scratch-made pizza sauce – Twice as Tasty

I’m sharing a series of recipes in my Twice as Tasty column for the Flathead Beacon that revolve around grilled tomatoes: first last week’s Grilled Tomato Bloody Mary Mix, continuing this week with a freezable pizza sauce, and next week with a recipe that can be paired with one or both.

We fill a good portion of a large hoop house with tomato plants each year. When the harvested crop starts to pile up in boxes, one of my favorite ways to deal with the overload is to grill the tomatoes. If I’m too busy to process them further, I stockpile the juice and solids separately in freezer-safe containers until I have time to turn them into sauce and more.

In a pizza sauce, grilled tomato solids have a deep, smoky flavor enhanced by grilled onion and garlic, as well as fresh homegrown herbs. I find it most useful to freeze the finished sauce in silicone ice trays that make cubes of various sizes, from a couple of tablespoons to 1-cup portions.
Learn to make Grilled Tomato Pizza Sauce

So many vegetables become sweeter and smokier when roasted or grilled, including red bell peppers, as I explain this week in my Twice as Tasty column for the Flathead Beacon. I grill peppers as they ripen throughout the growing season, both to eat immediately and to gather in a zip-close bag in the freezer.

Soft roasted peppers peel more easily if you move them straight from the grill to a paper bag or airtight bowl, let them steam a bit, and then pull off the translucent skin while they’re still warm. They’re easiest to chop uniformly, either by hand or in a food processor, if you first spread them on a tray and freeze them until slightly firm.

When I have a bumper crop of sweet peppers, I grill and puree them into a sauce to use on pizza, pasta, and more. When making sauce, I still remove as much peel as possible, because it tends to be bitter. But I don’t bother chopping the peppers. A high-powered food processor easily breaks down halves or quarters. I’ve been using this food processor for years to make ultrasmooth Grilled Sweet Pepper Sauce.
Learn to make Grilled Sweet Pepper Sauce