Three No-Cook Pizza Sauces: Smooth, Chunky, and NY-NJ

The best pizza sauce in the world takes less than 10 minutes to make and never touches a stove. This isn’t laziness — it’s the consensus of every serious pizza authority we’ve consulted. Canned San Marzano tomatoes are already cooked during the canning process. They cook again on the pizza in the oven. Simmering them beforehand means cooking them three times, which kills the fresh brightness that great pizza sauce should have.

Here are three base sauces that cover everything from a minimal Neapolitan to a full-flavored New York slice. All three are uncooked. All three are better than anything you can buy in a jar. For the broader debate on raw vs. cooked sauce across pizza styles, see our pizza sauce explainer.

Sauce 1: Forkish Smooth (Neapolitan, NY, Most Styles)

This is the universal base — Forkish’s recipe from Flour Water Salt Yeast, scaled for one 28-oz can. Makes enough for 5 pizzas.

Method

1. Drain the tomatoes in a colander for 10-15 minutes. This step is critical. The packing liquid in canned tomatoes is darker, more acidic, and often has a slightly metallic quality that’s separate from the tomato flavor itself. Discard the liquid.

2. Combine. Transfer drained tomatoes to a bowl. Add EVOO, garlic (if using), salt, oregano, and chile flakes (if using).

3. Blend with an immersion blender until smooth. Alternatively, pulse in a food processor.

4. Do not cook. Use immediately or refrigerate up to 5 days.

Notes

For a true Neapolitan Margherita, skip the garlic, oregano, and chile flakes — Gemignani’s Napoletana sauce is nothing but San Marzano tomatoes passed through a food mill with fine sea salt. The sauce should be thin enough that you can see the dough through it.

The drain time matters more than any seasoning. Gemignani goes further: he recommends rinsing the tomatoes after draining to remove residual dark juice entirely, then evaluating the actual tomato color and flavor before deciding what to add.

Sauce 2: Forkish Chunky (Pan Pizza, Al Taglio, Rustic Styles)

Same source can. Different technique. This is the texture-forward variant — irregular tomato pulp instead of a smooth puree. Makes enough for 2-3 pizzas.

Method

1. Drain the tomatoes in a colander for 10-15 minutes. Discard the liquid.

2. Push through. Press the drained tomatoes through the colander with a wooden spoon, pressing for about 30 seconds to break them into chunky pulp. You want irregular pieces, not a smooth puree.

3. Finish. Stir in EVOO and salt.

4. Do not cook. Use immediately or refrigerate up to 5 days.

Notes

Texture is the point. Irregular tomato chunks provide visual interest and a more rustic character than a blended sauce. This is excellent for pan pizza, al taglio, Sicilian, and any thick-crust style where the sauce sits in a deeper layer and chunkiness is desirable.

Roasted variation: For even deeper flavor, break each tomato into 3-4 pieces by hand. Spread on a sheet pan with EVOO, salt, and a few sprigs of thyme. Slow-roast at 325F for 20-30 minutes. This concentrates the flavor and reduces moisture — excellent for pan pizza and deep-dish applications where excess liquid is the enemy.

Sauce 3: Gemignani’s NY-NJ Tomato Sauce

The most complex of the three sauces and the only one specifically built for New York-style pizza. Source: Tony Gemignani’s The Pizza Bible. Makes about 1 cup (245g), enough for 2 pizzas.

Method

1. Combine the base. Put the ground tomatoes, tomato paste, oregano, salt, and EVOO in a bowl.

2. Puree with an immersion blender until smooth.

3. Hand-crush. Take 55g of canned whole tomatoes and crush them by hand — squeeze them through your fingers into rough, irregular pieces. Stir the hand-crushed tomatoes into the pureed base.

4. Do not cook. Refrigerate. Make at least a day ahead — the flavors need time to marry.

5. Temper. Bring to room temperature before using. Gemignani’s commandment: never put cold sauce on pizza dough.

Notes

The ground tomato and paste base gives the sauce body — thick enough to stand up to a generous layer of grated low-moisture mozzarella and a 7-12 minute bake without turning watery. The hand-crushed tomatoes stirred in at the end add textural contrast — little bursts of fresh tomato flavor against the smooth, concentrated base.

Why three forms of tomato? Each does a different job. Ground tomatoes provide the liquid base. Paste provides concentrated flavor and the thickness needed to cling to dough through the longer NY bake. Hand-crushed pieces provide brightness and texture. Combined, they produce a sauce with more depth than any single tomato product can deliver alone.

Which Sauce for Which Pizza?

Tomato Buying Guide

The sauce is 80-90% tomato, so tomato quality dominates the result. Here’s what to reach for, drawn from Gemignani’s professional and supermarket shortlists. For an in-depth head-to-head, see our canned tomato brand test.

Bianco DiNapoli (California-grown, organic) is Forkish’s favorite domestic option and is increasingly available in regular grocery stores. It’s also on Gemignani’s recommended supermarket list.

The Gemignani test: Buy 3-4 brands. Drain each can. Rinse off the dark juice. Compare the actual tomato color and flavor. The DOP label guarantees origin and processing standards but doesn’t guarantee superiority in every comparison.

You can find the brands above on Amazon — Bianco DiNapoli, Strianese, Contadina paste — though specialty Italian groceries sometimes have better prices on the Italian-imported lines.

Tips

• Always drain whole tomatoes before processing. The 10-15 minutes in a colander removes packing liquid that would make your sauce watery and metallic.

• Use whole peeled, not crushed or diced. Crushed and diced canned tomatoes typically contain calcium chloride (a firming agent) that changes texture — the pieces won’t break down as cleanly and the mouthfeel can turn slightly grainy. Whole peeled tomatoes are just tomatoes in juice.

• Room temperature before assembly. Pull sauce from the fridge when you pull dough. Both need to reach room temperature before they meet.

• Amount per pizza: 60-80g for Neapolitan (thin — see dough through it; this is the EU TSG specification when mozzarella is also used). 80-100g for New York. 120-150g for pan and Sicilian. The thicker the crust, the more sauce it can carry without going soggy.

• All three sauces freeze well. Portion into ice cube trays or small containers. Freeze up to 3 months. Thaw in the fridge overnight.

• No salt by weight here. These recipes use volume measures for salt because the absolute quantities are small enough that crystal size matters less than it does in dough work. Taste before applying.

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