If you grow your own tomatoes, there comes a point in late summer when you have more than you know what to do with. You’ve eaten them in salads, roasted them, made soup, chutney – and still they keep coming. This homemade fresh tomato pizza sauce is great to use up a glut. It takes just 25 minutes, makes enough for four pizzas, keeps in the fridge for two weeks, or in the freezer for when you have a pizza craving. Once you’ve made your own, you won’t go back to a jar.
Who doesn’t love pizza?!
In our house, pizza night is a proper occasion. The Chief Tasting Office (aka my husband) built an outdoor stone pizza oven, and there is genuinely nothing better than gathering everyone around it, stretching out the sourdough, and loading up pizzas with everyone’s favourite topping. This sauce is where it all starts.
Why fresh tomatoes make the best pizza sauce
There’s a time and a place for tinned tomatoes, but when your garden is overflowing with ripe, sun-warmed tomatoes in August and September, this is where they belong. Fresh tomatoes blended and cooked down into a sauce have a brightness and natural sweetness that’s very hard to replicate from a tin. Combined with loads of garlic, some chilli flakes, dried oregano, and basil, the result is a sauce that’s deeply flavourful and unmistakably homemade.
The key is using the ripest tomatoes you have. Overripe ones that are starting to wrinkle and wouldn’t look great in a salad are absolutely perfect here – they’re sweeter and more flavourful, and they blitz down beautifully. Don’t waste them. Talking of waste, with this recipe we’re blending everything up – seeds, skin, the works – which saves the work of peeling and deseeding and uses all the fruit.
Make enough sauce to load your freezer for when the tomatoes have finished their season. But if you do run out, then this sauce is OK to make with tinned tomatoes (make sure they are the best quality) – it’ll still be better than jarred!
Other tomato recipes
If your garden is still producing more tomatoes than you can eat, here are a few more ideas from the Eat Your Greens kitchen:
- Tomato and courgette risotto
- “Swicy” tomato and chilli jam
- Tomato tart with mustard shallots
- Homemade tomato ketchup
Absolutely – in fact, a mix of whatever is ripening in the garden at the same time makes a really interesting sauce. Different varieties bring different levels of sweetness and acidity, and they all work beautifully together once blended and cooked down.
No. That’s the beauty of this recipe. Blending the raw tomatoes before cooking takes care of the skins completely. Just remove any hard cores and roughly chop them before they go into the blender.
You can, but I’d recommend allowing it to cool completely first. A warm sauce on uncooked dough can make the base go soggy before it gets the chance to cook. Let it cool, then spread it thinly and evenly.
I would say it’s always less than you think! A thin, even layer is what you’re after – roughly 4 tablespoons per pizza. Too much sauce is one of the most common reasons for a soggy base, so try not to overload the base and spread it right to the edges.
Whilst this is primarily a tomato sauce for pizza, it’s definitely versatile and you can of course stir it through pasta or roasted vegetables.
Equipment
- large heavy-based pan with lid
Ingredients
- 1 kg ripe tomatoes chopped
- 3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
- 4 garlic cloves finely chopped or grated
- 1 tsp chilli flakes
- 1 tsp sea salt
- 1 tsp caster sugar
- 1 tsp dried oregano
- 1 tsp dried basil
- 1 tsp ground black pepper
- 5 g fresh basil leaves optional
Instructions
- Roughly dice the fresh tomatoes, removing any hard cores, place them in a blender and puree until smooth and there are no longer and visible strips of skin.
- Put the olive oil in a large, heavy-based pan over a medium-high heat. Add the garlic and fry for 2 minutes, stirring constantly to stop it from burning. Stir in the teaspoon of chilli flakes.
- Pour in the blended tomatoes and stir. Cover, turn the heat to medium, and cook at a low bubbling simmer for 15 minutes – stirring every now and then.
- Add in the salt, sugar, dried oregano and basil, as well as the freshly ground black pepper. Mix this into the tomatoes and cook uncovered for another 5 minutes until thickened.
- If using, tear up the fresh basil leaves and stir them into the sauce.
- Turn off the heat, taste for seasoning, and allow to cool.
- Stored in a tightly sealed glass jar in the fridge, the pizza sauce will last for up to 2 weeks. Or seal it well and pop it in the freezer.
Notes
- You can of course omit the chilli flakes if you’re making this for young children, or alternatively ‘turn-up’ the heat and add more if that is your preference.
- I like to stir in some fresh torn up basil at the end, but this is optional.