Homemade Pizza Sauce

This Pizza Sauce is equal parts phenomenal and stupendous. It’s classy, jam packed with flavor, and easy to make… and it’s so good that it will help you channel your inner Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle! Pizza Power, dudes!

INGREDIENTS (Makes approximately 6 cups of sauce):
1 to 2 tablespoons Olive Oil
3 Cloves Garlic
1 medium White Onion
1/2 cup White Wine (or Chicken Broth)
Three 15-ounce cans Crushed Tomatoes
Salt and Pepper, to taste
Pinch of Sugar
1 teaspoon Dried Oregano
8 to 10 fresh Basil Leaves

INSTRUCTIONS:
Start by mincing three cloves of garlic, and finely chopping some white onion. I chopped approximately 1/2 a cup of firmly packed onion. You can use more, or less, depending on personal preference.

Add approximately 2 tablespoons of olive oil into a pan over medium-high heat.

Toss the minced garlic and chopped white onion into the pan with the olive oil.

Cook the garlic and onions for 4 to 5 minutes. Stirring often, until the onion is soft and translucent.

Now, it’s time to add the White Wine, so I’m going to offer you some Wine Wisdom: I’m cooking on a glass stove top… But be very, VERY careful if you are cooking on a metal burner or over an open flame; sometimes the wine and open flame can ignite. So turn the burner off, pour in the wine, and then turn the burner back on. Just to be on the safe side…

Also, if you don’t want to use Wine you can substitute Chicken Broth for this step, but I love the taste that Pinot Grigio gives the sauce, Oh So Much! So, add 1/2 a cup of White Wine (or chicken broth) to the garlic / onion mixture.

Using a wood spoon stir the wine / garlic / onion mixture around, deglazing the bottom of the pan. Cook until the liquid reduces by half, approximately 4 minutes. Then add all three cans of Crushed Tomatoes.

Stir to combine…

… then add some Salt and Pepper, to taste.

Followed by a generous pinch of sugar. The sugar will help level out the acidity in the crushed tomatoes, plus I really love the subtle sweetness the sugar adds to the sauce.

Add 1 teaspoon of Dried Oregano… and admire my Spider-Man fingernail!

Now, it’s time to chop some Basil. Gordon Ramsay says that “the secret is to chop them, not bruise them.” When people “go mad” chopping herbs they tend to loose a lot of the flavor into the cutting board, and we absolutely don’t want that. Especially with THIS beautiful Basil that I got from my garden!

Place the basil leaves in a stack, with the biggest ones on the outside of the stack, then roll them up; Ramsay compares it to rolling a cigar. Classy, right? Be nice and gentle, don’t bruise them! “This is a soft herb, so treat it with respect!”, Ramsay says!

Begin at the tip of the basil roll, and start gently cutting up-and-down.

Simple enough, right?

Add the basil to the sauce pot.

And give the sauce a good ole’ stir. Then reduce the heat to low, and let the sauce simmer for 30 minutes.

*30 minutes later*

Glorious, isn’t it?

On this particular night I put a majority of the sauce in a mason jar, but kept out approximately 2 cups so I could make a Brick Oven Pizza.

Using the sauce is SUPER SIMPLE! Put a scoop of sauce on your pizza crust…

Also, if you want the step-by-step recipe for this Awesome Pizza Crust click HERE.

… and spread the sauce around! Seriously, could it get more simple than that?

And this is how my Brick Oven Pizza turned out! For the step-by-step recipe for this particular pizza click HERE.

This sauce is super tasty, and amazingly versatile. You can use it for Steakhouse Pizza (a Pioneer Woman recipe)…

Try it with Pioneer Woman Cowboy Calzones! It’s even an AWESOME dipping sauce…

It’s also great on Breakfast Pizza!

This recipe is “Part 2” of a Three Part PIZZA SAGA, or should I say PIZZA TRIFECTA?
Part 1: Pioneer Woman Pizza Crust
Part 2: Homemade Pizza Sauce
Part 3: Baking Pizza in a Big Green Egg or Conventional Oven

Cook Long and Prosper.

Sincerely, the Uncustomary Housewife