“Just Add Water” Pizza Sauce Mix

Raise your hand if canning pizza sauce always slides to the bottom of your summer list—somewhere below “organize the pantry” and “finally label the spice jars.”

For years, that was me. Pizza sauce meant a hot kitchen, a steamy canner, and half a day I didn’t really have. And we’d still run out by fall.

Then I stopped canning it altogether.

Not because we gave up homemade pizza night—we love it too much for that. I found a simpler way: a dry pizza sauce mix that lives on my pantry shelf and turns into fresh sauce in about two minutes flat. No canner. No processing.

Why I Switched From Canning to a Dry Mix

Canning pizza sauce is a lot of work for something you use a few tablespoons at a time. You heat up the whole kitchen, tie up your canner, and end up with jars that—once opened—need to get used quickly.

A dry mix flips all of that on its head:

• It’s shelf-stable. No freezer space, no fridge crowding. Just a jar on the shelf.
• It’s frugal. You’re building sauce from pantry staples instead of buying jarred sauce every pizza night.
• It’s fast. Three tablespoons of mix plus a couple minutes on the stove, and you’ve got sauce.
• It’s flexible. Make exactly as much as you need, whether that’s one pizza or five.

The real hero here is tomato powder. It’s just dehydrated tomato, ground fine, and it stores beautifully. If you grow and preserve your own tomatoes, it’s a wonderful way to put up the harvest without a single jar.

Don’t grow your own? You can dehydrate store-bought tomato sauce into powder, or buy tomato powder outright.

(We have a tutorial on making your own tomato powder here.)

What Goes in the Mix

This comes together in a single pint jar. Here’s everything you need:

• 1 cup tomato powder
• 1/4 cup Italian seasoning blend (or 1/4 cup oregano if that’s what you have)
• 1/4 cup arrowroot powder (cornstarch works too)
• 3 tablespoons sugar
• 1 tablespoon garlic powder (or 1 tablespoon dried minced garlic)
• 2 teaspoons onion powder (or dried minced onion)
• 2 teaspoons salt
• 1 teaspoon black pepper

A few notes from my kitchen:

The arrowroot powder is your thickener. When you measure it, tamp it down a little—pack it the way you’d pack brown sugar. That goes for cornstarch too, if that’s what you’re using.

The sugar isn’t there to make your sauce sweet. It’s there to soften the acidity and that slightly bitter tang tomato powder can carry. Just a touch balances everything out.

For salt, we use Redmond Real Salt around here. It has no anti-caking agents and it isn’t iodized, which means it doubles as a canning salt—one less specialty item to buy.

How to Mix It Up

This part could not be simpler:

1. Add every ingredient to a clean pint jar.
2. Pop the lid on and give it a good shake until everything’s combined.

That’s it. You can stir it together in a bowl if you’d rather, but the jar-and-shake method means less to wash.

One habit worth building: shake the jar every time before you scoop. The seasonings settle as the jar sits on the shelf, so a quick shake keeps everything blended and your sauce tasting consistent batch after batch.

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Turning the Mix Into Pizza Sauce

When pizza night rolls around, here’s how you go from dry mix to sauce in about two minutes:

1. Add 1 teaspoon of olive oil and stir until the oil works in.
2. Add 3 tablespoons of the mix to a small saucepan.
3. Stir in 1/2 cup of water (hot or cold—doesn’t matter).
4. Turn the heat to medium.
5. Don’t walk away. This happens fast.

Within about a minute, the sauce starts thickening up. Keep stirring constantly for one more minute, and you’re done. Start to finish, it’s roughly two minutes.

I can’t stress the “don’t walk away” part enough. Tomato powder scorches quickly, and it’ll grab onto the bottom of your pan—especially stainless steel—if you leave it alone. Stir it steadily through that second minute and you’ll be rewarded with thick, rich sauce.

This makes about 2/3 cup, which is plenty for a homemade pizza. I store any extra in a little half-pint jar in the fridge.

Why This Earned a Permanent Spot in My Pantry

What I love most is that this took one whole project off my summer canning list. Pizza sauce used to be a hot, sticky chore. Now it’s a jar of mix I put together once and reach for whenever we want pizza.

It’s frugal, it’s shelf-stable, and it turns “what’s for dinner?” into homemade pizza night without the fuss. That’s exactly the kind of simple, practical system I’m always chasing!