Love pizza but not the hard work? Homemade pizza sauce made with tomato paste comes together in a snap! It’s so easy to make your own sauce with a few pantry staples. This easy pizza sauce recipe is my go-to for pizza night with just a handful of ingredients: tomato paste, water, olive oil, and dried herbs.
Be sure to whip up a batch of our Homemade Pizza Dough to make this Easy Cheese Pizza or make a freezer meal pizza kit with your favorite pizza toppings for a later date. It adds the perfect flavors to English Muffin Pizzas or anywhere you want a little pizza flavor!
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Pizza night rolls around every week. You’ve done your due diligence and prepped the sourdough pizza crust — or bought some when you were at the grocery store. But, uh-oh. You forgot about sauce!
You can use marinara sauce or a store-bought pizza sauce, but making your own sauce is super easy, even on a Friday night when you’re tired after a long week. While I love my long-simmering pizza sauce made with diced or crushed tomatoes, this no cook pizza sauce is a great way to top your pizza in just a few basic steps.
Why Make This
It’s easy. With just four simple ingredients, a batch of this sauce is super quick and easy to make. It’s a no-brainer, no-recipe kind of recipe.
It’s delicious. By design, this pizza sauce has a thicker consistency than marinara sauce but with a surprising depth of flavor from such an easy recipe. There are many homemade sauce recipes you can make and this is a great one!
This simple recipe freezes beautifully. If you want to make extra sauce, store it in an ice cube tray or freezer-safe container. Leftover pizza sauce is great to stir into spaghetti sauce or to serve as a dipping sauce for breadsticks or garlic bread, so it’s awesome to keep frozen sauce on hand all the time.
It avoids food waste. You know how so many recipes only use a little bit of tomato paste and you’re stuck with a partial can? This recipe makes a lot of pizza sauce without wasting the can of paste!
It’s cheap to make. Avoid the extra cost of commercial sauce. The best homemade pizza sauce recipe costs about a dollar for 2 cups of sauce!
Ingredients
Here’s what you need to make this easy homemade pizza sauce recipe:
tomato paste – Affordable and easy to find, tomato paste is a highly concentrated form of tomato sauce. More of the water has been cooked out to make a very thick paste. Try to buy paste without added sugar. It’s got enough natural sweetness on its own.
water – Add enough water to the paste to dilute it to your preferred consistency. Start with a small amount, you can always add more.
spice blend – One of my favorite ways to seasons food is to use a custom spice blend that I mix myself, like Jamie’s Spice Mix or Italian Seasoning Herbs. These already contain Italian herbs, onion powder, and garlic powder. To increase the warm spice level, feel free to add extra cayenne pepper or red pepper flakes. (For best flavor, I add fresh herbs after I’ve baked the pizza.)
olive oil – Olive oil helps the water and tomato paste to emulsify, but it also brings great flavor to the pizza. I like to think that the oil also prevents a soggy pizza. The uncooked dough tends to absorb less sauce if it’s got some oil in it.
Step-by-Step Instructions
This is an easy no cook sauce. It takes minutes to make the best pizza sauce recipe:
- In a medium bowl, whisk together the tomato paste and water.
- Add the herbs.
- Whisk in the oil.
- Spread the sauce over your pizza base and add your favorite toppings. Bake and enjoy!
Leftover sauce is great to add to soups and stews as well as pizza rolls and other tomato dishes. Remember that pizza sauce freezes well. You can store it in a freezer bag or as cubes in an ice cube tray, ready for your next pizza night.
FAQs
Tomato paste is basically tomato sauce with the water removed. Add more water and you will have sauce!
Tomato paste has a much thicker consistency than sauce. If you want a cup of tomato sauce, you won’t need as much paste, as you can dilute it with water. 1 part water and 1 part paste is a good starting ratio.
Easy Pizza Recipes
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Homemade Pizza Sauce with Tomato Paste
Ingredients
- 1 6-ounce can tomato paste
- 1 ¼ cup water less for a thicker sauce
- 1 ½ tablespoon Jamie's Spice Mix
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
Instructions
- In a mixing bowl, whisk together the tomato paste and water. Add the spice mix and stir well. Stir in the olive oil, whisking until well-combined.1 6-ounce can tomato paste, 1 ¼ cup water, 1 ½ tablespoon Jamie's Spice Mix, 1 tablespoon olive oil
- To make ahead: sauce can be prepared up to 3 days in advance and stored in the refrigerator or frozen for up to 2 months in an airtight container.
Notes
Nutrition
This post was originally published on April 17, 2013. It has been updated for content and clarity.
andrea
knowing me – i would probably make this and use it as a quick pasta sauce – YUMMY! 😀
Jolene
I’ve made this pizza sauce several times and love it, thanks!
Carol
Delicious pizza sauce!
Mialee
Wow! Super easy and delicious! I passed up the jar of pizza sauce at the store because of the extra unnecessary ingredients. And I knew YOU would have a recipe. Thanks for saving Pizza Night from here on out! 🙂
Jessica Fisher
It’s my go-to recipe these days. So simple and easy!
cindy3539
Finally, a homemade sauce that is tasty! I used the sauced on a pizza today. Thanks for posting.
Jessica Fisher
Yay!
TSandy
I love homemade pizza. Your photo looks fabulous and it makes me hungry! I do use my Zo bread machine to make pizza dough. We like sweet pizza sauce (most commonly found on deep dish pizzas) which I also make using tomato paste (plus honey, olive oil, anchovy paste, and spices). Why did I pay for inferior overpriced pizza sauce from the grocery store all those years? I paid $1 for my pepperoni (same name brand found at the grocery store). We have a regional dollar store chain where I find some crazy bargains. Now I have like a 5 year supply of cheap pepperoni in the freezer. Makes pizza night cheap and so much better than anything you can buy.
Jessica Fisher
No pepperoni would ever last five years at my house. LOL!
Melissa
You can buy various flavored tomato sauces in the small cans – my favorite one for pizza sauce is the one with basil and garlic. I pick them up on sale with coupons. – I think its Hunts. Otherwise I use plain tomato sauce and add herbs and garlic.
Kathy
I am pinning this! I always decide to make a pizza at the last minute and then never have the right ingredients!
Jessica
@Kathy, thanks!
Margery H.
I use one 8-oz. can of tomato sauce and mix in 2 Tablespoons of Italian seasoning blend (bought super-cheap in a huge canister from Costco.) It takes about 30 seconds to make. This is enough for our family of five to eat a huge dinner (including a voracious teenaged son) and have leftovers for about three or four-people lunches.
I make our pizzas on a mixture of various pans and baking sheets, usually one regular pizza circular pan, three pie pans, and one huge rectangular cookie sheet. I usually have to bake it in two shifts. Maybe I should order a third oven rack for my oven…