Making the most AUTHENTIC NY-Style pizza sauce possible

So how do we make an authentic New York-style pizza sauce? I thought that'd be an easy question to answer, but the more I looked into it, the more questions I had. And I actually found that almost every single New York-style sauce recipe you'll see online isn't very authentic. And it's really for one main reason. To replicate that authentic New York pizza taste, we need to use canned tomatoes. But that's not the part that people get wrong. What most people don't realize is that the type of canned tomatoes you use is actually really important. You see, an authentic New York-style pizza sauce is made using American-grown tomatoes rather than the Italian-grown tomatoes that are used in a Neapolitan pizza, which have a completely different flavor profile. But the main difference that we're worried about is that American-grown tomatoes tend to be sweeter. And that sweetness is a defining characteristic of a New York-style sauce. So it's very important that we get it right. I mean, some New York pizzerias even sweeten their sauce with extra sugar, but often the sweetness of the tomatoes alone will be enough. So after a lot of research online, trying to figure out which brands actual New York pizzerias use, I settled on eight options. And I'm gonna do a blind taste test to figure out which is best. But actually, before we can do that properly, we need to answer one more very important question. To cook or not to cook? That's the question. Now, based on my research, the vast majority of New York pizza shops don't cook their sauce. And it makes sense because when you cook a sauce, you do bring out the sort of natural sweetness of the tomatoes, but you also take away some of their brightness and acidity. But there are some shops that cook their sauce, so it's definitely worth testing. And even though I haven't decided on a brand yet, it doesn't really matter because here we're just looking at the difference between a raw and a cooked sauce. So what I did was separate my puree into two separate containers. And with one, I simmered it over the stovetop for about 20 minutes. I found that any longer than that, and you lose out on too much acidity, and it starts to taste more like a pasta sauce than a pizza sauce. So over that 20 minutes, the sauce reduced by about 20%. So what I did with my other jar was just strain off a bit more liquid to make the consistencies the same between the two. And after letting the cooked sauce cool, it was time for the taste test. So I would say it's pretty much exactly what I expected. The cooked sauce definitely isn't quite as tangy and acidic, but it did maintain a pretty good amount of acidity, which I was kind of surprised about. The raw sauce was definitely more acidic though. And although it wasn't super sweet, I think by the time we add sugar to the actual pizza sauce, it's gonna taste pretty good. One thing I did notice though, is the flavor of the cooked sauce seems to be a bit more concentrated. And I think that's because as we simmered the sauce down, we were evaporating off just the water. Whereas when we strained out the raw sauce, that remaining liquid wasn't pure water. And so the resulting sauce isn't quite as concentrated. So based on this, I can't really say which one I like better. I mean, they both taste pretty solid. I think the only way to find out for sure is to bake some pizza with them. Now to make this a more true comparison, I also added a third variation here, which is the raw sauce with a bit of sugar added. I think that since the raw sauce isn't quite as sweet, you do need to add that sugar to get a true feel for what it should taste like. And again, the sauce is definitely a bit thicker than I would like it, but that's fine because we're just trying to compare the flavor here. All right. So in addition to the plain version, I also made one with cheese, so I can get a true feel for what it's gonna taste like on the pizza. Cooked, raw, raw sweet. And that's the same on this side. All right. So to me, there's definitely a clear winner here. It's not the raw sauce. This one was just a little bit too one dimensional. It had a nice tanginess to it, but there wasn't a lot of sweetness. So that one's out. Now it's between our cooked sauce and our sweetened raw sauce. So while they both do have a decent balance between the acidity and the sweetness, the raw sauce just definitely popped a lot more with that nice tanginess and acidity from the tomatoes. Again, even with this 20 minute simmer time, I think the cooked sauce just lost too much of that brightness and developed more of a pasta saucy flavor. And I mean, looking at them, you can tell a pretty big difference. The cooked sauce is a much deeper, darker red, where the uncooked sauce was a brighter, sort of pinker red, reminding me a lot more of the sauce at Joe's. And canned tomatoes are actually cooked a little bit during the canning process. So I think it actually takes away from the flavor if you cook them beyond that point. So again, for me, the choice is clear. From here on out, we're gonna go with the raw tomatoes. And of course, we'll be sure to add sugar as part of the sauce recipe to balance out those flavors. But before we can work on that sauce recipe, we need to decide on a brand of tomatoes. So let's get back to our taste test. And the brands I'll be testing are 7-Eleven, Tomato Magic, and Full Red, all of which are made by the same company and they're grown in California. And then we've also got Red Pack, which are grown in the Midwest. So these are all commercial grade products that only come in those big number 10 cans at food service stores, which means that they are what restaurants use, but they're not quite as accessible for the everyday consumer. So I'm also gonna compare with a few retail brands that pretty much everybody should be able to find. The first of those being Bianco Di Napoli, which is actually what I noticed that Scar's Pizza uses. They're also grown in California and they come in both whole tomato form and crushed. So I figured I'd try both. Then we've got Cento or Chento, whatever you call it, but these seem to be the most common brand that I see at grocery stores, even though they are grown in Italy. And then I also bought a generic grocery store brand for good measure. So all of the commercial grade tomatoes are either ground, crushed, or pureed because your average New York slice joint isn't gonna take the time to process whole tomatoes themselves. But there are a few higher end places that do. So that's another reason I included the Bianco Di Napoli and a couple of other whole peeled tomatoes to compare with. And of course, I wanted to eliminate any potential bias. So I blended and strained each tomato until they were all the exact same consistency. And I also added labels to each bowl so that you can see which is which, but I can't. Now in hindsight, I definitely strained these a bit more than I would for an actual pizza sauce, but that's fine because we're just comparing the flavor here. I'm just gonna go ahead and put this one here. These two are definitely the worst. This one just doesn't have a lot of flavor. This one has sort of a weird bitterness to it. This is very sweet. Almost tastes like it has sugar added already. Not bad, but I think by the time that we were to cook it on a pizza, it'd be a little bit too sweet. This one, again, kind of bitter and weak tasting. All right, so this one was definitely my favorite. It had a super bright, fresh taste to it with just the right amount of tanginess and a little bit of sweetness as well. These two, though, came in at a pretty close second. Honestly, I couldn't really distinguish between the two. Again, they had some pretty nice acidity, just not quite as much of that fresh tomato taste. And then this one would come in not too far behind these. Again, it had pretty much the same general flavor as these, but just not quite as potent. So let's see what we're working with. Number one, Red Pack. I'm actually kind of surprised about that. It comes in at a super good price, and it was actually the only one that had a pretty good consistency without even having to blend it at all. Now tied at second, we have the 7-Eleven and the Bianco DiNapoli Whole Tomatoes. So again, the 7-Eleven was one that came in those number 10 cans. So they may not be available to everyone if you don't have a restaurant supply store near you, but these Bianco DiNapoli Tomatoes can be found at Whole Foods, and you can even buy them on Amazon. The disadvantage of these being that they are a little bit more expensive, but in a way, it's nice that they come in smaller cans so that you don't have to make giant batches of sauce and then freeze it or have it go to waste. So between these three, there should be at least one decent option that you can find in your area. And actually, after doing a bit more research, I found that Red Pack actually makes smaller cans that are a lot more affordable than the Bianco DiNapoli Tomatoes. And they're actually pretty readily available at a lot of grocery stores. So of course, I bought some to test, and while they're not exactly the same as the version that comes in the number 10 cans, they're close enough that I would still recommend them. Basically, the main difference is that the commercial Red Pack Tomatoes are more concentrated and therefore a bit thicker than the retail version. And I also think that the commercial version tastes better, but it's probably not a big enough difference to outweigh the inconvenience of buying those big number 10 cans. All right, so here's our final lineup. Again, from best to worst. So even though we've only tasted the raw tomatoes, I feel confident enough in my three winners that we don't even need to bake a pizza with the rest. So with my three winners, I baked a pizza with each one just to make sure that they tasted just as good once they were baked. And again, I did a blind taste test just to eliminate any potential bias. All right, so between these bottom two here, I really can't tell any difference, but it doesn't matter because this one up here was the clear winner. I mean, don't get me wrong, they are all good, but this one just had a really nice brightness and acidity to it. And the acidity isn't something that you can modify by adding more salt or sugar. So to me, that is the most important trait when looking for a tomato for a pizza sauce. So let's see what it is. Yet again, it's the Red Pack. So I think we've got a pretty clear winner here. And not that it really matters because I couldn't tell the difference between the two, but this one's a 7-Eleven and this one's the Bianco DiNapoli. So again, I don't think you could go wrong with either of these, but for me, I'm gonna be using the Red Pack from here on out. Now we have to figure out the proper consistency for our sauce. And this is something that we can get a pretty good idea of just by watching some videos of New York pizzerias in action. So I'm actually surprised to see that most places use a pretty thin sauce. By the looks of it, they probably don't strain their tomatoes at all. But during my testing so far, I have preferred a slightly thicker sauce because I found that a thinner sauce just tends to make the dough a little bit more soggy. But I still wanna do an official test, so I baked three small pizzas, each with a different sauce consistency. And since the consistency of these Red Pack tomatoes is thicker than most other brands, I actually had to add some water to create my thin sauce. Then my thick sauce is just Red Pack tomatoes straight out of the can. And my extra thick sauce is strained off by about 15%. All right, so we've got the thin, thick, and then extra thick. So surprisingly, even the thin sauce didn't really have a huge impact on the crispiness of the dough, but it did have a noticeably sort of wetter surface, which I wasn't really the biggest fan of. Also, the two thicker ones did have a noticeably more concentrated flavor, which is nice as well. I actually think this middle option struck the best balance between being nicely concentrated without being too dry. But I do think we need to test it on a full-size pizza before we can decide for sure. So I made two more sauces, one with Red Pack tomatoes diluted by about 15%, and the other with the Red Pack tomatoes straight out of the can. All right, so a couple of takeaways here. Number one, to address the task at hand regarding the consistency, I think I do actually prefer the thicker sauce, even though it doesn't seem quite as traditional based on what I'm seeing from New York pizza shops. It just doesn't really make sense to me to use a wetter sauce because it just makes the pizza a little bit soggier. But maybe I'm missing something. So if anybody does know the advantage of using a thinner sauce, let me know in the comments. So I definitely think thinning it out by 15% was too much. If anything, maybe I would try thinning it out by about 5% or 10%. But the other takeaway that I'm getting here, which is possibly even more important, is that I really don't think I like olive oil in the sauce. For my last few bakes before this test, I hadn't been using olive oil in the sauce, and I noticed that the pizza was a lot less greasy than it usually was. I think that with the full fat cheese, you really just don't need that extra fat from the olive oil. And honestly, I was trying to see if I could taste the olive oil, and I really couldn't taste it at all. And I think that getting rid of the olive oil would also allow me to use a little bit more cheese than I'm using here because I don't have to worry as much about the greasiness of it. So we definitely got some important info here, but now it's time to dial in the rest of our sauce. Now, when it comes to ingredients, there are a few that are absolutely essential, a few that are sometimes added, and a few that are rarely added. Now, I've already determined that I don't wanna include olive oil, but I do think I wanna include sugar, at least a little bit, because I think it's important in order to balance out the acidity. Then I'm also gonna include oregano because personally, I think that's one of the flavors that kind of defines a New York-style pizza. Then from there, I'm also gonna test garlic and basil, but I think that anything beyond that would just be too much. Ultimately, the tomatoes are the star of the show, so I don't wanna drown them out with a bunch of other flavors, especially if those other flavors aren't considered essential. But of course, we have to take it from the beginning, testing just one ingredient at a time. So I'm starting off by making a very basic sauce consisting of red-packed tomatoes diluted with water by about 7 1⁄2%, plus some salt to taste, which in my case is about two grams of salt per 28 ounces of tomatoes. And here, I'm using the big-can red-packed tomatoes because I didn't find out about the smaller cans until after I'd finished all this testing. But since, again, those do have a thinner consistency, I found that I wouldn't need to dilute those at all. Instead, I just give them a blend to remove any big chunks, and they're good to go. So for each test, I made three pizzas, one with a large amount of the ingredient in question, one with a moderate amount, and one with little to none. So after each round, as I decide on the winner, I'm gonna add the corresponding amount of that ingredient to my mother's sauce here. So we'll sort of be building our sauce as we go along. And the first ingredient we're gonna test is the sugar. So we got low sugar, medium sugar, and then high sugar. And the high sugar is exactly what Joe's uses. All right, so I definitely do think you need a good amount of sugar to balance out the acidity of tomatoes, but the Joe's sauce is a little bit too sweet for my taste. This one, though, might not be sweet enough. So I think ultimately we're gonna end up somewhere in between these two. So I would put us somewhere between 0.6 and 0.7 grams of sugar per ounce of sauce. Up top, we got the low oregano. Down here, mid oregano. Over here, high oregano. All right, so this first one, I can barely taste the oregano, if at all. And when I tasted the second one, I thought that would be the perfect amount. I could taste it just a little bit, but it wasn't overpowering. But then I tried the third pizza, and it actually wasn't too bad either. I would say it's a little bit too much oregano, but not by a huge margin. So I think what I'm gonna go with is somewhere right between these two, which will end up being about three teaspoons of oregano per 28 ounces of tomatoes. Again, this isn't my final decision. I'll still have to see how it interacts with the rest of the ingredients. But for now, that's what I'm gonna go with. This is my baseline. This is no garlic. This is about one clove per 28 ounces of tomatoes. And this is about two cloves per 28 ounces. All right, so this is a pretty tough one, actually. What I basically found is that even a pretty small amount of garlic pretty significantly changes the flavor profile of the sauce. And I can't quite decide whether or not that's a good thing. For me, though, I do want it to be a pretty tomato-forward sauce, but I also kind of like the additional element that that garlic adds. So I think what I'm gonna do is go with just a little bit of garlic, probably about a half a teaspoon per 28 ounces of tomatoes. That way, it will barely be detectable on its own, but it'll still add a nice little extra dimension to the sauce. So you can't really taste the basil itself that much in the same way that you taste the oregano, for example, but you kind of get more of just like an essence or the aroma of the basil, which I do think is actually pretty nice. It kind of reminded me more of like a Neapolitan-style pizza, which, after all, is what the New York style evolved from. So I do think it's worth adding. So I think what I'm gonna start with is exactly what I used on this pizza, which is about a half a leaf of basil per ounce of tomatoes. So for a full 28-ounce batch, that'll be 14 basil leaves. But to be sure that the sauce is actually as good and as authentic as I want it to be, I have to perform one final test. All right, so for my final test here, I've got the sauce that we've developed in this episode with the Red Pack tomatoes, and then I made the same sauce with the 7-Eleven tomatoes just to make sure that I do still like the Red Pack the best. And then this third option here is a more basic sauce, again, using Red Pack tomatoes, but it only includes salt, sugar, and a little bit of oregano. But I actually do have one more to compare with. So I actually made it back to Joe's yesterday, and this time I brought myself home a few slices so that I had a reference point to compare my own pizza to. So as we know, Joe's uses a very basic sauce, just the tomatoes, salt, and sugar. I mean, it pretty much tastes like they use the tomatoes straight out of the can. Definitely not cooked, and it's actually not quite as sweet as it was the last time. There might just be variations from batch to batch, but I do like it a little bit less sweet, so I may end up bumping down the sugar content in my own recipe as well. But let's give mine a taste. Starting with my basic recipe, because that's gonna be the most similar to Joe's. So the Joe's sauce is definitely good, but tasting them side by side, I do think I prefer mine. I mean, I think the oregano adds a great flavor, and with the Red Pack tomatoes, it's got a lot more tanginess to it. Like I said, the Joe's sauce just tastes like tomatoes straight out of the can, and the tomatoes that they use don't seem to be quite as acidic. But this is still my basic version, so let me try the others and see if I do still like them better. All right, so regarding the tomatoes, I do still like the Red Pack ones the best, but the 7-Eleven aren't really too far behind. So I'd say that if you can find Red Pack, you should get them, but I think that any of the top brands that we've talked about are gonna be fine. Now, as far as the ingredients, that one is a little bit trickier, because even this basic sauce is really good. For me, though, I do think I like the addition of the basil and garlic, but only in very small amounts. Here, the garlic is still actually a little bit too strong, even though I only used a half a teaspoon for an entire 28-ounce can of tomatoes. But this still begs the question, which sauce is more authentic? Well, that's what I still need to figure out. But in order to do that, I think I need to make a trip to refresh my memory on some New York pizza spots. So to see the video where I do that, once it's uploaded, you can click right here. Otherwise, if you haven't seen the first few episodes of this series, you can check those out right here. Either way, thanks a lot for watching, and I'll talk to you in the next one.