Making pizza sauce at home is a fantastic idea. We can have the canned one easily but when you make something with your own hands and give your time to a dish it tastes much better than any other dish purchased from the market. It not only comes in use for making pizza but it can also become a nice gravy for your pasta. It has numerous uses. Spread it over a piece of bread for lunch or use it with sandwiches or make zingy gravy for Indian dishes. You can keep this sauce for 3 weeks in the refrigerator to explore its usefulness. It is one of my favorite sauces as it comes in handy for many things. It just makes every dish better.
Pizza sauce or just tomato sauce?
It is definitely not just a tomato sauce. A true pizza sauce has a thick consistency with very distinctive flavors of oregano, basil, and olive oil. A simple tomato sauce is just tomatoes and is a bit thin in its consistency. You don’t want the sauce to run off your dough so we use it instead of tomato sauce. Moreover, it tastes better too. Then there is marinara sauce. Even though they look somehow the same, they taste a bit different from each other. Marinara sauce sautes the tomatoes with garlic and onion, which makes it thin.
The perfect pizza sauce has to be thick, period! Just imagine having a really thin consistency of a sauce, dripping all over the plate..uhh! NO! Making sauce for pizza at home is so satisfying. You can choose the consistency of your pizza sauce. Keep it a bit chunkier or smoother. Some people love tomatoes so they want to taste it in their sauce and some like to see the smooth paste without any chunks. We all have different ways to have sauce but one way to eat with it is Pizza!
So, let’s get started with the recipe.
Pizza Sauce Recipe
Ingredients
- 6.5 kg ripe tomatoes
- ¾ teaspoon salt
- 2 tablespoon olive oil
- 1 clove garlic (minced)
- ½ tablespoon sugar
- 1 teaspoon dried basil
- ½ teaspoon dried oregano
- 10-15 Freshly cracked black pepper
- 1 pinch crushed red pepper(optional)
Instructions
Step 1: Take a large bowl and fill it with water. Then, take all ripe tomatoes and slice a shallow ‘X’ under each tomato and drop them in a bowl of water. Start boiling them.
Step 2: Now fill a large bowl with ice and water and keep it aside. Boil them until you see the skin of the tomatoes is splitting from them.
Step 3: After they have boiled properly, take out all the tomatoes with the help of a slotted spoon. Then carefully transfer all the tomatoes to the ice bowl that we prepared earlier. Then peel the tomatoes by rubbing them with your hands in the iced water. You will notice that the skin is coming off easily.
Note: You don’t have to dry the tomatoes.
Step 4: Now put the peeled tomatoes in a food processor for blending. You can blend it for just a few seconds for chunkier sauce or make a smooth paste by processing more. Alternatively, you can chop them by hand or skip this step let them break while cooking.
Note: Blending the tomatoes depends on how chunky or smooth you need the sauce.
Step 5: Now take a sauce pot and start the stove. Put the pot on it and add olive oil and garlic to it. Cook this at medium heat for 2-3 minutes or until the garlic gets fragrant and soft.
Step 6: Now add the processed tomato sauce to the pot. Mix it well. Initially add salt, oregano, cracked black pepper, basil, sugar, and a pinch of red pepper. Mix it well for 1-2 minutes. Keep on stirring occasionally until the sauce comes to a good consistency.
Step 7: Cover the pot and reduce the heat to low. Let it cook for at least 15 minutes. Keep on checking the sauce. When you like the consistency of the sauce, turn off the flame. Let it cool down in a pot for a few minutes. After that transfer it to an airtight container and enjoy the homemade pizza sauce that will give you an amazing flavor on your pizza.
Some helpful tips:
- Make sure to use ripe tomatoes for that rich red color and tangy taste of pizza sauce.
- Do not blend the tomatoes without boiling them. Boiling is an important step, do not skip it.
- If you like your sauce chunky, do not blend it at all. Just chop the tomatoes roughly before adding them to the saucepan.
You can improvise the recipe further according to your taste and preference. I cannot recommend this recipe enough. It is simple, tasty, and authentic. Do give this a try and let me know how you liked it!
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