A Tale of 2 Pizza Sauces: Act 1
Since I started growing my own tomatoes in my raised bed garden, it has been a long time since I have bought a jarred or canned pizza sauce. I can usually freeze enough red sauce to last me until next year’s harvest. I find the flavor of home-made pizza sauce with my own tomatoes from my garden to be fuller bodied than traditional or jarred sauces. Lucious Roma or San Marzano tomatoes lend to a great sauce that can be used on a Margherita, sausage, pepperoni, or supreme pizzas that I make from scratch including homemade pizza dough. I have developed 2 recipes that work well for me. One is a quick pizza sauce that uses tomatoes and tomato paste. The other is a slow simmer sauce that takes time on the stove top to reduce into a pizza sauce consistency. I get more sauce with the quick recipe as it does not reduce the moisture out of the tomatoes like the stove top method. It also makes less of a mess as you don’t have spattering pizza sauce going over the stovetop when you open the lid to stir when using the stovetop method.
Best tomatoes for pizza sauce: Roma or San Marzano tomatoes are the best. They have less moisture content and make for a thicker sauce.
Oregano: Most spices are quite expensive, so I grow my own oregano to use in my sauce and my husband loves to sprinkle it on top of our pizzas. Last year I had a little 6-inch pot on my deck with my oregano plant in it, but it didn’t really produce as much oregano as I would have liked. In the fall when I was done harvesting as much as I could from the oregano plant, I decided to transplant it into my landscape between my sedum and hardy ice plants. He is one happy oregano plant; I have harvested from it multiple times and do nothing to it. It gets rainwater from the heavens and nothing else.
The link to the Quick Pizza Sauce Recipe is: A Tale of Two Pizza Sauces: Act 2 – Traveling Garden Lady
Ingredients
- 10 Roma or San Marzano Tomatoes (Cut into quarters)
- 1 tablespoon Minced Garlic (about 4 cloves)
- 2 tablespoon olive oil
- 1 teaspoon dried oregano
- 1 teaspoon sugar
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1/2 teaspoon Dried Basil
- 1/4 teaspoon black pepper
- 1/4 teaspoon Red Chili Flakes (more if you like a spicier sauce)
- For: 1 serving (1/4 cup)
- Cooking: 1 h 30 min
- Ready in: 2 h 30 min
Instructions
- Take the rinsed tomato quarters and put them into a stand blender and puree to a liquid/puree consistency.
- Put olive oil in pot or Dutch oven and heat on medium heat until warm then add garlic and stir for 1-2 minutes until aromatic. Then stir in the red chili flakes.
- Add the tomato puree and stir, set heat to medium low and allow sauce to thicken for 15-20 minutes. Put lid on pot during this process as the sauce tends to splatter while it is reducing. Stir occasionally to prevent burning and sticking tomatoes to bottom of pot.
- After 20 minutes add salt, sugar, oregano, basil and black pepper. Stir in.
- Cook on medium low for another 20-30 minutes until sauce reduces to desired sauce consistency. Allow sauce to cool before storing.
- Pizza sauce keeps in refrigerator for 2 weeks and freezes for up to 8-12 months in freezer containers.
- Per serving
- Energy: 70 kcal / 293 kJ
- Fat: 7 g
- Protein: 0 g
- Carbs: 4 g
