My Homemade Tomato Sauce Recipe

First, find some good quality fresh tomatoes. Homegrown tomatoes are always amazing, but store bought will still make a great pizza sauce. I often buy a carton of sauce tomatoes, and make enough pizza and pasta sauce for weeks.

Simmered tomatoes, ready to be pulped

Bring a large pan half full of water to the boil, and carefully add as many tomatoes as will fit. Allow the pan to return to the boil. Watch the tomatoes, and as soon as the skin starts to loosen and crack remove them from the pan. We are just aiming to gently cook the tomatoes and soften the skin. Repeat this until all of your tomatoes are cooked.

Pass the tomatoes through a tomato press or a mouli (food mill) with the smallest holed disc. The aim here is to pulp the tomatoes while removing as many of the skins and seeds as possible. You can also press the tomatoes through a sieve, but it is hard slog to do a big batch that way.

If you don’t have access to a food mill or tomato press, just peel the skins and process the tomatoes in a food processor.

Separating the tomato pulp from the juice

At this point, you will have  a large quantity of runny tomato passata. Taste and smell it – you should notice a delicious fragrance that is missing from commercial sauces! The sauce is too runny to use on a pizza without turning the base into a soggy mess, so we need to remove the moisture. I have tried simmering the sauce down, but found that the tomato overcooked and lost a lot of its subtle flavor. The better method is to gently pour your tomato pulp into a large sieve, set over a bowl. Leave it to sit for a minute and you should notice that the tomato flesh stays in the sieve, while a clear juice drains into the bowl.

Rather than discarding this juice, here’s my trick for adding an amazing kick to your pizza sauce. Take the juice, and simmer it over low heat. Unlike the pulpy part of the tomato that we sieved out, long cooking doesn’t seem to affect the flavour of the juice at all. Simmer gently until most of the liquid has evaporated – watch carefully or it will burn.

Once you have reduced the juice as much as possible, stir it back into the tomato pulp. You will end up with a pizza sauce that has the best of both worlds – thick enough to use on even a thin pizza base, and with an acidic kick from the reduced juice together with the great smell of fresh tomato from the pulp. Give it a try!

Ingredients

• 400g Canned whole tomatoes
• 1 tbsp Tomato concentrate (puree)
• 1 tsp Fresh or dried Oregano
• 1 tsp Lemon juice or Balsamic vinegar
• Salt and pepper to taste

1. Tip the can of tomatoes into a strainer, reserving the tomatoes. You can also reserve a little of the juice from the can if you prefer a less thick sauce, but a thicker sauce makes the base less soggy.
2. Remove just the tips of the tomatoes where the stalks were attached, and discard. These can make the sauce a little lumpy.
3. Crush the tomatoes. You can use a blender or food processor for this but squishing the tomatoes in your clenched fist works well, makes less dishes, and is fun!
4. Add all other ingredients to the crushed tomato mixture in a bowl and stir through. The sauce is now ready to use!