Don’t buy expensive pizza or pasta sauce…

When I am not making BBQ, I love finding a good slice of pizza. It is really hard to beat a piping hot, charcoal grilled pizza made on the Big Green Egg. I do not make crusts, I will buy pre-made Pillsbury pizza dough or some fresh dough from your local grocery store like Harris Teeter. Heck, even your local pizza shop will sell you the dough. But for me it is all about the sauce! You do not need to spend a lot of money on fancy sauce. I will buy a cheap bottle of pasta sauce from the grocery store and jazz it up when i get home.

The key to a good sauce is to let it simmer for as long as possible. So here is what Id do:

• Dump the entire bottle of sauce in a sauce pan over medium-high heat

• Pour some wine (start with a half a cup) into the empty bottle and place the lid on the bottle and shake it around so the wine gets all the remaining sauce from the sides ofthe bottle

• Dump wine into sauce pan

• Crush 2 cloves of garlic into sauce

• pour 1/3 cup of olive oil into the sauce

  Hint: If the wine does not get all the sauce out of the bottle, try using the olive oil to do the same. If that still does not do the trick. Try more wine. More wine always helps!

• Stir the sauce occasionally and bring to a bubble

• Turn the heat down and let it simmer. The longer it simmers the more robust your sauce will be.

  I will let the sauce simmer for 15 minutes before I begin making the pizza or pasta. If you are cooking pizza on your grill, now is good time to go start the charcoal. To get that nice charred crust you will need to get the temperature of your grill up to about 800 degrees.