Marinara vs. Pizza Sauce: How to Use Marinara and Pizza Sauce

Marinara sauce, also known as a red sauce, features tomatoes as the base ingredient. A marinara recipe can vary from home cook to home cook and may include oregano, garlic cloves, fresh basil leaves, olive oil, bay leaves, red pepper flakes, and tomato paste. You can serve marinara sauce as a pasta sauce or add ground beef or meatballs to make spaghetti sauce. Marinara also has high versatility and can also be used as a dipping sauce for breadsticks.

In the sixteenth century, the Spanish brought tomatoes to Italy, and marinara sauce was developed in Naples. There are two theories as to how marinara sauce got its name. One is that the tomato sauce was served to sailors coming home to Italy—”marinara” is the female form of “marinaro,” the Italian word for “sailor.” The other theory is that the sauce traveled well on long seafaring expeditions.

Pizza sauce is any type of sauce on top of a pizza, typically a tomato sauce that’s very loose in consistency. Like marinara, pizza sauce is also Neapolitan in origin. The Italian classic Margherita pizza—with tomato sauce, fresh basil leaves, and mozzarella—was invented in Naples.

The main ingredient of marinara and pizza sauces is either fresh tomatoes or canned tomatoes, particularly San Marzano tomatoes. Despite a common base ingredient, these Italian staples are different sauces with different uses:

1. 1. Consistency: The main difference is texture. Marinara tends to be thicker than pizza sauce because it needs to cover pasta. Pizza sauce is a puree that’s looser than marinara that you can easily spread on pizza dough.
2. 2. Types of tomatoes: Cooks may use whole tomatoes to make thick marinara sauce and crushed tomatoes to make a looser pizza sauce.
3. 3. Flavor: Marinara tends to have a more complex flavor than pizza sauce because it typically contains more seasonings.
4. 4. Cooking process: Marinara sauce needs to be simmered on the stove to thicken it and develop the flavors, and some recipes even call for tomato paste as a thickening agent. Pizza sauce requires minimal simmer time—just enough to bring the ingredients together into a loose puree. Pizza sauce will finish cooking in the oven while the pizza bakes.
5. 5. Usage: Pizza sauce is for pizza, whereas marinara sauce can be pasta sauce or dipping sauce.

You can substitute marinara for pizza sauce and vice versa if you want to save yourself a trip to the grocery store. In Italy, cooks use marinara and pizza sauce interchangeably by adding pasta water or spices to a base tomato sauce. To turn pizza sauce into marinara, reduce the sauce on the stove to thicken it, and add herbs such as oregano, minced garlic, Italian seasoning, and basil to give it more flavor. You can easily turn marinara into pizza sauce by adding tomato juice or even water to loosen up the texture.

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