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Quick and Easy Pizza Sauce

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Quick Pizza Sauce

Ironically, the same day Joseph and I went to the store to stock up on lots of garlic and olive oil so that we could start making our own garlic olive oil for our pizza instead of buying it, the store was out of the fresh tomato sauce we usually buy for pizza. Why not make that too, I figured?

garlic cloves

Of course I’ve known all along that we could make our own sauce, and we have done this occasionally, but we often make pizza on Friday nights and after a long week, yes, I’ll admit it, we cut some corners and tend to just rely on store-bought sauce. The small Italian store near my office makes some great marinara sauce and it’s pretty cheap. So pure laziness wins out.

Sautéing Garlic

But when they didn’t have it, I pulled out my smart phone and went to my number one source for recipe basics: Cook’s Illustrated. And boy, did they deliver. This sauce is so quick and easy to make that we can’t even rationalize buying sauce from the store anymore. You don’t even have to cook it if you don’t have time!

Quick Pizza Sauce

I was completely sold before we even made it and told Joseph all about my plan to store smaller containers of the pizza sauce in the freezer so we would always have sauce ready for pizza night. Being the grounded individual that he is, he recommended that we try the sauce before committing to making gallons of it and swearing off the store-bought stuff.

Quick Pizza Sauces

One bite of our pizza that night, and he was ready to swear off the store-bought stuff. It’s tasty, it’s super easy, and it’s cheaper than buying pre-made sauce. Not only that, but you probably have all of these ingredients in your pantry right now. What more can you ask for? Now I just need to load up on small freezer containers so I can pack the freezer with sauce….

Quick Pizza Sauce


Quick and Easy Pizza Sauce

Adapted from Cook's Illustrated

Don't have time to cook the sauce? Just mix all the ingredients together and let them stand while you work on the pizza dough. If you won't be cooking the sauce, you may want to drain some of the liquid from the can of tomatoes if there's a lot of juice in there.

Ingredients

  • 2 large cloves garlic, minced
  • 2 tablespoons olive oil
  • 1 (28-ounce) can crushed tomatoes or tomatoes packed in puree, chopped coarse
  • Salt and ground black pepper

Directions

  1. Heat the garlic with oil in a saucepan over medium heat. When the garlic starts to sizzle, add the tomatoes. Simmer, uncovered, until the sauce is thick enough to mound on spoon, about 15 minutes. Season to taste with salt and pepper.