A big-batch pizza sauce for freezing, cooked down with peppers, onions and herbs and frozen in pizza-sized portions.
Ingredients
Instructions
Dip the tomatoes in boiling water for 30 to 60 seconds, until the skins split. Slip off the skins, then core and quarter the tomatoes.
In a 16-quart non-aluminum pot, bring the tomatoes to a full boil. Reduce the heat and simmer, uncovered, for 20 minutes. Put the tomatoes through a food mill and return the puree to the pot.
In a large skillet, cook the peppers and onions in the oil until tender. Add them to the tomato puree with the remaining ingredients except the tomato paste.
Bring to a boil, then lower the heat and simmer, stirring often, until the sauce is as thick as you like it. Remove from the heat, stir in the tomato paste and discard the bay leaves.
Let the sauce cool, then refrigerate it until cold.
Divide the sauce into freezer containers or freezer bags in pizza-sized portions, leaving about 1/2 inch of space at the top of containers for expansion. Label, date and freeze.
Thaw portions in the refrigerator overnight before using.
Notes
This sauce is for the freezer, not for canning. There is no research-tested recipe for canning pizza sauce, and this one has too much oil, onion and pepper to be canned safely.
The frozen sauce keeps its best quality for about 6 months. Thawed sauce keeps 3 to 4 days in the refrigerator.
For a shelf-stable base, can plain tomato sauce using the tested standard tomato sauce recipe from the National Center for Home Food Preservation, then season it with the herbs, oil and sautéed vegetables when you make the pizza. See our introduction to canning.
Variations
For a smaller batch, divide all the ingredients by four. It makes enough for several pizzas.
Use fresh basil and oregano instead of dried, adding them at the end of cooking.