Roasted Red Pepper Sauce with garlic, onion and crushed tomatoes – Serve over pasta, chicken, fish or veggies and enjoy! Gluten Free + Paleo + Vegan
Originally published May 14, 2015 – Updated August 17, 2018
For those times when you really want a red sauce but you don’t want the same old tomato dish – this roasted red pepper sauce is where it’s at.
How to Make: Roasted Red Pepper Sauce
Start out by prepping your red peppers: cut them in half and then remove the seeds and stems as you can see in the pictures above (photo 1 & 2).
Move on the arrange the red peppers on a baking sheet along with the quartered red onion and garlic cloves. Brush everything with a little oil and then pop it in the oven to roast for about 25 minutes.
There are two main reasons that you’d want to get rid of the skin:
- The skin is pretty tough and doesn’t easily break down. You’d end up with little bits of hard skin all throughout your sauce.
- The skin has a strong, bitter flavour that can end up overpowering everything else in the dish.
Fortunately, once roasted the peppers become extremely easy to peel. Just pinch the wrinkly red pepper skin and pull away and it should peel back fairly easy.
When you’re all set just add the peppers, onion and garlic to a blender or food processor along with with your remaining ingredients and blend until smooth or mostly smooth – depending on how chunky you want your sauce.
Quick Questions:
Drizzle this over fish, chicken, veggies – anything you want! This recipe makes for a very tasty roasted red pepper pasta!
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Roasted Red Pepper Sauce
Roasted Red Pepper Sauce with garlic, onion and crushed tomatoes - Serve over pasta, chicken, fish or veggies and enjoy! Gluten Free + Paleo + Vegan
Ingredients
- 3 red peppers, cut in half and seeds/stems removed
- 1 red onion, quarted
- 4 large cloves garlic
- 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
- 1 14 ounce can | 400 grams can crushed tomatoes
- 1 teaspoon balsamic vinegar
- 2 tablespoons nutritional yeast, optional - this gives it a slightly cheesy flavour
- 3/4 teaspoon salt and pepper each
Instructions
- Heat your oven to 425°F/220°C. Lay your red peppers, onion and garlic on a large baking sheet. Lightly brush the vegetables with oil and roast for 25 minutes. The red pepper will begin to char slightly.
- Let the peppers cool about 10-15 minutes so that they are easier to handle. Once cooled, peel the skin off the peppers. After roasting this should be fairly easy. Discard the skin.
- Add the roast peppers, onion and garlic to a blender or food processor along with the crushed tomatoes, nutritional yeast, vinegar, salt and pepper. Process/blend until mostly smooth or until you reach your desired consistency. Taste and season with a little more salt and pepper as needed.
- Pour the sauce over pasta, cooked chicken/fish or over veggies and serve.
Notes
Serving size: about 1/4 cup
How do I serve it?
Drizzle this over fish, chicken, veggies, pasta - anything you want!
How long does it keep?
Keeps for about a week in the fridge in an airtight container.
Can I freeze it?
Yes! Since this is a dairy free sauce it lends itself well to freezing/reheating. It keeps about a month in the fridge.
Can I make it creamier?
If you don't need this sauce to be paleo or vegan you can absolutely add in 1/4 cup or so of cream or milk. For vegan options stick with unsweetened almond milk or an another dairy free milk. For paleo options you can go for a paleo friendly milk or chicken stock.
Julia says
I have only recently got into soup and sauce making. I love thick and satisfying sauce and soup, but I don’t want the fat of full cream. I have had excellent results substituting a small package of soft tofu for cream. I add it to the mix before I add the dairy or nut milk and puree it with an immersion blender. It also ups the protein content.
Sarah Nevins says
Love the idea of adding cream or tofu to thicken this up – it sounds delicious!
Marcy says
Hi Sarah! I just made this and it’s wonderful. I found your site while I was trying to find a recipe to use up some yellow and orange bell peppers. I subbed them for the reds and it is delicious! I also used diced tomatoes cause that’s all I had. I just puréed them a bit before adding everything else. I normally don’t sub things out when trying a new recipe and I also don’t normally write reviews with changes to someone’s recipe; I don’t like things to go to waste and had to use these peppers while they were still good. I just had to write and thank you for this delicious sauce! It also speaks to how easy and versatile the recipe you wrote is. Thanks again for saving the day. I look forward to checking out your site and trying more of your recipes!
Sarah Nevins says
Hi Marcy, I’m so glad you enjoyed the sauce! Thanks so much for coming back to leave a review and share what changes you made. I always find tweaks like this super helpful to know and I’m sure future comment readers will too!
Angela says
I made this tonight and added some turmeric, red pepper flakes and cumin when I blended it. It might have been on the sweet side because I didn’t use canned tomatoes and roasted 14 oz of tomatoes instead (which may not have been 14 oz after roasting) which caused less acidity. I made this while we were eating dinner, so haven’t put it with anything other than taste-testing it with some 2 ingredient flatbread I made earlier. And that was lovely, so I can’t wait
to put this over some pasta and vegetables.
I had difficulties removing a lot of the pepper skins, so maybe they needed to roast longer…two halves skinned great, and then the others were extremely tedious. Next time I’ll roast them a little longer and see if that helps.
Thanks!
Sarah Nevins says
So glad you enjoyed it! Love the sound of adding turmeric and cumin – I’ll have to try that next I make this! As for the skin, roasting them longer should certainly help to make them easier to peel but I also want to suggest that you make sure that there is a little space between the peppers as they cook. I notice that when I roast peppers, if they are too crowded on the pan they don’t always peel as easily.
You might already be spacing them out well – I just wanted throw that out there in case it helps.
Thanks so much for coming back to let me know what you thought! So glad you’ve enjoyed it so far 🙂
Marina says
Hello
Can you make this with no onion and garlic as I’m unable to eat them. What else could I sub for?
Sarah Nevins says
Hi Marina! It’s a bit tricky because I do think this recipe gets a lot of it’s flavour from both the onion and tomato. That being said, roasted red peppers and tomatoes are quite delicious and flavourful all on their own that I do think there is some mileage in trying this recipe without onion/garlic. I think maybe adding a stalk of celery and a carrot would be quite tasty here. If you’re up for playing around with the recipe I think that would be worth trying out.
Tracy says
Can this be preserved (jarred/canned) as if making tomato sauce?
Sarah Nevins says
Hi Tracy! I’m not sure as I don’t have any experience with canning sauce so I’m not sure what is needed. I did find a post though on canning that leads me to believe that this recipe wouldn’t be a good recipe to use for canning as it’s not acidic enough. https://foodinjars.com/blog/canning-101-why-you-cant-can-your-familys-tomato-sauce/
Lori says
Can this sauce be made without the tomatos?
Sarah Nevins says
Hi Lori! I haven’t tried this without the tomatoes so I can’t say for sure but I do think it would work. You will probably need to increase the amount of red peppers though because the tomatoes do add quite a bit of bulk
Helen whittle says
Made this tonight, but had no canned tomatoes so pureed some slightly soft, fresh tomatoes after simmering with a little water, honey and sun-dried tomato paste, followed the rest of the recipe exactly and well what can I say totally delicious and will be a firm favourite from now on, I’m from Scotland and just came across your site and am very pleased I did, thank you, simply stunning recipe
Thanks
Helen
Sarah says
Hi Helen – I’m so glad you enjoyed it! That honey and sun dried tomato paste sounds lovely! I need to try that myself!
Kris says
Looks delicious! Could I use roasted red peppers from a jar?
Sarah says
Thanks Kris! That’s totally fine!