March | 2018 | Our Austintatious Life

OK, I know its easy to pick up a jar of pizza sauce at the grocery but what do you do if you find yourself ready to make a pizza but don’t have any pre-made pizza sauce? Um, you make it yourself and after the first time you make, you might never buy pizza sauce again. We’ve been making our own pizzas for a few years now have settled on a couple techniques. One is to use the pizza dough from Trader Joe’s because it’s so convenient and it taste good. The other method is to use Trader Joe’s Lavash Bread. We’ve used a lot of different sauces for the pizza but we’d never set out to make a traditional pizza sauce because we always have a jar or can of a store bought sauce. One day we realized we didn’t have any pizza sauce so we looked online for directions. There are a lot of them but we didn’t want to spend hours simmering a sauce and we didn’t want to use a lot of ingredients. When we found a selection with simple ingredients and simple cooking methods, we took the flavor profile we were looking for and came up with this easy pizza sauce recipe. We’ve used it a number of times now and it always turns out great.

Some comments on the ingredients – this is supposed to be easy and from items already in your pantry. If you don’t have the separate containers of oregano, basil and rosemary, you can substitute with 1 1/2 tablespoons of Italian Seasoning mix. If you don’t have garlic cloves you can substitute with other forms of garlic. Check out this conversion for using garlic powder, garlic salt, etc.

We also found a similar recipe that uses 1 (28-ounce) can of whole tomatoes. You could use this instead of the tomato paste and 1 1/2 cups of water if you don’t have the tomato paste on hand.

Ingredients

6 oz can tomato paste
1 1/2 cups water
1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil
4 cloves garlic
salt to taste
black pepper to taste
1/2 tablespoon dried oregano
1/2 tablespoon dried basil
1/2 tablespoon dried rosemary, crushed
1 teaspoon of crushed red pepper flakes (optional)

Instructions

Combine all ingredients into a saucepan. Cook over medium heat until mixture boils.

Reduce heat to low and simmer 10 minutes, or until it has the thick consistency of pizza sauce.

Allow sauce to cool and spread on pizza dough and add the toppings of your choice.

Finished bacon jam

This post is long over due. I thought I had shared one earlier this summer but it appears it was left in draft limbo land. The idea for this post came from a pizza we had at Cane Rosso here in Austin, TX. You might have seen this restaurant on the TV show “Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives” or written up in Austin or Dallas food blogs. It’s a great restaurant with fun pizzas. One of the ones we tried when we visited their Austin, TX, location was a bacon jam pizza. We had never heard of anything like this and immediately fell in love with the flavors. A quick Google search resulted in a lot more recipes than I expected.

We took a few of them and came up with a version that we really like. We use the jam to put on pizza but it’s got so much more potential that you can do anything you want with it.

Ingredients

1 lb bacon, chopped
2 tablespoons butter
4 cups of yellow onion, diced
1 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons minced garlic
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup apple cider vinegar
1 teaspoon ground black pepper
1 tablespoon of chopped hot pepper (we used a red jalapeno in the pictures)
1/2 cup water
2 teaspoons balsamic vinegar
2 teaspoons extra-virgin olive oil

Direction

chopped bacon ready to be cooked

Place the bacon in a large pot and cook over medium until the bacon is crispy and rendered fat is foaming and white. It should take about 10 minutes. Pour bacon and rendered fat into a strainer placed over a bowl to collect the fat. Save the fat for the next step.

cooking bacon

Return the pot to medium-low heat and add 2 tables spoons of bacon fat and 2 tablespoons of butter in the pot. Add the chopped onions and 1 teaspoon of salt and saute until the onions are soft and translucent. It should take about 10 minutes.

picture of ingredients

Onions sauteing

Add the garlic, brown sugar, apple cider vinegar, black pepper and cayenne to the onion mixture. Once mixed, add the cooked bacon and stir in the water. Cook until the jam is a reddish-brown brick color and has a jam consistency. This will take about 10 to 15 minutes.