(Almost) Instant Homegrown Pizza Sauce

Pizza is a standard at our house - Saturday night dinners alternate between spaghetti and pizza. Everyone likes them both, and it seems to be a good lead-in to our "family night."

I make pizza sauce by the quart all summer long as the tomatoes are coming in, then freeze them in 1 cup portions. This works great, until I forget to take sauce out to thaw and dinner needs to be on the table in half an hour. So tonight, I improvised, and the result was so yummy I thought I'd share it.

Here's how to have "fresh" from the garden pizza sauce in less than five minutes.

Use half a quart of canned roma tomatoes. (Yes, half a quart is a pint. However, I can my tomatoes in quart jars, so I call it half a quart.) Squeeze most of the juice out. Put them in a bowl, cup, something that you can use your stick blender in.

To the tomatoes, add a couple cloves (or more) of garlic, a tablespoon or so of dehydrated onions, and a good bit of whatever Italian-ish spices grew successfully for you this year. I used dried basil, oregano, and rosemary.

Now mix away with your stick blender until it's pretty much smooth. If it's too thin (mine was) add a small handful of dried tomatoes to the mixture, and blend them in really well. It'll thicken right up, and add really rich flavor.



And that's that. Super simple, and super fast. I think I might actually like this more than the sauce I've been using for the past three years, it was that good.

An actual "recipe":
1 pint canned roma tomatoes, drained
2 cloves garlic
1 Tbsp dehydrated onions
2 Tbsp. mixed dried Italian herbs
1/4 c. dehydrated tomato slices

Blend all ingredients with an immersion blender until smooth.