Once you’ve made your own basil pesto, you’ll never go back. It takes less than 10 minutes and is SO versatile. Toss through pasta, use as salad dressing, spoon over grilled meat or veggies or just spread on toast.

Fresh basil pesto has to be one of my absolute favourite sauces to make. It’s truly SO easy to make it yourself and it’s far superior to the jarred versions you can pick up at the store (which I always find just taste a bit dull). Once you try making this, you won’t go back to jarred.

It’s also a super versatile little ingredient to have on hand. Toss through pasta for an emergency, super quick weeknight meal when you’re exhausted and just need something quickly, drizzle over roasted veggies for a serious flavour kick, swirl through thick labneh or hummus to make a quick dip for entertaining, or use as a spread in a sandwich. You’re never far from a full, easy meal with this pesto in your fridge.

Ingredients

Only a handful of flavour-packed ingredients are needed to make delicious fresh pesto.

• Olive oil. You want a good quality, extra virgin olive oil here because you can really taste it.
• Basil. You can’t make basil pesto without this glorious guy! You’ll need 2 packed cups of leaves, and really make sure you pack them in there. Try and remove any longer, tougher stems but don’t worry too much about trimming them.
• Pine nuts. For a classic basil pesto, these lovely guys are a must – but they tend to be quite expensive. Instead, you can use cashews, almonds, pistachios, sunflower seeds or pumpkin seeds. Whatever you do, make sure you toast the nuts or seeds first! Get them in a dry pan for a couple of minutes, tossing frequently until they smell toasty and have lovely golden spots on both sides.
• Parmesan cheese. I’m using freshly grated parmesan and I recommend you do too. Pre-grated cheese has an anti-caking agent coating and you won’t get as smooth a pesto in the end.

Essential equipment –

I use a food processor in this recipe as I find it does a quicker and better job than my blender. You could use a blender, you may just need to add more olive oil to loosen things up and get the blades going. You could also do it the traditional way with a pestle and mortar!

How to make the pesto

Start by getting your basil, parmesan, lemon juice, toasted pine nuts, garlic and salt into your food processor. Blitz for a minute, until everything is broken up and a chunky paste forms. Scrape down the sides.

Next, you’re going to slowly pour in the olive oil. Doing this slowly will allow the pesto to emulsify and form a cohesive sauce, rather than the oil separating. And you’re done! Use a rubber spatula to scrape out every last morsel of the pesto and store it in a covered container in the fridge for up to 10 days.

How to keep basil pesto bright green

The basil in the pesto will start to discolour when it comes into contact with the air, so there are a couple of little tricks you can do to keep that glorious green colour.

Either pour a layer of olive oil over the top of the pesto OR use a piece of cling film to cover the pesto, making sure it’s touching the top and covering it completely to make a barrier from the air! I like to do this, then cover it again with the lid of whatever container I’m storing it in.

Got a question?

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If you make this recipe, I’d love to hear from you! You can leave me a comment below.

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