Boring Life Story
Not bothered about the life story behind this pizza sauce recipe? Click here to go straight to the recipe.
At the start of lockdown in 2020, my sister and I stopped getting takeaways (out of an abundance of extremely short-lived caution). It didn’t take long for me to start getting pizza withdrawals. Ignoring the fact that I should be concerned about having a genuine addiction to pizza, I set about searching the internet for the perfect pizza recipe. I tried a number of different recipes and variations, until I finally settled on a few holy grails. The following recipe is my go-to for pizza sauce. It takes less than an hour in total to make, and lasts for 5-6 days in the fridge (with the taste getting more delicious the longer you leave it in the fridge).
As well as using on pizza, you can also mix this with heavy cream and vodka to make a tasty “alla vodka” sauce for your pastas.
Link to the Original Recipe
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zojdhaol9KM
Tweaks I made
- I don’t have a pizza oven, so I used a regular fan-assisted oven at 180°c. This means that the tomatoes might not char (like in the original recipe video), but they should still cook enough for the flavour to come through.
- The original recipe uses a food mill (suggested in the original recipe). Being too cheap to buy one, I ended up MacGuyvering my own equivalent using a Roti Press and Colander
- The recipe in the video says to use a “Number 10 Mutti can”. I couldn’t find that size, so I substituted with 5 x 400g tins of Mutti Peeled tomatoes instead
- Because I was using less tomato, I had to halve some of the ingredients, but leave others the same
My Version of the recipe
Ingredients
Ingredient | Amount (metric) | Amount (imperial) |
Peeled Tomatoes | 5 x 400g tin | 5 x 14oz can |
Olive Oil | 55g | ½ cup |
Sea Salt | 14g | 1 tbsp |
Black Pepper | 2 grams / to taste | 1 pinch / to taste |
Dry Oregano | 2 grams / to taste | 1 pinch / to taste |
Basil Leaves | 2 | 2 |
Garlic cloves (Large) | 2 | 2 |
Prep (10 minutes)
- Separate the tomatoes from the juices (keep both)
- Cut each tomato in half, length-ways
- Pre-heat oven to 180°c
Method (45 minutes)
- On a sheet pan / baking tray, place the tomatoes and then put them in the oven
- After 10-15 minutes, take them out (the tomatoes should be hot, and some of them should be smoking slightly)
- Pass the tomatoes through a food mill (or equivalent home-made contraption) into the container where you will store your sauce
- Pass the tomato juices through the food mill / home-made contraption to help pass some of the remaining tomato pieces through
- Scrape the tomato sauce/pulp from the under-side of the mill into your sauce container.
- Add the olive oil to your sauce container
- Next, add the Sea Salt
- Add the black pepper
- Add the oregano
- Stir all the ingredients together
- Crush the basil leaves in the palm of your hand, then tear each leaf into 2-3 pieces
- Add the pieces to the sauce and stir (putting large pieces of basil in the sauce, as opposed to dicing the basil, will release the essential oils into the sauce without over-powering it with a heavy basil taste)
- Smash the garlic against a worktop using the palm of your hand. The garlic cloves It should be broken, but still in one or two pieces (as with the basil, leaving these whole in the sauce will release the garlic oils into the sauce slowly without over-powering it)
- Add the garlic into the sauce and mix everything together
1 Comment
avid follower · February 1, 2022 at 1:45 pm
Excellent post, loved the sauce. I added extra garlics so yummy. can you do one on chai please?