Pure Your Own Canned Tomatoes
Serious Eats / J. Kenji López-Alt
I knew that I wanted to use canned tomatoes, since they are much more consistent year round. But which tomatoes should I use? Pretty much every brand has five offerings:
So diced tomatoes are too firm, crushed tomatoes are too inconsistent, and tomato purée and paste are too cooked. This left me with the whole canned tomatoes. I opted for those packed in juice, giving them a quick whir with my immersion blender to purée them right after I added them to the pot.
How To Make The Ultimate New York Pizza At Home
Theres something about the mouthwatering taste of New York pizza that makes us want to keep coming back for more. Ordering take out does get a little expensive, however, and we dont want to drive all the way to the Big Apple just for a slice.
The solution? Make one at home, of course!
It took me a while to find the recipe thatll make any NY pizzeria proud and maybe a little intimidated, given how similar it tastes to the original! Heres how to make a New York pizza at home, plus New York-style pizza sauce recipes thatll blow your mind.
Ny And Neapolitan Sauce Recipes
Tomato-based pizza sauces are typically made in two different flavor profiles. Each has its own unique flavor and its important to know the difference between the two if you plan on making your own pizza sauce. Here are two amazing recipes you can follow when looking to figure out how to make your own pizza sauce.
The New York style pizza is known for its extremely rich tomato flavor that offsets the cheese and toppings. The hearty tomato flavor that is found in this sauce typically takes a little longer to produce but it can be well worth it for the thicker and more flavor-forward experience. This can elevate a typical cheese slice and make sure you really taste the tomatoes with a large number of toppings.
Neapolitan style pizza sauce is known as more of a bright and crisp sauce. This style of pizza sauce is classic for Margherita pizza. The style of sauce is usually used primarily with mozzarella and just a few other toppings. The nice part about this sauce is that it doesnt require any type of cooking and you can produce it with just a food processor.
You May Like: Texas Pete Green Pepper Sauce
Learn About This Famous Pizza Style
If youve ever been to New York City, you surely found the time to grab a slice of pizza. NYC is home to hundreds of slice joints, pizzerias, and pizza restaurants serving the citys iconic and unique pizza. The New York-style slice grew out of Neapolitan-style pizza when Italian immigrants brought pizza to NYCand Americain the early 1900s. New York-style pizza has slices that are large and wide with a thin crust that is foldable yet crispy. It is traditionally topped with tomato sauce and mozzarella cheese, with any extra toppings placed on top of the cheese. Pizza without additional toppings is called plain, regular, or cheese.
The pizza is usually sold by the slice or as a whole pie, which is quite large typically 18 inchesand is cut into eight slices. Customers often purchase a slice to eat on the go by folding it in half vertically. New York-style pizza was traditionally cooked in a coal-fired oven, and while a few places still use that method, most places nowadays use a regular gas oven.
Classic New York Pizza Sauce
Looking for the perfect sauce to top your homemade pizzas with? Look no further than this delicious recipe for a classic Italian New York-style pizza sauce. While Neapolitan-style pizza dictates the use of simply pureed, uncooked tomatoes, New York and other pizza styles utilize a cooked sauce of tomatoes and spices and gasp sugar. And, the best part is, this recipe makes more than enough so you can refrigerate or freeze the leftover sauce for another day! No need to go in search of a pizza joint when you can make a New York-style pizza at home any time you want, starting with this faithful and perfectly balanced pizza sauce recipe.
-
1 can diced tomatoes with juice
-
1 can tomato paste
-
2 TBSN extra virgin olive oil
-
1 TBSN unsalted butter
-
2 TBSN chopped fresh basil
-
2 TBSN dried oregano
-
1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes
-
1 small yellow onion, peeled and quartered
Medium mixing bowl, mixing spoon, measuring spoons, measuring cupsPrep: 10 minutes prepCook: 60 minutes Ready: 70 minutes Serves: 2 1/2 cups
Before you handle any food, wash your hands thoroughly with soap and water.Clean your kitchen work area and pull back your hair or wear a cap.You want to avoid contaminating your meal with harmful bacteria that could cause food illness.
1. In a food processor, pulse the diced tomatoes with juice, onion quarters, butter, tomato paste, olive oil, basil, oregano, sugar, red pepper flakes, garlic, and salt.
2. Blend ingredients until it forms into a puree.
You May Like: Rao’s Spicy Marinara Sauce
Final Steps For Balanced Flavor
Serious Eats / J. Kenji López-Alt
The best tomatoes should have high levels of both acidity and sweetness the best sauces will have those flavors as well, but they need to be in balance. Slow cooking is the best way to achieve it.
Canned tomatoes invariably have some citric acid added to them in order to increase their acidity. Slowly reducing the puréed tomatoes on the stovetop not only creates new flavor compounds, adding complexity to the sauce, but it also gets rid of water content, intensifying the flavors that are already there.
One other reason to go slow: If you aren’t really careful, high heat can cause unwanted browning, created roasted, caramel notes in your sauce. This isn’t a good thing. I tend not to be careful, so I hedge my bets by keeping the heat minimal.
After an hour of slow simmering, the sauce was nearly perfect, but was missing a couple of key elements. A little extra sugar helped to balance out the newly-intensified acidity, and a pinch of pepper flakes added a not-overwhelming level of heat. Cooking a new batch and adding the pepper flakes to sauté in the butter-olive oil mixture right from the beginning made it even better.
In the end I had a sauce with just the right balance of flavor for my New York-style pies. Sweet, a little hot, and intensely savory, with a texture that helps it meld in beautifully with the cheese, the way a good pie should. And here’s a non-shocker: It’s also good served with pasta.
Serious Eats / J. Kenji López-Alt
The Best Ny Pizza Recipe Youll Ever Need
Making pizza is an art form. It takes patience, dedication, and just the right amount of ingredients to make it to the top. Plus, cheese, cheese, and more cheese. But thats just me.
- 3 3/4 cupsbread flour
- 1/2tspinstant dry yeast
- 1 1/4cupslukewarm water
- 2tbspvegetable or olive oil
- 3 tbspgranulated sugar
- dashkosher salt
You May Like: Mad Dog 357 Plutonium No 9 Hospital
How To Make Grammy’s New York Style Pizza Sauce
- 1Lightly sauté the minced garlic in olive oil, being careful not to burn the garlic . Add the crushed tomatoes, salt, oregano & basil. Add the red pepper if you like it spicy.
- 2Cook on low for about 20 minutes or until oil comes to the top. Stir it occasionally so it doesn’t burn on the bottom.
- 3Use it immediately or store in the refrigerator or freezer.
- Last Step: Don’t forget to share! Make all your friends drool by posting a picture of your finished recipe on your favorite social network. And don’t forget to tag Just A Pinch and include #justapinchrecipes so we can see it too!
New York Style Pizza And Sauce
The last and the best!!
This month its Baking Partners Challenge #10 and the chosen one was New York Style Pizza and Sauce from Scratch. There were 3 recipes of pizza suggested & we were free to choose one of them.
I choose the Pizza suggested by Pam of Living Rancho Deluxe basically because the crust did not need bread flour that the others needed and based on the general discussion on the Baking Partners page I reached the conclusion that the others will not give me the needed crust. But that does not mean I am not going to try that out sometime, hopefully, sooner I will be making the others too.
Needless to say that we enjoyed the pizza a lot. The girls were especially thrilled that I was making pizza for lunch!! As they had different jobs they were in a hurry but that did not stop them 2-3 slices then off they went but at night they continued with their Pizza Party for dinner!
Yield about 3-4 cups enough for 12-inch pies
Active Time: 15 minutes
Special Equipment: hand blender/ blender
Read Also: Is Rao’s Sauce Keto Friendly
New York Style Pizza Sauce
I have an obsession, a pizza obsession. I have a super duper long post in the wings about pizza dough that I need to shrink down but I have a lot of feelings about pizza. That, though, is another post. My pizza obsession needs a sauce. I used to use Prego spaghetti sauce as pizza sauce. Its something I have done for years since I was a teenager, the best Prego sauce was Roasted Garlic Parmesan, mmmm. I figured after a while, if I take pride in my pizza making, I would need to find a good pizza sauce to accompany my awesome pizza dough. SidetrackI love Cooks Illustrated, they always have awesome recipes and some of the best have come from one of their former chefs J. Kenji Lopez-Alt. One of his best recipes was how to make the best shake shack hamburger clone. Long story short, he left Cooks Illustrated to become the Managing Culinary Director for Serious Eats, which is where I found this recipe. It is now my go to sauce recipe. Its got great tomato flavor and hints of garlic, oregano and fresh basil. It is a really great New York style pizza sauce.
What Is New York Style Pizza
New York Style Pizza is defined by its crust. Unlike Neapolitan crust, it is thin, crisp, and less bubbly. The crust at the end should be a bit thicker, but the middle should be thin and soft enough to fold. The dough is topped with just a thin layer of sauce, and dry, shredded mozzarella is used instead of fresh, which gives you a more even melt and those lovely browned spots of cheese.
Some people say that the water in New York is what makes NY-style pizza so delicioussome restaurants even have New York water sent to them across the country for that authentic taste because of the waters pH balance. Some even call the areas water the champagne of water! Chefs outside of New York dont subscribe to that thinking, and neither do I because this crust is just like a slice from NYC!
Read Also: Campbell’s Oven Sauces Creamy Garlic Butter Chicken
Gemmas Pro Chef Tips For Making The Best New York Style Pizza
- Use my 5 Minute Pizza Sauce! It comes together in a blender in no time!
- Bread flour gives you a chewier dough with more bite, but you can also use the same amount of all-purpose flour if you dont have bread flour. Just note the dough will be softer.
- If you have active dry yeast, you can use 2 1/2-teaspoons of it but remember to let it sit until bubbly in warm water before adding it to the dry ingredients.
- Make the dough up to 3 days in advance!
- This dough can be frozen for up to 4 weeks. Defrost at room temperature and then bake off per the recipe.
What Else Do I Need For A New York Pizza
Now that you have made the best pizza sauce you will ever have, you just need a few other things for the very best New York style pizza recipe!
Pizza Dough: They say that there is nothing like a true New York pizza crust. Apparently, there is something in the water that makes it impossible to recreate. But this cold ferment pizza dough recipe has great flavor and texture, and makes a darn good pizza!
Premium Quality Mozzarella Cheese: The third most important ingredient for a New York pizza is the cheese. Shredded cheese, to be exact.
You won’t find slices of fresh mozzarella cheese on a New York pizza. Instead, sprinkle shredded low moisture mozzarella over the sauce. The key here is that it needs to be whole milk, low moisture cheese. Skip the low-fat and pre-shredded cheeses, and you will end up with the best creamy, delicious topping for your pizza.
Additional toppings: You can add your favorite toppings, like pepperoni or sausage. Just keep the toppings minimal to let the crust and sauce shine through. Finally, sprinkle some shredded Parmesan cheese over the top and the pizza is ready to bake.
Read Also: Rao Sauce Where To Buy
S To Making The Best Pizza Sauce
Step 1: Saute the herbs in olive oil and butter. This builds the foundation of the sauce.
Step Two: Add in all of the remaining ingredients. The tomatoes, onions, basil, and sugar go into the pot.
Step Three: Puree the tomatoes and other ingredients together. This can be done using a hand blender or food processor.
My family likes a smooth sauce with no tomato chunks, so I puree the ingredients until they are smooth. But if you like some chunks in your sauce then just blend it for a shorter amount of time.
Step Four: Simmer the sauce for an hour over low heat, with the sauce gently bubbling. The flavors deepen as the sauce cooks, and in the end, you will have a rich and delicious pizza sauce!
How Do I Make The Bottom Of My Pizza Crust Crispy
Baking the pizza on a preheated surface will cook and crisp up the bottom crust while the oven is baking the top. An hour before you bake the pizza, move the oven rack to the second-highest position, put a pizza stone on the rack, and preheat the oven to 500 degrees F. When ready, open the oven and shake the pizza onto the hot stone.
Read Also: Palo Alto Pepper Sauce
How To Make New York Style Pizza
Keep in mind that the dough does need to rest at least one day to rise and build up gluten, so make your dough the day before you plan to make your pizza! Here is how you make New York Style Pizza :
A Blend Of Fats Builds Flavor
Most pizza sauces start with a base of extra-virgin olive oil, which is fine, but there’s a better option. Is there anyone in the food world who has yet to hear about Marcella Hazan’s amazingly simple and delicious tomato sauce with onion and butter? Made by simply simmering tomatoes, butter, and a couple of onion halves , it produces an exceptionally smooth, complex, and delicious sauce.
French chefs have known for years that adding butter to a sauce can help round off the rough edges and give it a richer, fuller mouthfeel. This pizza sauce is no exception. Simply replacing one of the two tablespoons of extra-virgin olive oil I was using with unsalted butter added sweetness, complexity, and smoothness to my sauce without creating any extra work.
I also decided to use Marcella’s onion trick, further upping the sweetness.
Don’t Miss: Where To Buy Rao’s Pasta Sauce
How To Make Your Own Pizza Sauce Ny & Neapolitan Sauce Recipes
There are two distinct styles when it comes to tomato-based pizza sauces and although many people choose one and stick to it, I think we should be using both. Not only do they both have their own distinct flavor but they also have their own purposes.
A Neapolitan style sauce has to be one of the easiest pizza sauces to make if not the easiest sauce to make. It requires little more than adding ingredients to a food processor. Theres no cooking, heck theres not really a need for a knife except to peel a couple cloves of garlic. The sauce is light and bright and really works for a classic Margherita pizza. I usually use this sauce for pizzas that have a few pieces of fresh mozzarella and only one or two other toppings. Since the sauce isnt cooked it needs to be exposed while the pizza is cooking. This allows some of the moisture to evaporate while still maintaining a bright tomato flavor and crispy crust.
New York style pizza holds a special place in the hearts of millions. Its that classic pizza by the slice with all its cheesy goodness and glorious toppings. With all the cheese and toppings its important to have a sauce that is rich and flavorful. By adding a few more ingredients and cooking the sauce, we are able to get a great tomato flavor. This sauce takes longer than the Neapolitan sauce but it is crucial to have a thicker and more forward flavored sauce to stand up to the extra cheese and toppings.
Neapolitan Style Tomato Sauce
- ¼ cup extra oil
- Salt to taste
