Looking for an easy pizza sauce recipe? This homemade pizza sauce gets rave reviews and takes only 5 minutes in a blender!
Eleven years ago, Alex and I honeymooned in Italy, in Rome and on the Amalfi Coast. It was like falling in love all over again: with the beautiful views and Italian pizza! On the plane ride home, we dreamed of learning how to make homemade artisan pizza. Since then, we’ve become homemade pizza experts, perfecting our Best Homemade Pizza Dough Recipe and all the things you need for how to make killer homemade pizza. One thing we didn’t have, though, was an easy homemade pizza sauce recipe: until now. It’s just 5 ingredients and takes 5 minutes! Typically we hate the word “easy” since it can be misleading, but this one is truly an easy pizza sauce recipe. Keep reading for how to make it.
Related: Homemade Pizza for Beginners | Homemade Pizza Recipes
Video: How to make this pizza sauce recipe
Here’s a video of me in our kitchen, showing you how to make our new pizza sauce recipe!
How to make this pizza sauce recipe
This homemade pizza sauce is truly easy. As I mentioned above, Alex and I don’t love the word easy. With cooking, we’ve found there are rarely recipes that are “easy.” Simple, yes. To us, simple can mean a simple concept that involves several steps to get great flavor. But easy? There aren’t too many things in the kitchen that are easy. But this recipe is an easy pizza sauce recipe: we promise.
There are just 5 ingredients in this easy pizza sauce recipe. It requires no cooking, just blending. However, there are a few notes to understand before attempting this in your kitchen:
- Fire roasted canned tomatoes: Our easy pizza sauce uses fire roasted canned tomatoes as the base of the recipe. If at all possible, try to find fire roasted tomatoes! They’re available at many mainstream groceries these days, and fire roasting brings a mellow, sweet flavor to the tomatoes. If you can’t find them, use the highest quality crushed tomatoes you can find.
- Small garlic clove: Garlic cloves widely vary in size. This recipe calls for a small clove — watch the video if you’re new to garlic clove sizes. If you don’t have a small clove, slice a medium garlic clove in half. Some garlic heads have gigantic garlic cloves: we’d do a quarter of a very large clove. This is important so that your sauce doesn’t end up too garlicky.
- Dried oregano: Make sure to use dried oregano that’s fairly fresh. If it’s been in your cabinet over 1 year, it’s time for a refresh!
- Olive oil: As in all of our recipes, use extra virgin olive oil. Always.
Related: How to make artisan pizza | What’s the best pizza oven?
Pizza recipes & resources
Of course, the best way to serve this easy pizza sauce recipe is ON PIZZA! If you’re looking to have a homemade pizza night, we have lots of resources, including:
- Video: Easy Homemade Pizza Dough
- Best Homemade Pizza Dough Recipe
- Quick Pizza Dough in a Food Processor
- Rye Pizza Dough Cracker Crust
- Our Best Vegan Pizza
- Veggie Pizza with Avocado
- Easy Calzone Recipe
- The Best Margherita Pizza
- 29 Homemade Pizza Recipes
- What’s the Best Pizza Oven?
- What’s the Best Pizza Stone?
- How to Make Artisan Pizza
- Thin Crust Pizza Dough
This recipe is…
This easy homemade pizza sauce recipe is vegetarian, gluten free, vegan, plant based, refined sugar free, and naturally sweet.
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Easy Pizza Sauce Recipe
(45 votes, average: 4.13 out of 5)
- Prep Time: 5 minutes
- Cook Time: 0 minutes
- Total Time: 5 minutes
- Yield: About 1 1/2 cups 1x
Print Recipe
Pin RecipeDescription
Looking for an easy pizza sauce recipe? This homemade pizza sauce gets rave reviews and takes only 5 minutes in a blender!
Ingredients
- 15 ounces crushed fire roasted tomatoes*
- 1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
- 1 small clove garlic (1/2 medium)
- 1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
- Scant 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
Instructions
- Cut the garlic into a few rough pieces (no need to mince it).
- Place all ingredients in a blender. Blend until fully combined. (This pizza sauce is Italian-style, which has a slightly runnier texture than American style pizza sauce. See the video for the desired texture!)
Notes
*If at all possible, try to find fire roasted tomatoes! They’re available at many mainstream groceries these days and have a mellow, sweet flavor. If you absolutely cannot find them, use a high quality brand of crushed tomatoes.
Inspired by Flour Water Salt Yeast
- Category: Sauce
- Method: Blended
- Cuisine: Italian
Keywords: Pizza Sauce, Easy Pizza Sauce, Pizza Sauce Recipe, Best Pizza Sauce, Homemade Pizza Sauce, Italian, Pizza, Gluten Free, Vegan, Vegetarian
About the Authors
Sonja Overhiser
Cookbook Author and writer
Sonja Overhiser is author of Pretty Simple Cooking, named one of the best healthy cookbooks of 2018. She’s host of the food podcast Small Bites and founder of the food blog A Couple Cooks. Featured from the TODAY Show to Bon Appetit, Sonja seeks to inspire adventurous eating to make the world a better place one bite at a time.
Alex Overhiser
Cookbook Author and photographer
Alex Overhiser is an acclaimed food photographer and author based in Indianapolis. He’s host of the food podcast Small Bites and founder of the recipe website A Couple Cooks. Featured from the TODAY Show to Bon Appetit, Alex is author of Pretty Simple Cooking, named one of the best vegetarian cookbooks by Epicurious.
22 Comments
Ruth Erwin
September 3, 2018 at 11:07 amWe had friends over for a make your own pizza party this weekend – I tried this sauce (instead of my typical store bought) and everyone loved it! It was so easy to make. I’m never buying pizza sauce again!
Sonja
September 3, 2018 at 9:46 pmOoo we are so glad it was a hit! Thank you so much for trying it and that makes our day!
Neil
September 3, 2018 at 12:22 pmI like to simmer the ingredients together for half an hour or so, then use an immersion blender. I cook the garlic in the olive oil for a few minutes then add the rest of the ingredients: and I also like the flavor that thyme brings, so I use that as well as oregano.
Sonja
September 3, 2018 at 9:50 pmThat sounds delicious! We’ve tried cooked sauces but have never found one we love. We’ll have to try your version! What tomatoes do you use?
Sabrina
September 3, 2018 at 5:04 pmI understand the inspiration from visiting Italy and love how you capture that in this pizza recipe and love artisan recipes, thank you
Sonja
September 3, 2018 at 9:51 pmThanks for reading!
Brittany Audra @ Audra's Appetite
September 3, 2018 at 10:52 pmCannot wait to try this; love how simple this is!! I always have these ingredients on hand to…perfect! :)
Darlene Enns-Dyck
September 8, 2018 at 3:20 pmHow would you do this with fresh tomatoes??
Darlene Enns-Dyck
September 8, 2018 at 3:21 pmIf I were using fresh tomatoes, should I crush them in a blender and cook them for a few minutes?
Sonja
November 17, 2018 at 7:41 pmGood question! We typically don’t use fresh tomatoes in our tomato sauce, but you can! Most recipes I’ve looked up do what you suggested but cook the tomatoes for about 1 to 1 1/2 hours. If you can, I’d use canned here and then put fresh tomatoes on top! (Thinly sliced or seeded and diced, since they do release some water when cooked)
Ashleigh
November 17, 2018 at 6:42 amHi! I’ve never been a commenter but I love your site and your cookbook. I always thought fire-roasted meant spicy, is that not true? Thank you for helping us to bring healthy food to the table!
Sonja
November 17, 2018 at 7:37 pmThank you so much for the kind comment! No, actually fire-roasted is not spicy at all! It does seem that way :) Fire roasting is just a way to cook the tomatoes that really brings out the sweetness. Their flavor is a lot more developed than most canned tomatoes. If you can’t find them you can just do crushed, but we love the flavor of fire roasted here!
Allison
March 13, 2019 at 5:19 pmThis pizza sauce was amazing, never buying store bought sauce again.
Sonja
March 23, 2019 at 9:05 pmWe are SO glad to hear it! Thank you so much for trying it out!
andrea
May 27, 2019 at 6:43 pmShould you drain the tomatoes first? My sauce was very thin and not sure if that was the issue. Thanks
Alex
May 27, 2019 at 9:49 pmHi! No, you shouldn’t need to drain them. I wonder if your can just had extra liquid?
Sonja
May 28, 2019 at 9:39 pmHi Andrea, could you let us know if you remember: what brand and type of tomatoes did you use?
Anonymous
June 22, 2019 at 2:57 pmMine also turned out very thin. I used Kroger fire roasted diced tomatoes (the only fire roasted tomatoes I could find). It tastes great! Just thin.
Sonja
June 22, 2019 at 4:08 pmHey, thanks for the note! As I noted above, this pizza sauce is intended to be Italian-style, which might be a little runnier than you’re used to from store bought versions that are American style. Would you be able to take a look at the video and see if it turned out runnier than shown in the video? Then it seems it would be due to the runniness of the tomato brand — which can vary greatly!
Kris
June 20, 2019 at 7:29 pmI ended up adding almost an entire can of tomato paste. It tasted fine, just was thin and anemic looking. I guess either we are used to a more robust sauce or my fire roasted tomatoes were weak.. Once I did that though, it was great! I used Hunt’s fire roasted tomatoes..
Sonja
June 22, 2019 at 4:07 pmThanks for the note! This pizza sauce is intended to be Italian-style, which might be a little runnier than you’re used to from store bought versions that are American style. Would you be able to take a look at the video and see if it turned out runnier than shown in the video? Then it seems it would be due to the runniness of the tomato brand — which can vary greatly!
Kris
June 30, 2019 at 12:12 pmYes, mine was quite a bit runnier than video. I will try a different brand – or strain and reserve the liquid from the tomatoes and add as needed to get the consistency.