Homemade Pizza Sauce: Authentic Italian Recipe

Anyone who knows how to make pizza sauce will agree that it is a generally easy task and even with the recommended long simmer period, you can still accomplish your authentic Italian pizza sauce recipe in less than an hour. It does not matter whether it is homemade or store-bought, with the best sauce, every pizza is sure to taste exceptionally good. However, for those who are eager to learn how to make authentic Italian pizza sauce, the below sumptuous recipe for pizza sauce comes highly recommended and we promise it will give your pizza a whole new taste. All you need do is to get all the required ingredients ready, and you are good to go.

Ingredients:

For preparing your pizza sauce from scratch, you only need nine major ingredients, they include:

• Tomatoes: This can either be fresh or canned; if it is canned, then the quantity to take is one 28 ounces canned tomato.
• Olive oil: Be sure to go for the best quality, 2 tbsps will suffice.
• Onions: If grated, ¼ cup is ok, however for the chunkier texture, you can decide to finely dice or chop the onions.
• Oregano: ¾ tsp (the dried one is better).
• Basil: 1 tsp for the dried ones, but you can still go for the fresh leaves.
• Red pepper flakes: ¼ to ½ but this is heavily dependent on heat preferences.
• Garlic – 3 cloves either minced or grated.
• Sugar: 2 tsp (granulated).
• Salt: 1 tsp.

Pizza Sauce Preparation

For the first step, you should ensure that the oil you are using is adequately flavored. If it is olive oil that you wish to use, then, it should be the very best because how good, or bad the oil is will affect the taste of the sauce – no doubt, a good quality oil will give it a pleasant taste, but the reverse is the case with bad oil. The recommendations for spices are fresh basil, which is best combined with fresh oregano, grated onions as well as pepper flakes. If you are the type that loves to have a bit more texture in your sauce, you can go ahead and give those onions a fine chop and allow up to three to four minutes for all the ingredients to brown in the sauce.

Important to note that the garlic is supposed to be added much later, that is the reason we did not include it in the first set of spices. If you make the mistake of throwing in the garlic with the initial set of spices, you will only end up with charred garlic, which will not do any good for the sauce. The maximum length of time you can allow for the garlic on fire is an additional one minute.

Now for the Tomato Sauce

It is not only the olive oil that should be carefully selected but the right tomatoes also affect the quality of your pizza sauce. Although many of us, will no doubt, opt for fresh tomatoes, but recommendations are that you only go for the fresh ones when tomatoes are in season. When out of season, canned tomatoes are a much better option. The reason is that canned tomatoes are more flavorful than fresh ones, and there are still a select few which are a whole lot better than others.

Furthermore, when it comes to the slow simmer that a pizza sauce is supposed to be put through, canned tomatoes are just perfect, especially when whole and peeled. You only need to turn the content into a large bowl and break them into smaller pieces with your fingers. An immersion stick blender will also come in handy here; just dig it here and there until some of the whole tomatoes are broken down. It would be a mistake to use a blender as it would totally mush the tomatoes.

When in the pot, the slow simmer starts immediately; the tomatoes go into the saucepan alongside sugar and salt. Allow half an hour to simmer over the heat. Try to marry all the other ingredients if you want to really develop the tomato flavor. After thirty minutes, taste the simmering sauce and add more seasoning if it is not yet to your liking. To improve the flavor, an extra fifteen minutes of cooking will do the trick. However, it’s vital to understand that the sauce tends to reduce in quantity as you increase the cooking time. When you allow it to stay too long on the fire, you will end up with less than your targeted quantity.

For your Italian pizza sauce, ten minutes of preparation time with thirty-five minutes cooking time is just perfect. You can even decide to prepare a double batch and save half of it in the fridge to be used on a later date. However, a single batch of sauce will be just enough to cover a couple of pizzas generously.

As for storing, it is actually possible to freeze already prepared pizza sauce for all of three months, so you can enjoy homemade pizza in less than half an hour on a hectic weeknight complete with authentic ingredients and no mystery stuff.

Pizza Sauce Uses

Yes, it is called pizza sauce, but you can still use it for other purposes apart from enjoying those delicious pizzas. The super-rich thick and red sauce can be perfectly combined with eggplant, meatballs, as well as chicken parmesan. And that is not all; the yummy sauce is equally good for dipping your breadsticks – it is an easy, quick, all-purpose red sauce. In fact, the list of what you can use your pizza source for is endless; you can even throw in a bit more basil, and use it in baking some eggs in little ramekins. This is just so perfect, especially when there is some leftover sauce.

Conclusion

Making homemade Italian pizza sauce is not a difficult task, and needn’t consume much of your time. There is a saying that this sauce needs to be slow-simmered for an unending length of time, but it is not something that everyone will be able to accomplish.

Source:

1. Authentic Italian Tomato Sauce Recipe – NonnaBox