In June 2019 we made an investment in a wood pellet smoker/grill. We choose the Daniel Boone model from Green Mountain Grills. The primary reason we chose this one over other smoker/grills is my first hand experience seeing it in operation while visiting my daughter, son-in-law, and their son. Their grill made impressive chicken and amazing chocolate chip cookies. Yes, chocolate chip cookies. I would never had thought using a smoker/grill to bake cookies. There’s just a hint of smoke flavor in the cookies. Very subtle but you can taste it. Anyway, I digress so back to the title of this post but I’ll post the cookie recipe in the near future.

This particular brand of grill also supports a pizza oven attachment. as shown below.

We’ve used it a few of times and it makes an amazing, authentic wood-fired pizza. The stone temperature runs between 700º to 900+º depending upon where you set the smoker/grill temperature.

At that temperature, it only take 4 or so minutes for the pizza to cook and give you a nice crispy crust with toppings that are just starting to have a bit of char.

The pizza oven attachment came with a small user manual that included recipes for dough and sauce. We’ve tried both recipes and really like the outcome. As we do with other recipes, we use our blog to capture those recipes that we like for easy access. The sauce has made it to the “keeper” list.

Before the recipe, I want to thank my son-in-law Rob for educating me on smoker/grills.

Ingredients

• 1 tablespoon EVOO
• 1 tablespoon butter
• 1/2 cup diced yellow onion
• 1/4 cup of diced celery
• 3 cloves of garlic, mashed

• 1 cup of Marzano peeled whole tomatoes (See note #3)
• 3/4 cup of tomato paste (which just happens to equal one small can)
• 1 teaspoon of fresh basil
• 1 teaspoon of dried oregano
• 1/2 teaspoon of kosher salt
• 1/2 teaspoon of coarse ground black pepper
• 1/2 teaspoon of brown sugar
• 1 teaspoon of fennel seed
• 1/4 teaspoon of red pepper flakes

Directions

1. Using a small saucepan, add about a tablespoon of butter and 1 tablespoon of olive oil. Saute the onion, celery, and garlic until soft. Set aside in bowl.
2. Add the remaining ingredients to the saucepan and puree it with an immersion blender.
3. Add the onion, celery, and garlic mixture to the saucepan.
4. Simmer for 15 minutes.

Notes

1. This makes enough sauce for 2 large pizzas.
2. The sauce freezes well and will last for several months in the freezer.
3. March 19, 2020: We’ve made this recipe several times since it was first published in July 2019. For the whole tomatoes, we’ve been buying a 28 ounce can. We use about half of it, including the juice, for the recipe and then freeze the remainder to make our next batch of pizza sauce.