A couple of weeks ago, I was planning a birthday party for my daughter at which I planned to serve pizza rolls. While checking ingredients, I realized that I had no tomatoes to make sauce, but I did have two quarts of tomato juice left over from Bloody Marys. Knowing that I was unlikely to use the juice for anything else, I decided to try making my pizza sauce from the juice, although I was a little concerned that juice would have too much liquid to cook down into a nice, thick sauce. Quite the contrary – it turned out that the sauce was a great way to use up the leftover tomato juice!

In fact, juice was an even better choice than tomatoes in some ways. Because the juice is nice and smooth, you can skip the step of peeling and seeding tomatoes or removing the skins and seeds with a food mill. The sauce ended up velvety-smooth and rich right out of the pan. Best of all, cooking the juice down actually took less time than cooking down chopped tomatoes!

This rich, hearty sauce would also be excellent over pasta!

Here’s how I made mine; you can, of course, substitute juice for fresh or canned tomatoes in your own favorite recipe. For reference, I ended up with about three cups of sauce from two quarts of juice.

From-Scratch Pizza Sauce with Tomato Juice

1 tablespoon lard or other cooking fat

1/4 cup finely chopped onion

4 cloves garlic, minced

2 teaspoons dried Italian herbs or 2 tablespoons chopped fresh basil, parsley, and oregano

1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes

2 quarts tomato juice

Salt and ground pepper to taste

In a 4-quart saucepan, warm the cooking fat over medium heat. Add onions; sauté until translucent and tender. Add the garlic, Italian herbs, and red pepper flakes and sauté a minute longer until fragrant. Slowly add the tomato juice, stirring to combine. Reduce the heat to low, cover the pan with a splatter screen, and allow the sauce to simmer, stirring occasionally, until reduced to your preferred consistency. This should take about 10 to 15 minutes. Once the sauce is reduced, taste for seasoning and add salt and ground pepper and more red pepper if desired. Yield: About 3 cups of sauce.

If you make this recipe, please let me know what you thought in the comments below!

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