How to Make Tomato Sauce? For pasta and pizza!

Tomato sauces are available in many varieties in the supermarket. From ‘normal’ tomato sauce to spicy tomato sauce and with garlic and basil. At home, you open the jar, throw it in the pan and you’re done. But making your own is fun and you know exactly what ingredients are in it. But how do you do that, how to make tomato sauce?

The base consists of tomatoes, fresh or canned. A chopped onion, olive oil, and salt. The onion is sautéed in the skillet and the tomatoes are added, as well as the salt. Let it simmer for an hour and the sauce will thicken.

When you make tomato sauce from fresh tomatoes, you naturally want to keep them fresh for a long time. Check out our blog ‘ How to store tomatoes? Multiple ways ‘ and you always have fresh tomatoes at home.

Make your own tomato sauce

You don’t really need many ingredients to make tomato sauce. These are ingredients that you often have at home or can buy in the supermarket. You can make the sauce with different tomatoes:

1. Fresh tomatoes
2. Cherry tomatoes
3. Canned peeled tomatoes
4. Canned tomato cubes
5. Tomato paste

It takes a while to find for yourself what you like and enjoy to use. For example, if you have little time and you want to keep it easy, use canned tomatoes (diced). If you like cooking, go for the fresh tomatoes or cherry tomatoes and create your own tomato sauce.

The base of tomato sauce consists of tomatoes, an onion, coarse salt, and olive oil. Of course, you can add a lot of ingredients, but this is the basis of the tomato sauce.

In all sauces below you can replace fresh tomatoes with an equal amount of canned tomatoes. It takes some measuring but it doesn’t affect your sauce. Conversely, you can also replace canned tomatoes (cubes) with fresh tomatoes. 1 can of tomatoes is equal to about 500 uncleaned fresh tomatoes.

Making Italian Tomato Sauce

When you think of tomato sauce, you think of Italy. Tomato sauce is widely used in Italian cuisine. They also grow their own tomatoes in the south of the country.

One tomato sauce is not the other and that is why there are sauces for pizza, pasta and lasagna. Of course, there is also the green pesto sauce. For making pesto refer to our blog ‘ How to Make Pesto? 10 ways ‘.

The simplest tomato sauce consists of tomatoes, an onion, sea salt and olive oil. However, below we will adapt the sauce to the dishes and add more seasonings.

Making tomato sauce Pasta

Pasta sauce made from tomatoes can be tasty and spicy. So only the tomato base makes the pasta bland in taste. That’s why we add other flavor makers. This is the list of ingredients for 4 people:

• 2 cans of peeled tomatoes or tomato cubes, take the best quality in the supermarket.
• 1 onion, chopped
• 1 small red bell pepper, diced
• 3 cloves garlic, crushed.
• 2 tbsp olive oil.
• Small handful of basil leaves (20 grams), chopped
• 1 tsp oregano

You can also use 1 kilo of fresh tomatoes. However, this requires a different preparation. This is described in the chapter ‘Making fresh tomato sauce’.

To prepare, proceed as follows:

1. Place a frying pan on the heat source and heat the olive oil.
2. Now fry the chopped onion and garlic for 5 minutes on a low setting. They should be soft. Then add the bell pepper and fry for 5 minutes.
3. Now add the tomatoes and crush them with the back of the ladle.
4. Stir everything together well and let the sauce reduce on a low setting of the heat source. It should simmer gently. This takes about half an hour. Depending on the amount of moisture.
5. Add the oregano and finely chop the basil leaves and put them straight into the pan. If you leave them on the cutting board, the juice will run out of the basil and you will get less flavor.
6. Stir well and let it simmer for another 5 minutes.
7. Now we mix the sauce with the hand blender or in the blender. If you use an immersion blender, it is better to transfer the sauce to a high bowl. Then the sauce goes back in the pan for 2 minutes.

Now comes the most important part of cooking, tasting. Taste to see if your tomato sauce is flavoured. If not, add salt and pepper or more basil or oregano. This is really up to you, what do you like? If you like it, you can serve it over the pasta.

Making Tomato Sauce for Pizza

We’re going to sift tomato sauce for pizza. This way we remove the coarse pieces and we only have sauce left. These are the ingredients we use:

• 1 can of peeled tomatoes or diced tomatoes.
• 2 cloves of garlic.
• 1 tsp dried oregano or 1 tsp Italian herbs
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• small onion, chopped

What are you going to do?

1. Saute the onion and garlic in a frying pan for 5 minutes.
2. Then add the tomatoes and press the tomatoes finely into the pan.
3. Let the sauce simmer for 20-25 minutes. It should now have thickened.
4. After 15 minutes, add the spices and mix well.
5. Put the sauce in a high bowl and puree the sauce with your immersion blender.

Now your sauce is basically ready, but to get a really smooth sauce you can still pass the sauce through a sieve. Press the sauce through the sieve, leaving the rest of the larger pieces. Now you have a very smooth tomato sauce for your Pizza. Enjoy your meal!

Making Tomato Sauce For Lasagna

The sauce for the lasagna should be more moist than for the pizza or pasta. The moisture in the sauce should ensure that the lasagna sheets become soft. This recipe is delicious with a splash of red wine. These are the ingredients for 2 people:

• 1 red onion, chopped
• 2 cloves garlic, crushed
• handful of basil
• 1 pack sieved tomatoes or 1 can tomatoes
• can of tomato paste or splash of red wine.
• 1 tsp oregano
• The preparation is again as described earlier:
  Saute the onion and garlic in the frying pan for 5 minutes.
• Add the tomatoes and heat through.
• Add the wine and stir well, then add the basil and oregano. Let it simmer for 5 minutes.
• Now your tomato sauce is ready. However, you will use many more ingredients and seasonings for your lasagna. I’m thinking of carrots, zucchini, vegetarian minced meat, mushrooms and of course bechamel sauce.
• If you fry the minced meat and vegetables in a frying pan, you can add the sauce later. It does not have to be completely baked, because the vegetables will continue to cook in the oven. Season to taste with salt and pepper.
• A layer of tomato sauce and a layer of bechamel sauce gives your lasagna a real full flavor. For making bechamel sauce you can read our blog ‘ How to make bechamel sauce? 6 applications ‘ reading.

·      Making fresh tomato sauce

• Everything tastes better fresh. It is often more work in the kitchen, but it also really tastes better. You can also use fresh tomatoes or fresh cherry tomatoes to make tomato sauce. The real tasty sauce is made with Italian Pomodori tomatoes.
• For all recipes described above, you can use 500 grams of fresh tomatoes for every 400 grams of canned tomatoes. So canned tomatoes can easily be replaced with fresh ones.
• The tomatoes do need a pre-treatment before you can use them in the tomato sauce.

·      Making Tomato Sauce from Fresh Tomatoes

• Whether it’s regular, meat or pomodori tomatoes to use for the sauce, we have to blanch them first. You do this as follows:

• Bring water to a boil in a saucepan and turn off the heat.
• Also have a pan with ice-cold water ready or place your colander under the tap.
• Remove the stems from the tomatoes and make a cross at the bottom with a sharp knife.
• Now put the tomatoes in the hot water for a minute, do this with a slotted spoon.
• Remove the tomatoes from the pan and immediately put them in the ice-cold water or rinse them under the tap.
• You can easily remove the skin afterwards.
• Cut the tomatoes into four pieces and remove the seeds.

Your tomatoes are now ready to use in one of the above recipes.

Making Tomato Sauce from Cherry Tomatoes

The same applies to cherry tomatoes as described above. Cherry tomatoes have a sweet taste. You can read all about this in our blog ‘ The List Of Tomato Varieties And All Information ‘.

1. Bring water to the boil and at the same time prepare a pan with ice-cold water or place your colander under the tap.
2. Cut a cross at the bottom of the tomatoes and place the tomatoes in the hot water with a slotted spoon.
3. After 20 seconds, remove them from the water and place them in the ice water or rinse them under the cold tap.
4. You can easily remove the skin afterwards.
5. Cut the tomatoes into pieces and remove the seeds.

Your tomatoes are now ready to use in any of the above recipes. For 400 grams of tomatoes from token you need about 500 grams of unskinned tomatoes.

Making Tomato Sauce from Tomato Paste

We can be brief about this. Tomato paste is a flavor enhancer and not a base for sauce. Tomato puree is also more acidic. The bottom line is, you shouldn’t actually use tomato paste for a sauce.

If you do the draft, you have to taste the result at every step, because the sourness of the puree is difficult to suppress. This is actually possible with just a lot of sugar.

Thicken tomato sauce

Let the tomato sauce thicken by letting it simmer on the fire; don’t boil, just simmer.

If you are impatient or simply do not have the time for this, you can add a tablespoon of flour. First put the flour in a sieve and sprinkle it over the sauce. Stir it right away and you will see your sauce thicken.