An easy recipe for an aromatic and delicious home-made pizza sauce with fresh tomatoes and other easy ingredients
What’s the most important thing for good pizza?
Dough?
Toppings?
Cheese?
Nope, none of this. It’s actually the pizza sauce. A lot has been said and spoken about the toppings that make a pizza, but honestly that’s a very grey area with so many different preferences. And while cheese may seem to be very important, I’ve had some really good pizza with little to no cheese and the one thing that still made it work well was – the pizza sauce.
Yes, it’s a highly underrated component of pizza but I feel like good pizza sauce can elevate your experience by so much whereas an average pizza sauce is well, an average pizza itself!
For many years, pizza sauce to us meant ketchup and some hot sauce mixed together to make a very Indian-jugaad style pizza at home. When I moved to the US, I was amazed by the sheer variety of packaged pizza sauces available in the supermarkets. And I tried quite a few.
However, with time and wisdom, the knowledge that all of these were packed with preservatives that we didn’t need to consume pushed me to explore a home made sauce.
My earliest recipe was simpler than the existing one but would probably identify more as a sophisticated tomato purée than a pizza sauce really.
With more tweaks and trials, I now have what I believe to be the best no-frills pizza sauce.
No frills because this pizza sauce requires only –
– tomatoes
– onion
– garlic
– fresh basil
– salt, pepper and chili powder
– dried oregano and chili flakes
It also has a pinch of sugar to balance the tomatoes but if you’re really finicky, you could skip that too.
Other uses
This sauce is actually great to use in many ways beyond pizza. I have used it in so many ways including
– as a pasta sauce
– on bruschetta
– as a filling for breads
– in these yummy eggless pizza muffins
– on these yeast-free pizzas
Storage
This easy pizza sauce is basically a gift you can gift yourself in advance for days when cooking is just not your thing. It stores perfectly for atleast 2 months in the freezer – thaw and use as needed or for upto a week in the fridge.
With barely 20 minutes to make this from start to end, you really don’t have an excuse to buy ready-made, preservation-laden pizza sauces anymore. Try this out and send me your pictures on Instagram
Easy Pizza Sauce
Ingredients
- 5-6 Tomatoes
- 1 tbsp Olive Oil
- 1 Onion finely chopped
- 5-6 cloves Garlic minced
- 1 tsp Sugar
- 1 tsp Salt
- ½ tsp Red Chili Powder optional
- ½ tsp Black Pepper
- 1 tsp Oregano
- ½ tsp Chili Flakes
- 2 tbsp Basil Leaves chopped
Instructions
INSTRUCTIONS
- Make a cross (x) on the bottom of each tomato.
- Place the tomatoes in a large pan and fill enough water to fully submerge the tomatoes. Cover the pan and cook the tomatoes for 7-8 minutes.
- Drain the water and transfer the tomatoes to a bowl filled with ice water. Once cool, remove the peels of the tomatoes and roughly chop them.
- Transfer half of the chopped tomatoes to a processor/mixer and blitz till you have a puree. Set aside the puree and remaining chopped tomatoes.
- In a pan, add some oil, minced garlic and onions and sauté for 2-3 minutes. Add the prepared tomato puree, chopped tomatoes, chili powder, black pepper, chili flakes, oregano, sugar and salt. Cover and let it cook while stirring in between till all of the water evaporates and you have a chunky sauce.
- Switch off the flame and add chopped basil. You could also add more fresh herbs like thyme, parsley, cilantro etc if you like.
- Let cool then use over pizza dough or store in a clean glass jar.
