Making Pizza Sauce in a Hurry at Home

Someone sent me a new sourdough recipe to try for pizza crust so without even thinking, I made the crust before realizing we had no pizza sauce. Whomp whomp! But I remembered my own tomato sauce recipe with frozen tomatoes. I simply made an edit for a can of tomatoes and some dried spices instead. Turned out to be a fantastic sauce for our pizzas. Read on to see how to make quick pizza sauce at home for your family real quick.

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How long is “quick pizza sauce at home” exactly?

This recipe calls for very few and simple ingredients, a blender or my favorite: the immersion blender, and seriously, 15 minutes of your time. Most of that time is the prep. A few more minutes to heat up the sauce and that’s it!

Time is relative. Saying you don’t have the time is just means it’s not a priority to you. That’s okay too but I’m just trying to put in perspective that many of these “homemade” recipes don’t take a lot of time to accomplish.

What are the ingredients in quick pizza sauce?

• Can of tomatoes
• onion powder
• garlic powder
• salt and pepper
• a generous pinch of sugar
• basil
• oregano

Honestly, I didn’t measure a single ingredient but taste tested a few times and added until I got it like I wanted the quick pizza sauce to taste like. I do have a starting point of measurements for you, though. Then you’ll need to taste test and decide if it needs a little more of something.

Keep in mind this is a PIZZA SAUCE. It will be covered in cheese and possibly other toppings that’ll enhance the flavor.

How to make a pizza sauce when you’re in a hurry:

First, grab one can of tomatoes. Whether they were freshly canned from last summer’s garden or a tin can you snagged at the grocery store matters not. If freshly canned, a pint would work but a quart is fine too, you’ll just have extras and may need to play with the spice and herb additions more. For the sake of this QUICK pizza sauce, we’ll use a grocery can of tomatoes at 14.5 ounces. Empty tomatoes into a small sauce pan on your favorite stove’s eye. You know you have a favorite eye.

Next, add 1 teaspoon of garlic and onion powders each and a tablespoon of oregano and basil each. Then you’ll mix in our generous pinch of sugar (it kind of cuts the acidity of the tomatoes). I save the salt and peppering for last, after I blend the ingredients. I use air dried herbs from my garden when they are available so the blending process will crunch up the herbs.

Now grab your immersion blender or your regular blender. Blend up the tomato chunks as fine as you can. I prefer the immersion blender because I can blend while it’s still cooking and kill two birds with one stone. Using a regular blender means emptying the pot into the blender, blending, then putting the sauce back into the pot to cook.

Here’s where your test preferences for tomato sauce come on the scene. Grab a spoon or two (multiple tastings equals the need for more spoons when you’re feeding more than yourself, right??) and sample your sauce. If it needs something more, add it. If it still tastes “tomatoe-y” or acidic, add another pinch of sugar.

Pizza Sauce Recipe Note:

Of course the longer you allow the sauce to simmer, the more flavorful it’ll be as the herbs have time to release their oils and flavor into the sauce. However, if you’re in a pinch to make sauce like I was, you dump, blend, then use the sauce! My children had NO complaints about our homemade sourdough pizza! Just saying.

Minimal ingredients, maximum flavor

I’ll give it to you: a jar of marinara sauce at the grocery store is fairly affordable and a little quicker than this sauce is to make BUT…

If you live 15 minutes from your nearest grocery store and try to keep a can of diced tomatoes in your pantry just in case, then you’ve just saved yourself about an hour of your life. And maybe the stress of packing children up to take to the store with you. Let’s also make mention of the rarity it is to enter a grocery store and ONLY buy the one thing you went in there for.

Basically what I am saying is using this recipe saves you money too! In today’s world, we could all use a little money saving hack from time to time.

If you liked this recipe, you may also like these too:

Sourdough tortilla wraps are great for pizza crust!

Make your own brown sugar at home with only 2 ingredients and about 5 minutes of your day

Powdered sugar is WHAT???!! the hack that blew my mind!

Taco Seasoning with 4 ingredients, no fillers or MSG like in those grocery packets.

Preserving fresh tomatoes the easiest way my 95 years young Nana taught me!

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