Description
Pesto is a divine, fresh, luscious green basil sauce that will brighten your pasta, pizza, roasted veggies and crostini.
Ingredients
Units
Scale
- 5 cups packed basil leaves
- 1/2 cup pine nuts ( you may use any nuts you may like, or seeds such as pumpkin or sunflower seeds if allergic to nuts). See Note 1
- 1/4-1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil, to taste
- 4 ounces good quality aged Parmesan cheese, preferably Parmigiano Reggiano, chopped OR 1/4 cup nutritional yeast, if want to keep the pesto vegan See Note 2
- 1/2 tsp salt, skip if using parmesan cheese or adjust to taste.
- 1/8 tsp ground black pepper
- 1 clove of garlic or more to taste. See note 3
- The zest of one medium lemon and 2 tsp of freshly squeezed lemon juice (optional)
Instructions
- Combine all the ingredients, except the olive oil, in the food processor. Pulse while drizzling the olive oil until you obtain a chunky sauce (do not over process. You don't want a smooth paste, pesto should have some texture)
- Taste the pesto and add more olive oil, salt or cheese to your taste
Notes
- Pine nuts are our favorite nut to add to pesto, but they are expensive and sometimes hard to find. Walnuts, almonds, hazelnuts, pistachios, etc work well also. See a complete list on the post.
- If you are using Parmesan cheese, don't add the salt, taste the pesto and add more salt, if needed. For a vegan option use nutritional yeast or vegan Parmesan instead.
- We are not big fans of raw garlic, so we only used one clove of garlic for this pesto. Feel free to use more if you would like. We prefer basil to be the predominant flavor in our pesto. Read the body of the post for more suggestions.
- Store pesto in a glass jar with a tight lid. Top it with some extra virgin olive oil, to keep it fresh longer
- Freeze the pesto that you are not going to use immediately in ice cube trays or flat in a freezer bag so you can break pieces off when needed.
- In the summer when basil is fresh and plentiful make big batches of pesto and freeze for the winter months.
- Prep Time: 5
- Category: sauce
- Method: raw
- Cuisine: Italian
Nutrition
- Serving Size: 2 tablespoons
- Calories: 31
- Sugar: 0 g
- Sodium: 73.9 mg
- Fat: 3.1 g
- Saturated Fat: 0.6 g
- Trans Fat: 0 g
- Carbohydrates: 0.5 g
- Fiber: 0.1 g
- Protein: 0.6 g
- Cholesterol: 1.2 mg