, you walk into a Pizza Hut and sit there wondering are Pizza Hut breadsticks vegan? After all, surely the ingredients list just cannot include something derived from an animal?
Trying to find actual 100% vegan options at some brands may not prove the easiest of tasks. It turns out you must pay close attention to every aspect, or some non-vegan ingredients could slip through the net.
Well, the surprising thing is that not all breadsticks are made in the same way. So, what about Pizza Hut? Can you go ahead and nibble away on a breadstick as a side even if you do indeed follow the vegan lifestyle?
Well, we do have several things to go through when it comes to Pizza Hut and what they offer vegans. So, let’s get on with it by addressing our title question first. After that, we will move into other things that Pizza Hut offers that will work for any vegan.
The Answer
The answer is that the Pizza Hut breadstick is indeed vegan, but that’s not the full answer. You see, it will very quickly become non-vegan unless you become extremely specific with your order.
Perhaps the fact that they have a vegan breadstick is not a surprise. After all, a breadstick generally has very few ingredients, and the common ones certainly do not contain any animal products.
But it can all go wrong relatively quickly here, and that is what we want to help you to avoid.
How it Becomes Non-Vegan
The main issue surrounding Pizza Hut breadsticks comes down to one thing, parmesan cheese. Pizza Hut will cover them in cheese when serving, so that does mean they a vegan cannot consume them.
For Pizza Hut, the parmesan remains a huge part of the seasoning of the breadstick, but you don’t have to go for that option.
Instead, you can easily ask that they refrain from adding the parmesan. That should never prove problematic.
But that does also mean you have nothing to worry about with the actual ingredients contained within the breadstick itself. Every single thing they use in the making of the breadstick remains vegan.
Understandably, you probably think that it means you need to eat them plain, but that’s not always the case.
Instead, you could go ahead and even use a dipping sauce to add some flavor to the breadstick and stop it from becoming too dry. However, we will explain later on why you need to take a moment and examine everything, even with a dipping sauce.
What About Anything Else?
Pizza Hut does make it slightly tough for anybody who is vegan, and it’s because they do not currently stock vegan cheese at all of their locations. However, they do state they work with you to make sure that you can at least get something to eat.
But this is where we do have a bit of an issue with Pizza Hut. There never seems to be any general consensus across the brand when it comes to vegan offerings.
It turns out that some countries offer better options for vegans than the likes of the United States.
That does mean you need to spend time looking through everything on the menu and paying attention to the finer details. Also, it may require you to contact the Pizza Hut you plan on ordering from in advance to double-check the ingredients.
Once again, this step may prove necessary because of the potential for regional variations at Pizza Hut restaurants. It’s annoying, but it may represent the only way in which you can know with any certainty that you have ordered a vegan option.
How They Deal with a Lack of Vegan Cheese
One option is that Pizza Hut will do no-cheese meals. Admittedly, that’s not ideal, and it does leave things a bit on the bland side. It would certainly help if they spent time bringing vegan cheese into each location and to even having that as some sort of an option.
Also, some countries do have vegan cheese as an option, and that makes things even more insane. It does make you wonder why they do not then make it a global thing.
Of course, if ordering for delivery then you could end up adding your own vegan cheese when you get the pizza home and then throw it in the oven for a few minutes.
While this does not represent the best option, it does mean you can enjoy your pizza without having to give up on the cheese aspect.
The Beyond Meat Option
For a short period of time, Pizza Hut did actually offer something they referred to as their ‘beyond meat’ option. That did mean they could provide some pizzas with a non-meat alternative.
However, they, unfortunately, stopped providing this as an option. Whether or not they will ever bring it back remains unknown, but it’s certainly disappointing that the company decided to remove this from their menu after only a limited trial run.
The Crusts
So Pizza Hut will remove the cheese to make sure the pizza is vegan, but what about their crusts?
Well, not every crust is vegan, but it’s easy to spot which ones fail to meet the mark. Basically, you just need to avoid the stuffed crusts since they do include cheese.
Apart from those options, you have nothing to worry about from a vegan perspective.
The Sauce
The sauce that appears on Pizza Hut pizzas also passes as vegan. This makes such a huge difference as the sauce they use on their pizzas has a real depth of flavor to it.
There’s no doubt that the sauce makes a huge difference when you need to avoid cheese. Also, feel free to ask them to throw on some extra sauce if you like. They generally go big on adding more, so if you really do love the flavor, then this could help.
However, when talking about the sauce, we only mean the sauce put on the pizza. Their dipping sauces do not come with the same guarantee.
Anything Else Vegan?
You do have several other options available to you if you want something vegan from Pizza Hut. One option is to go ahead and design your own pizza.
Pizza Hut does have a wide range of toppings you can add to your own pizza, so creating your own makes sense. The fact you can choose almost any crust makes life easier.
So consider choosing a crust, add on loads of sauce, and then go crazy with the veggie toppings. Just remember to stress you don’t want cheese on your pizza. Also, add in some of those breadsticks as a side.
But that’s not all.
You can also choose their fries. They don’t use any animal products in the cooking of their fries, so you have nothing to worry about there.
However, we need to point out a couple of areas where you could easily slip up. After all, that’s not something we want to happen.
Problem Areas
Generally, it’s easy to determine which items could prove suitable for vegans and which products fail to make the mark. However, a couple of problem areas exist.
Look at the dipping sauces as the perfect example. Here, you need to stick to the buffalo dipping sauce because the barbecue sauce contains honey in the list of ingredients.
You can see how some people would just presume a dipping sauce would pose no problems, but that’s not the case.
Also, this is not the only problem area.
Take their cinnamon sticks as another example. Now, while you have nothing to worry about with the actual cinnamon stick, the same cannot go for the icing dipping cup.
Instead, you must tell them not to give you the icing dipping cup. The problem is it contains sweetened condensed milk, so this means it is not vegan.
This does also mean that you must avoid most of the desserts. You may find some locations that have a vegan cheesecake, but that’s not always possible.
Overall Conclusion
So if you wish to stick to vegan options, then Pizza Hut breadsticks can work for you. However, you must stress when ordering that the parmesan seasoning should not be added. Remember that they will add this automatically, and we would hate you to feel disappointed.
But Pizza Hut does not only have these breadsticks as an option. Other vegan options appear on their menu, but you must spend time going through the list to ensure nothing untoward sneaks into the ingredients list.
It’s just sad that Pizza Hut restricts itself when it comes to vegan options in certain locations. Not having vegan cheese in different places does not make any sense, and it’s certainly something that the company should look at changing.
But if you have the willingness to spend time checking out those small details, then you will find things available to you at Pizza Hut. However, don’t act surprised if you discover that things do not work out quite as you hoped, especially in the cheese department.
