Healthy Homemade Chickpea Pizza Sauce

So not long after I posted the Cauliflower Pizza Crust, I decided to think outside the box to create a healthy pizza sauce.  Pizza sauce isn't all that bad on it's own really, but aside from the benefits of lycopene, there isn't much else going on.  I wanted to use ingredients my kids wouldn't normally eat and bury them in a delicious pizza sauce.  I considered sauteing onions, carrots, and basil to add to the mix, but instead opted for the selections below.  It gets to be a lot of work for a pizza if you decide to make the Cauliflower crust and the sauce, so I wanted to make it a bit easier to throw together.  The resulting sauce is thick and flavorful.  It doesn't tend to burn the roof of your mouth like a tomato sauce does and it brings out the flavor in your toppings.  Tested in an oven, but not on a wood fire or grill (yet...).

Healthy Homemade Chickpea Pizza Sauce

1 Can Chickpeas with Water

1 Can Tomato Sauce

1 Can Tomato Paste with Italian Seasonings

1 Tbsp. Dried Minced Onion or 1/4 C. Sauteed White or Yellow Onion

1 Clove Garlic

1 Tbsp. Italian Seasoning

3/4 C. Water

2 Tbsp. Olive Oil

Starting with the Chickpeas (the entire can, water and all) place all ingredients in a blender cup EXCEPT the 3/4 C. Water.  The Water we will use as needed to ensure smooth blending.  Blend slowly at first to get the ingredients moving well in the blender and then ramp up the speed, adding Water as needed to keep the mixture flowing in the cup.  Blend until smooth.  This can take a while depending on your blender.  The thing to remember is that a better blender will yield a thicker sauce while your average $20 blender is going to need more water and will produce a thinner sauce.  What is important here is that we get a smooth, well blended sauce.  Color will be like a vodka sauce (orange/milky pink) and the texture will be like a hummus or peanut butter.

Next, transfer the sauce to a saucepan and bring up to a high temp.  The thicker this sauce is, the less likely it will boil or even bubble.  Heat is going to break down the chickpeas just a bit more, creating a smoother texture.  If you needed to add more water to blend in the previous step, you can cook the sauce down a bit and achieve that hummus/peanut butter thickness I mentioned.

Once the sauce is heated you can use it immediately.  It will be thick, but it will spread very easily because it still has a high moisture content.  Spread the desired amount (about 1/3 Cup) on a pizza crust.  Need a good recipe for one?  Try the Cauliflower Pizza Crust we featured last month.  For this experiment, I just used the cheapies from WalMart so I could toss it and start over if needed.  While I was there I found some turkey pepperoni and thought I'd give that a try.  Gotta say it was really good.  The crust tasted like cardboard, but the sauce was quite good.  This is a work in progress and if you have any suggestions/alterations, just make a comment below and we will see what we can do to dial this in a bit further.

Nutritionally this is much better than your canned pizza sauce and the kids might not even know the difference.  Our daughter is one to turn her nose up at anything new and she caught me making this so I was met with some resistance, but she ate the entire slice and other than a few grumblings about not liking it before she had even tried it, she was quiet.  We will see if she wants to have it again tomorrow night.  After all this makes just under a quart of sauce, which is enough for a good number of pizzas.  I will freeze the extra in roughly one cup quantities so I can quickly thaw and top a pizza or two at a time.

Enjoy!