Any variety of tomatoes works just fine for making pizza sauce, even your grocerystore brand. For the authentic Neapolitan pizza experience, however, pick up a can. Get Pizza Sauce Recipe from Food Network. Nutritional Analysis Per Serving Calories 39 calorie Total Fat 1 grams Saturated Fat. How to Make the Best Tomato Sauce From Fresh TomatoesVideo Serious Eats VideoLet me get something straight right off the bat here Im not sure theres such a thing as the best tomato sauce. Whoa, whoa, whoa, I can hear you saying already. I am not a strict purist when it comes to margherita, or margarita, pizza. I like the crust to be crispy, but still with a little chew. When tomatoes are in season. Making tomato sauce from fresh tomatoes only requires the right tools and a little bit of knowhow. Make tomato sauce from fresh tomatoes with help from a. This is a quick, simple marinara sauce that will only be good if your tomatoes are ripe If you have a food mill, you dont have to peel and seed the tomatoes you. Artichoke Pizza with Spinach, SunDried Tomatoes, White Sauce Low Carb, Glutenfree This healthy spinach artichoke pizza recipe with sundried tomatoes and white. Recipe for homemade pizza sauce. Lentil Salad Recipes. Its loaded with authentic ingredients basil, oregano, San Marzano tomatoes, and garlic. Easy to make and freezes well. Process How to Make pizza sauce from Fresh Tomatoes Step 1 Selecting the tomatoes. Its fun to go pick your own and you can obviously get better quality. First this guy has the nerve to claim he makes the best tomato sauce, and then, before he gets even two inches deep into his explanation of why its the best tomato sauce, hes already backpedaling. What gives Ill tell you what gives. I grew up in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn I currently work in Little Italy and I have spent a lot of time in Big Italy, so I know how much pride people have in their tomato sauce. I also know how many different ways there are to make it, and how many different ways there are to use it. What I will tell you is that Ive spent a lot of time researching, contemplating, and cooking tomato sauce using fresh summer tomatoes, and I have some observations Id like to share that, taken together, make for what I think is one damned fine tomato sauce. Is it the best I dont know, but I can say its the best Ive ever made, and Ive made my fair share. The Trouble With Fresh Tomato SaucePhotograph Vicky WasikFirst, I want to admit something Making sauce from fresh summer tomatoes has long been an insecurity of mine, despite years of cooking experience, including working as a sous chef in a Tuscan restaurant in New York and living and working on farms in Italy for extended periods, elbows deep in fresh picked tomatoes and the sauce we made from them. The reason why There are two primary goals when making fresh tomato sauce, and theyre at odds with each other. First, the sauce should taste like it was made from fresh tomatoes, which means it should have the bright, fruity aroma and flavor of uncooked or barely cooked fruit. If we dont have this, we might as well throw in the towel and stick with canned tomatoes 3. Second, the sauce should have a good, sauce like consistency and have deep, sweet notes, which means cooking off much of the tomatoes natural water content and caramelizing the fruits natural sugars. Otherwise, its going to be too thin and tart. The trouble is that retaining the tomatoes fresh flavor means minimal cooking, while getting rid of the excess water content and caramelizing the sugars means extended cooking. Everyone has a different solution to this dilemma. Some discard the watery seed jelly and cook only the tomato pulp, which I refuse to do because the seed jelly has way too much flavor to waste. Others settle for a minimally cooked sauce that heats for just about 2. Recipe Pizza Sauce Fresh Tomatoes' title='Recipe Pizza Sauce Fresh Tomatoes' />I find this to be a compromise that fails to deliver the deep, sweet flavors we want. Another approach is to divide the sauce into two parts, one long cooked, one quick cooked, and then blend them back together. Of those approaches, the divide and conquer concept has always made the most sense to me, but Id never settled on exactly how to do it. To figure it out, I started with the first, obvious question What kind of tomato should we use You Say Tomato, I Say, Which One The first rule of making tomato sauce from fresh tomatoes is to do it in the peak of summer, when tomatoes are not only at their absolute best but also at their absolute cheapest. In the winter, when the only tomatoes available are ghostly versions of their in season selves, it often makes more sense to use canned Canned tomatoes tend to be made with fruit thats riper than anything we can hope to get out of season, and theyre generally cheaper, especially when you account for the amount of water weight that fresh ones have to shed before they become sauce. But theres still the question of which fresh tomatoes to use when theyre at their peak. The general wisdom says to use pulpy paste tomatoes i. Those guys yield more sauce per pound of fruit and require a shorter cooking time to get rid of the liquid, which helps retain some of that fresh tomato flavor. But are plum tomatoes really the best way to go And does it matter which kind of plum tomato you use I bought four different types of tomato at the farmers market three different varieties of plum tomato, and then common beefsteaks, which are basically never recommended for sauce due to their juiciness. There are far more varieties of tomato than this, but it isnt practical to test them all, and, frankly, most other varieties, such as most heirlooms, require paying a premiummaking them a prohibitively expensive option for sauce. Four varieties of tomato for sauce testing. From left are three types of plum tomatoSan Marzano, Amish Paste, and Romaand then a beefsteak at far right. Photograph Daniel GritzerThe three types of plums I gotSan Marzanos, Amish Pastes, and Romasare good examples of how much variety exists even within one category of tomato. Photograph Daniel GritzerLook inside and youll get an idea of how their pulp to seed ratios differ. The San Marzanos, at left, were small and firm, with a relatively high amount of seed. Next, the Amish Pastes were mealy and soft, with the lowest amount of seed. The Romas were on the firm side, with a fair amount of seed. Last, the beefsteaks had plenty of watery pulp surrounding multiple seed compartments. I cut each type into chunks and cooked them separately to see how theyd turn out. Photograph Daniel GritzerAbove are the Amish Pastes note how much pulp there is, and how little water. Photograph Daniel GritzerAnd these are the beefsteaks. Tanta acqua Clearly, after all this water cooks off, theres not going to be much sauce left, which is why it doesnt make a lot of sense to make sauce from these kinds of tomatoes, unless you like paying hard earned cash to humidify the air in your home with tomato vapor. But, since Id already started, I took the beefsteaks to completion, straining out the skins and seeds and cooking the pure down. I did the same for all four types of tomato, and was surprised at how drastic their flavor differences were. The San Marzanos made a pure that was bright and tart and not too sweet. The Amish Pastes produced a pure that was sweet, mild, slightly tart, and fruity. The Romas were sweet and floral, but not very tart. The beefsteaks had a great balance between sweetness and tartness. Alone, each had its strengths one more tart, one sweeter, one fruitier, another more fragrant. But as I tasted them all, what I realized was that I didnt want any one of these tomatoes in my sauce I wanted all of them. Tasting them one by one, each was good, but combining them into a single spoonful made the whole thing pop. To be clear, the flavors of my tomatoes are particular to the ones I bought. You may buy San Marzanos that are sweeter and less tart, and Romas that are tart but not sweet. It depends not only on the variety but also on where they were grown and other specific environmental conditions. Its hard to predict with certainty the exact flavor profile and balance of sweetness and tartness any given tomato will deliver, so the best way to arrive at a balanced sauce is to combine multiple types. The majority of the tomatoes should be pasty plumsideally a variety of types, if you can find thembecause theyre more cost effective. But Im willing to add a little extra water from a small portion of beefsteaks or other juicy tomatoes if it means I can get a little bit of their flavor in the mix. A mix of tomatoes, mostly plums, is the way to go. Photograph Daniel GritzerPrepping the Tomatoes. Once Id settled on using a mix of tomatoes, the next step was deciding on how to prep them. Most folks agree that an abundance of skin or seeds in a tomato sauce is not a good thing, but theres more than one way to remove that stuff from a sauce.