New York-Style Pizza Sauce Recipe

New York-Style Pizza Sauce Recipe

In contrast to Neapolitan pie, which generally uses the simple, uncooked sauce made of canned or fresh tomatoes, salt, and spices, New York by-the-slice pie recipes use a highly seasoned cooked sauce. The secret to great sauces of the New York style is to create an equilibrium between acidity, sweetness, and heat, along with a distinct herbal backbone. Additionally, it requires a light texture that can spread but is thick enough to prevent your pizza from getting too wet during the de rigor fold-and-carry.

It is possible to make the most simple recipes in a New York minute: puree tomatoes, olive oil, garlic, and Italian seasoning and reduce it on the flame at a simmer. The result is not terrible–certainly an improvement from the overly sweet and sour canned pizza sauces, but the goal for us in The Food Lab is for something that’s more than “not bad.” We’re after excellent. We’re ready to go to the kitchen.

A Blend of Fats Builds Flavor

Most pizza sauces begin with extra-virgin olive oils, which is excellent; however, there’s an alternative. Are there any people in the food world who haven’t heard about Marcella Hazan’s simple, tasty tomato sauce made with butter and onion? Simmering butter, tomatoes make it, and a few onions halves (the onion is removed after cooking). This creates a silky rich, delicious, and complex sauce.

French chefs have realized for many years that adding butter to sauces can smooth those uneven edges and provide an extra rich, fuller taste. This pizza sauce isn’t an exception. Changing one tablespoon of extra-virgin olive oil that I used with unsalted butter added sweetness, richness, and smoothness to the sauce without any extra work. (I left some olive oil in to provide a spicy bite.)

Also, I decided to use Marcella’s onion trick to increase the sweetness further.

Fresh Herbs Aren’t Always the Best

Most recipes require dried oregano, or “Italian seasoning,” typically dried basil and oregano. My initial idea was to substitute dry herbs by using fresh ones. Imagine my surprise when, after making two sauces simultaneously, one using dried oregano and one made with fresh oregano, was not much of a difference.

Many chefs believe that fresh herb is better than dried ones, which is sometimes. Most herbs have flavoring compounds that tend to be more volatile than water. This means that any drying process that strips moisture can also eliminate flavor.

“rosemary, marjoram, bay leaf, thyme, and sage fare similarly well in the drying process.”

However, this isn’t often the situation, and here’s the reason. The savory plants that typically develop in hot, dry climates — like oregano, for instance, have flavor compounds that are stable in high temperatures and are contained inside the leaves. They must endure the extreme temperatures and the lack of humidity in their natural habitat. Other arid climate-friendly herbs, such as rosemary, marjoram bay leaf, thyme, and sage, also perform well during drying.

I discovered that provided I ensured that I cooked dried herbs long enough to reduce their texture (I sauteed them right from the start in the butter-oil mixture). The flavor I got from the dried herbs was as great as fresh, affordable, and accessible.

Basil, On the contrary, needs to be used fresh. I chopped it in the middle the first time I added it, just like other fresh herbs, to preserve its flavor; however, I found it unsuitable as pizza sauce. It was more beneficial to add a few sprigs when it was cooking. Then remove them after the sauce is finished.

Puree Your Canned Tomatoes

I knew I would prefer canned tomatoes since they’re more reliable all year. (I find myself shivering at the thought of creating a fresh tomato sauce using bland tomato sauce made from winter ones.) What tomatoes should I make use of? Every brand offers five varieties:

The whole tomatoes that are peeled are the most unprocessed offering. They comprise whole tomatoes that are peeled (either through steaming or treated by the lye) and then packed into tomato juice or puree. Juice-packed tomatoes are not as processed and thus more adaptable. Puree tomatoes are always a “cooked” flavor, even when consumed from the can.

Diced tomatoes are whole tomatoes sliced by machines and put into juice or purée. The significant difference with whole tomatoes is that frequently diced tomatoes have calcium chloride added, which is a firming agent that assists the dice in maintaining its shape inside the container. The issue is that calcium chloride makes tomatoes too rigid. They don’t break down as well in cooking. Choose brands that do not contain calcium chloride if you wish to use these.

Tomatoes crushed are wildly different from one brand to the next. There are no restrictions regarding the labeling of crushed tomatoes. Therefore, one company’s “crushed” may be a lumpy mash, and another may be a smooth puree. Due to this, it is generally best to stay clear of crushed items and prefer crushing your tomatoes.

Tomato Puree is an uncooked and strained tomato product. It is an excellent substitute for sauces that cook quickly but will not have the richness of slowly reducing a less processed tomato product. Put the puree out on the shelf to make this sauce.

Tomato paste is concentrated tomato juice. When cooking tomatoes fresh, all the larger solids are squeezed out, and the liquid is cooked to a moisture level of 76 percent or less. It’s great to add an intense umami flavor to braises and stews. However, it’s not what I’m looking for with this sauce.

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