I first shared this all-purpose simple tomato sauce recipe on my weekly free newsletter, aptly named Pizza Friday, but wanted to make it a standalone blog post. It’s inspired by the inimitable Marcella Hazan’s famous tomato sauce recipe, with some additions and scaled up because I like to make sauces in bulk as a time saver. It’s my go-to sauce for pizza nights, spaghetti and meatballs, lasagna, and I’ve even used it in shakshuka before. I have another recipe for a quick and easy no cooking required sauce here, if that’s more your speed. But especially with fall and winter coming, there’s nothing like the succulent scent of tomato sauce bubbling away on the stove.
Now, my grocery store sells comically large cans of whole peeled San Marzano tomatoes — a 90 oz can is roughly $10.99 last I checked. I used to make a fresh pizza sauce every Friday for pizza night, but then I had our second baby and I needed to get a lot more efficient with my time in the kitchen, so I make a huge batch every month and a half or so, depending on how much we use.
First, some pizza math to figure out how this recipe breaks down and saves you time and money!
Pizza Math
This makes a huge amount of pizza sauce —I’m trying to do some fast math here, but when I make this, it’s usually enough for a 6 week’s worth of pizzas. We do two a week, so we get rougly 12 pizzas out of this recipe. I use some of the sauce fresh then typically get 4 quart containers (3/4 of the way full, which is enough for 2 pizzas for us and some leftover for dipping) worth of sauce out of this.
The amount of sauce used per pizza typically ranges from ½ cup to ¾ cup, depending on how saucy you like your pizza and the size of the pizza.
Given that:
- 1 quart = 4 cups
- This recipe yields ~3 quarts, so that’s about 10 to 12 cups of sauce.
So, for each pizza:
- If you use ½ cup of sauce per pizza: The recipe will make enough sauce for about 21 to 24 pizzas.
- If you use ¾ cup of sauce per pizza: The recipe will make enough sauce for about 14 to 16 pizzas.
I tend to go on the saucier side, so probably use slightly more than 3/4 cup per pizza!
Simple Tomato Sauce
Equipment
Ingredients
- 6 Tbsp butter
- 2 yellow onions peeled and roughly chopped
- 90 oz can of whole peeled San Marzano tomatoes I get cans this size at Wegman’s, but if you can’t find a jumbo can, simply use 3 28 oz cans instead!
- 1 tsp salt you may want to add more depending on your tastebuds
- 1 Tbsp ish! Italian seasoning or combo of dried basil, oregano, and thyme (I start with a few dashes and adjust to taste)
- optional: juice of 1/2 lemon brightens the flavor up! I swear by this.
- optional: up to 1 Tbsp granulated sugar
Instructions
- Add butter and onions to a stockpot, and cook over medium until onion is starting to soften up.
- Add tomatoes and salt, bring to a simmer, and crush tomatoes with the back of a large wooden spoon or whatever you’re stirring with.
- Simmer for ~30 minutes, squeeze in lemon juice, add seasoning, then with an immersion blender, get in there and smooth things out. Alternatively, you can use a high-powered blender (I swear by mine and it’s going on 12 years strong!) and get it to your desired consistency.
- Taste, adjust seasonings, add more salt if needed, or if it’s a bit too acidic for your liking, add some sugar to mellow things out.
- Portion into containers as needed!
Notes
- I put 1 tsp of salt because that’s what I usually end up using, but always start with less because you can add more but you can’t take it away!
- The lemon juice is added but I swear by it — I think I first learned about this from an episode of Great British Bake Off and then I read about it in On Food and Cooking by Harold McGee and it solidified its place in my cooking repertoire.
Nutrition
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