When fresh basil is garden plentiful, pull out the food processor and whip up a batch. This pesto freezes beautifully, so when you want pesto for pasta or pizza, there’s a stash of basil walnut pesto ready to use!
Using a food processor, this pesto is quick to make–the work is in stripping the basil leaves off the stems. The garlic is super-easy to mince–begin your pesto by dropping whole garlic cloves in the work bowl while the processor is running and the blade is spinning. When the garlic stops hitting the sides of the processor bowl, it’s perfecty minced!
Click here to PIN Homemade Basil Walnut Pesto recipe!
This basil walnut pesto recipe uses less olive oil than many pesto recipes, giving you more basil bang for the buck. Not that extra virgin olive oil is a bad thing, I just think this pesto’s flavor and texture is dandy with less olive oil!
You’ll appreciate this budget-wise pesto. It’s made using walnuts and Pecorino Romano cheese in place of the more expensive pine nuts and Parmesan cheese called for in classic Italian Genovese pesto.
Basil walnut pesto makes a quick and easy pasta sauce for sure. You’ll also love the extra flavor a dollop of pesto add to lots of other dishes. Basil pesto serves as an easy way to add fresh herbs and garlic to soups or anything that benefits from such a bump, like sauteed leafy greens.
This pesto is delicious spread on pizza dough–the beginnings of fabulous homemade pizza, like this homemade pesto potato pizza. Any time of year, a dollop of garlicky basil walnut pesto brings summer punch to so many recipes.
Purists be appalled, but any flavor or texture nuance lost by not using the traditional mortar and pestle (Affiliate link) is more than made up for with time saved by making it with the food processor.
You say stripping all the leaves still seems like a lot of work, and why not buy the pesto at Costco. To me, that’s like saying dried parsley is an adequate substitute for the fresh leaf. There is nothing like homemade easy basil walnut pesto, fresh, or frozen stash.
Whenever I make up a fresh batch of the emerald opulence, we gorge ourselves on pasta with pesto. There is no match for freshly made basil walnut pesto. What doesn’t go on the pasta that day, goes in jars and into the freezer for another meal.
You might also like this Garlic Scape and Mess o’ Greens Pesto.
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Homemade Basil Walnut Pesto
Ingredients
- 2 large garlic cloves
- 3 ounces Pecorino romano cheese grated, about 3/4 cup (see note)
- 2 cups tightly packed , stemmed fresh basil
- ½ cup walnuts (or pine nuts to be extravagant)
- ½ teaspoon fine sea salt
- ½ cup extra virgin olive oil
Instructions
- With the motor of the food processor running, mince the garlic by dropping it through the feed tube. Process until it is very fine and it no longer makes noise as it hits the side of the bowl.
- Add the cheese, basil, walnuts and salt. Process for about 10 seconds, stopping to move things around if they get hung up.
- With the machine running, pour oil through the feed tube in a thin stream, processing until everything is well blended.
Notes
- Don’t even think of using that sawdust in the green can they call parmesan!
- Add the ingredients in the order directed for efficient use of the food processor.
- Scrape the pesto into small containers immediately and freeze. To use in winter, thaw the pesto only enough so you can scrape out what you’ll use.
Nutrition
Nutrition information is meant to be an estimate only. Figure 2 tablespoons of pesto per person. The numbers will vary based on the quantity consumed, and any substitutions you make.
