Easy Low Carb Pizza Sauce (and Pasta Sauce Base)

This sugar free, no-cook pizza sauce can be used the minute you mix it up, or it can be refrigerated or frozen for later. In addition to pizza, I use this as the starter for pasta sauce and the sauce for my Baked Italian Chicken. A half cup—a quarter of a batch—will cover a 13″x9″ pan pizza, and the entire recipe costs me less than $1.50. (That’s less than the brand name sugared pizza sauce, but a little more than the generic. Almost a Price Gloat, but not quite!)

My recipe is adapted from this one; my version favors the seasonings I usually have on hand, and reflects my conviction that Friends Don’t Let Friends Buy Tomato Sauce. Please note that my granulated garlic isn’t quite the same thing as garlic powder; check out this handy info page for substitutions.

Easy Low Carb Pizza Sauce

Ingredients

• 2 6-ounce cans of tomato paste
• 1 cup water
• 1 Tbsp Italian seasoning
• 3/4 tsp granulated garlic
• 1 tsp ground paprika
• 1/4 tsp salt

Directions

1. Place tomato paste in a small mixing bowl. Add water, using some of the water to rinse the last of the paste out of the cans. Stir well. (I whisk it with a fork.)
2. Add seasonings and stir again. You will have a very thick pizza sauce; add more water if you like a thinner sauce. (I don’t.)
3. Refrigerate leftovers up to one week; freeze for up to a year.

Yield: About 2 cups.

Nutritional Information:Each half-cup portion contains about 17.2 g carbohydrates, 4.4 g fiber, 12.8 g net carbs, 3.9 g protein, 0.5 g fat, and 75.3 calories. (Divide that by 8 slices of pizza, and that’s not bad!)