Fresh basil blended with extra virgin olive oil, garlic, parmesan cheese, almonds, and lemon pepper to create a healthy and delicious basil pesto. Easy to make, this basil pesto is perfect on toast, with pasta, or as a dip.
Is pesto perfect for fall or what?
I love the taste of fresh basil. It has a distinctive fragrance that complements tons of food.
So it’s about time I made my own basil pesto to pair with some of my favorite foods. Pesto on bread, pesto in my pasta, pesto as a dip, pesto as a sauce for pizza. Just to name a few possibilities. =)
I could always buy a container of pesto from the local supermarket, but it’s not as fresh, and you can never tell what extra ingredients might have been added.
With a simple recipe such as this one, you know exactly what you’re adding to your sauce. Not only that, once you’re comfortable with making pesto, you can customize it to your liking. Like extra nuts? Toss more in. Like more citrus? Add lemon juice. Easy, right?
Normally, pesto is made in a food processor, but I actually made mine in a Magic Bullet
How can you make your own?
Add a cup of basil leaves, packed down as much as possible, into a food processor or blender. Next, pour extra virgin olive oil into the blender. If you’re not a fan of the taste of Extra Virgin Olive Oil
Blend all of these ingredients together until the consistency is to your liking.
Serve the pesto with bread or pasta.
Enjoy!
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- 1 cup fresh basil leaves, packed
- ⅓ cup extra virgin olive oil (or olive oil)
- ¼ cup grated parmesan
- 1 teaspoon garlic, minced
- ⅛ cup almond slivers (or pine nuts or walnuts), more to taste
- ¼ teaspoon salt
- ⅛ teaspoon lemon pepper
- Blend all the ingredients in a food processor or blender until the consistency is to your liking.
- Serve the fresh basil pesto with bread or pasta.
thanks for following! hope you enjoy my photos! that basil pesto looks so yum!!
Thank you so much!
Thanks for visiting my blog!
Also, basil pesto happens to be one of my most favourite things. I’m getting ludicrously hungry, but unfortunately, it’s ‘insane’ hour in Sydney, i.e. 4:15am, i.e. no cooking just yet. Back to bed!
I hope you’ll like the basil pesto!
yumbo
Thank you!
We had a great basil crop this year, so I made a ton of this. So much that my wife and I almost got tired of it! Like you mentioned, one of the great things about pesto is how versatile it is! Basil also works really well with other herbs. Rosemary and basil pesto is fantastic!
Yum! I’ll have to try it with rosemary =)
Pesto is delicious! I find more and more ways to enjoy it each year.
It works well with so many dishes!
Yum! An excellent alternative recipe to try with my pesto fanatic daughter (one of her favourite meals is pesto mixed with plain boiled pasta) with cheese on top… 🙂
That’s one of my favorites too! =)
Love that you use almonds instead of pine nuts. I never want to buy pine nuts just to make pesto, but I almost always have almonds on hand.
I didn’t want to buy pine nuts either! Plus they’re pretty pricey too.
Once again I’m enchanted by one of your recipes! I need to try this asap.
Thanks, Ashley! I hope you’ll try it. It’s really easy to make =)
Yum! One of my favourites. I sometimes make this one with rucola instead of basil – just for that extra kick.
I’ve never had rucola before. How does it taste?
Just more pungent and peppery. Great on ciabatta with some serious prosciutto…I’m getting carried away 🙂
That looks amazing! You always have the best recipes. Thanks.
Thank you so much, Amanda! Hope you’ll like it =)