Table of Contents
About Our Homemade Pasta Sauce
We have been experimenting with pasta recipes more and more over the past year or so. We’ve been making pasta Alfredo about once a week (check that recipe out here) using just vegan butter, pecorino cheese, and pasta water (from gluten-free pasta, of course). We’ve also been dabbling in pesto sauce with our new basil plant, but it’s not a regular occurrence because a small jar of sauce takes a lot of basil.
When we started experimenting with a tomato-based sauce, we had a few things in mind. First, we wanted San Marzano tomatoes. We’ve had them a few times at nice restaurants, and knew that they had a really nice flavor. Second, we wanted to keep the recipe pretty simple. Our favorite Italian restaurant has a red sauce they use on basically everything and it’s mostly just tomatoes and salt (we suspect those are San Marzano, too).
This recipe is gluten-free and Celiac-friendly without the extra cost or effort. Always check your ingredient labels just to be sure! It’s also vegan and relatively allergy-inclusive. If you are allergic to any of the add-ins or are restricting your salt intake, then you can adjust it easily.
Why Homemade Pasta Sauce?
As much as we have been kind of obsessed with our pasta Alfredo, we weren’t getting much variation. We wanted tomato sauce, but we weren’t loving jarred tomato sauces that much. Our favorites were kind of pricey, we had to deal with Isabelle’s allergies, and we found sauces a little acidic.
We also found ourselves wanting more versatile sauces. We wanted something that would taste good on several gluten-free pastas, while also working well as a pizza sauce (both taste and texture-wise).
What About Homemade Pizza Sauce?
We figured out through some more experimentation (and out of convenience to be honest) that our pasta sauce recipe works pretty well as a pizza sauce. However, it did require a little bit of alteration.
The main thing we changed was the texture. Our pasta sauce works really well on basically any gluten-free pasta we use, but it can be a tad thin for pizza. In a pinch, it’s not a bad option, but we would definitely recommend adding tomato paste to thicken it up. It also helps to keep it in the fridge overnight if you want it to be just right, rather than using it right away.
We also add just a little dried oregano. Some sauces recipes we’ve tried were a little heavy on the oregano and that’s all we could taste, so we toned it down a lot. It does add that “pizza” flavor we needed, so we include a little.
How to Store Homemade Pasta Sauce
You can store your pasta sauce a few different ways, depending on how often you are going to use it.
For us, one large mason jar works well. We go through our sauce pretty fast with just two of us. We haven’t had any batches spoil in the fridge, even after a few weeks.
The alternative is to divide your sauce into smaller jars and seal them. This resource walks through the process in detail.
Homemade Pasta Sauce Recipe (With Pizza Sauce Alteration)
Homemade Pasta (or Pizza) Sauce
Equipment
- Blender or food processor (if using whole canned tomatoes)
Ingredients
- 1 28 oz. can San Marzano tomatoes crushed or whole
- 1 1/2 tsp. salt
- 1/2 tsp. pepper
- 2 tbsp. fresh basil (chopped)
- 1 1/2 tsp. sugar
- 1 tsp. garlic powder
- 1 tsp. onion powder
- 1/4 tsp. cayenne pepper
- 1/4 tsp. dried oregano for pizza sauce alteration
- 1 12 oz. can tomato paste for pizza sauce alteration
Instructions
- If your tomatoes are whole, then blend them in a food processor. In this case, you can do the entire recipe in the food processor.
- If your tomatoes are crushed, then open the can and empty it into a large bowl.
- For pasta sauce, add everything except for the tomato paste and mix thoroughly. Taste periodically to ensure that the sauce is not too acidic or too sweet. The sugar should balance out any acidity, and the cayenne should prevent the sauce from tasting sweet. The sauce should not taste spicy.
- If you are making pizza sauce, then add your can of tomato paste to the mix. Be sure to break it up well so that it blends in with the other ingredients.
- When you are happy with your sauce, carefully pour it into either one large mason jar or several smaller ones. We use one large jar because we go through it fast, but you can use seberal smaller ones if you want to keep it for longer.
Conclusions About Our Homemade Pasta Sauce Recipe
We have been loving our pasta sauce recipe. We’ve been making it for at least a couple of months, eating it 1-2 times a week. We’ve eaten more pasta with red sauce than we used to, and even made chicken parm with it. We also eat our pizza sauce variation all the time and still love it.
If you would like to keep up with all the future updates of the Celiac Press, we highly recommend joining our newsletter by subscribing at the top right of any page. Check out our other recipes here.