No-Cook Pizza Sauce in 5 minutes!

This is the easiest and quickest (vegan) pizza sauce you can make at home. I am telling you it takes 5 minutes tops. You need a quality tomato sauce and the right seasoning to make the perfect homemade pizza sauce. No cooking is needed. Mix, spread, and bake.

Everyone has a favorite pizza. Mine has a thin pizza crust, smooth red pizza sauce, melted mozzarella cheese, and fresh arugula (rocket salad). If you also need it to be gluten-free, like me, let me show you the BEST Ultra-thin Gluten-free Pizza Crust recipe (no specialty flour, no xanthan gum, easy to roll, and no-knead). What is your favorite pizza? Let us know in the comments.

Pizza sauce vs marinara sauce

In both cases, the main ingredients are usually tomato, garlic, onion, olive oil, herbs and spices like basil, oregano, salt, and black pepper. The crucial difference being that marinara sauce is pre-cooked, while pizza sauce shouldn’t be (or it should rather be cooked on top of the pizza).

If you are making marinara sauce, you start with sauteeing onion and garlic. Then adding tomatoes or tomato sauce to be cooked with Italian seasoning. It also remains a bit chunky, which I have never ever seen on a pizza crust. See our Marinara Sauce (Vegan) recipe here.

If you are making a pizza sauce from scratch, you take a food processor and add ripe, juicy tomatoes, and Italian seasoning. Puree them thoroughly. Spread it on pizza and bake it with your favorite topping. Check out this Authentic Italian Pizza Sauce recipe.

It is a vegan pizza sauce from tomato sauce

Tomatoes are one of the most popular veggies around the world. There are certainly so many different forms they are manufactured. You can buy tomato paste, tomato puree, tomato sauce, chopped canned tomato, etc. But which form of tomatoes is the perfect candidate to make a delicious homemade pizza sauce?

As I explained in the previous section, pizza sauce should be vegan and made of raw tomatoes. It is not always easy to find juicy, ripe, sweet tomatoes like San Marzano or Heirloom. If you can’t, your best option is to make this quick pizza sauce using sieved raw tomato puree aka “passata”. It will not only be sweet but silky smooth as well, which may be hard to achieve at home without a power blender.

We use Cirio Passata* or Mutti’s Passata*, but there are other brands you can buy. It is a super creamy un-cooked tomato sauce. Or rather a creamy mash of peeled raw tomatoes. It is thin so it will not overpower the topping like a tomato puree or tomato paste would. These two have a rather concentrated flavor. It is also thick enough to spread but will not flow over your pizza crust. See perfect attributes to make homemade pizza sauce. See on the below picture our delicious Ultra-thin Gluten-free Pizza Crust with this quick pizza sauce and topped with mozzarella and arugula (rocket salad).

How to make this vegan Pizza Sauce?

Collect and measure your ingredients: tomato passata sauce, dried oregano, dried basil, garlic powder, salt, and black pepper. Mix it well and they are ready to be spread all over your pizza crust. If you use fresh ingredients, chop them finely but keep a couple of basil leaves for decoration. See all vegan and gluten-free. Not to mention sugar-free and oil-free in contrary to some of the jarred or canned pizza sauces.

What else can you add?

This vegan pizza sauce is perfect as it is. If we would like to add more flavors, we usually add it as a topping. However, here are some quick tips to enhance the sauce further depending on your taste.

• Spicy – add chili flakes or sriracha or hot chili powder
• Cheezy – add vegan parmesan or nutrition yeast
• Thicker – add tomato paste
• Richer – add a dash of red wine to make it richer

More ways to use this no-cook pizza sauce

This pizza sauce can be used in other ways than spreading on your favorite pizza crust. It works perfectly in any recipes calling for an Italian tomato sauce like:

• Vegan Spaghetti Bolognese
• Vegan Eggplant Parmesan
• Vegan Moussaka
• Vegan Lasagna with Lentil Ragu
• Vegan Cabbage Lasagna
• Quinoa Sweet Potato Chili
• Vegan Bean Chili with Millet

FAQs and Substitutions

How to store it?

The sauce is perfect for batch cooking. You can easily store it in the fridge for up to a week without any problem. 

Can you freeze it? 

Store any leftovers per serving (in a jar, in a ziplock bag, or air-tight container) in a freezer and thaw whenever you need it. 

This No-cook Pizza Sauce recipe is meat-free, dairy-free, and egg-free. It is also suitable for vegan, vegetarian, nut-free, and gluten-free diets. It can WFPB-compliant (whole foods plant-based).

More quick sauce recipes

You can browse through our Vegan Sauce Recipes  or our Quick Vegan Meals collection or check out

• Hidden Vegetable Pasta Sauce
• Caramelized Carrot Pasta Sauce
• Cashew Alfredo Sauce
• Vegan Mac and Cheese Sauce
• Vegan Bechamel Sauce/ Vegan White Sauce