This flavorful homemade pizza sauce is made with fresh tomatoes, onion, garlic, and oregano, and it’s completely free of any added sugar. You can use this light and garlicky sauce to make your own homemade pizza or try it with pasta (it’s delicious).
Related: We love this easy homemade pizza dough!
Making Homemade Pizza Sauce
Our family has two pizza sauce recipes that we turn to. The first is a Neapolitan-style sauce that requires no cooking and is used for making our favorite margherita pizza. The second recipe is a homemade pizza sauce that cooks fresh tomatoes, onions, and garlic until they become soft. We prefer the cooked pizza sauce for American-style pizzas like cheese pizza or pepperoni pizza.
This pizza sauce recipe is the cooked version. Let me walk you through how easy it is! While this is a pizza sauce, it’s fantastic tossed with pasta or gnocchi (especially with gnocchi).
I love how this sauce starts with fresh tomatoes, which keeps it light on its feet. I find sauces made with tomato paste too rich and tomato-y. Also, there’s no sugar to be found. This sauce is light, garlicky, and perfect for my favorite pizza toppings like mozzarella cheese, onions, veggies, pepperoni, and sausage. I love it. We use this sauce to make our ultimate cheese pizza!
To make the pizza sauce: Combine fresh tomatoes with olive oil, garlic, onion, pepper, oregano, and salt in a covered saucepan and simmer for 30 minutes.
Uncover the pot and continue to simmer for another 30 minutes. During this time, the sauce will concentrate its flavor and become incredibly flavorful.
When the sauce is done cooking, blend until your desired consistency.
I have successfully used cherry, vine-ripened, heirloom, and Roma tomatoes for this sauce with excellent results. Canned tomatoes should also work, if that is all that you have. We recommend using canned whole peeled tomatoes.
To make pizza, stretch your pizza dough and spoon on your sauce. I keep the sauce application pretty light. You should be able to see through the sauce. Here’s our favorite pizza dough recipe!
Seriously Good Pizza Sauce
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PREP
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COOK
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TOTAL
This flavorful homemade pizza sauce is made with fresh tomatoes, onion, garlic, and oregano, and it’s completely free of any added sugar. You can use this light and garlicky sauce to make your own homemade pizza or try it with pasta (it’s delicious).
Makes 2 cups
You Will Need
4 tablespoons olive oil
3 cloves garlic, minced or finely grated
3/4 cup (100 grams) chopped onion
Pinch red pepper flakes or gochugaru
4 cups (760 grams) chopped fresh tomatoes, 5 to 6 medium
1 teaspoon dried oregano
4 twists black pepper
1/4 teaspoon fine sea salt, plus more to taste
Directions
1Over low heat, combine olive oil, garlic, onion, and pepper flakes in a medium saucepan. Cover the pot and cook for 5 minutes.
2Add the tomatoes, oregano, and black pepper. Simmer, covered, for 30 minutes.
3Uncover, and continue to simmer for another 30 minutes, stirring every once and a while.
4Season with salt — start with 1/4 teaspoon and add from there. Use an immersion blender or stand blender to puree the sauce.
Adam and Joanne’s Tips
- Canned tomatoes: We love fresh tomatoes for this sauce and have even found that the more lackluster winter tomatoes in stores work perfectly well for this pizza sauce. That said, you can use canned tomatoes. We recommend using drained whole peeled tomatoes.
- Nutrition facts: The nutrition facts provided below are estimates. We have used the USDA database to calculate approximate values.
If you make this recipe, snap a photo and hashtag it #inspiredtaste — We love to see your creations on Instagram and Facebook! Find us: @inspiredtaste
Nutrition Per Serving
Serving Size
1/4 cup
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Calories
43
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Total Fat
3.6g
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Saturated Fat
0.5g
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Cholesterol
0mg
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Sodium
38.8mg
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Carbohydrate
2.8g
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Dietary Fiber
0.8g
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Total Sugars
1.3g
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Protein
0.5g
