The ingredients you need for this Papa John’s garlic sauce copycat recipe are probably items you already have on hand — unsalted butter, salt, garlic powder, and onion powder. Seriously, you don’t need anything else. Carli says she prefers using unsalted butter to the salted version in everything she cooks, as this enables her to control the salt content (both the flavor and the sodium) in her meals. That said, if you don’t have unsalted butter on hand, salted will do just fine.
Also, if you prefer to use fresh garlic and onion (assuming you’ve minced them well), Carli says that you can, but you’re really just making life harder on yourself. The powdered versions easily blend into the sauce, while minced garlic and onion will leave chunks in the finished version. You can always remove the chunks, but ultimately, the flavor won’t be that different, and the whole recipe will take longer to make.
