Walnuts basil pesto

Make a homemade walnuts basil pesto! Easy, fast and you'll never buy industrial pesto again!

I'm not going to lie to you, I love pesto. I put it in my pasta, in my tomato salads, I even serve it with prime rib!
Basically, I put it everywhere.

You know it, what's better than spaghetti with homemade pesto?
This sauce works every time. And I have a confidence to tell you, it's super easy to make, especially with the following recipe.

Jump to:

• Walnuts basil pesto
• My recipe
• Other recipes
• Crunchy or smooth?
• Where to use pesto?
• How to keep it?
• 📖 Recipe

Walnuts basil pesto

I could have given you the classic recipe for Pesto alla Genovese, but I preferred to present you a pesto I make at home with wanuts. I love the slight bitterness they bring to the sauce.

But if you don't like walnuts, don't hesitate to go back to the basic recipe with pine nuts. Or use other types of nuts such as almonds, hazelnuts or cashews, etc.

And to avoid making you work for too long, I will make you use the hand blender or the robot to make it instead of the pestle.

Homemade pesto can be kept for one week in the refrigerator and several months in the freezer. You can use it with pasta, in a salad, spread it on bruschettas, use it as a dip or serve it with meat!

My recipe

• 3 basil bouquets
• 50 g chopped nuts
• 50 g grated Parmesan cheese
• 50 g grated pecorino romano cheese
• 25 cl extra virgin olive oil - The better the oil, the better the pesto!
• 1 clove of garlic
• Salt and pepper

Mix and blend!

Other recipes

Using my recipe, you can of course try other combinations to vary the pleasures.
The basic recipe being: basil, pine nuts, parmesan, olive oil.

• another green :
  Basil, rocket, spinach shoots, parsley, coriander, carrot tops, beet tops…
• be nut :
  Pine nuts, walnuts, cashew nuts, almonds, hazelnuts.

Without forgetting the pesto rosso, made with candied tomatoes.

Crunchy or smooth?

Pesto can be crunchy, my favorite, or almost smooth. It all depends on your preference or how you use it.
A creamier pesto gives a greener color to what you mix it with.

Personally, I prefer crunchy pesto. But some people say that smooth pesto gives a better taste.
How do you mix your pesto to make it smooth?
Two things will help you make it smoother:

1. Make sure you put enough olive oil in it. Because the amount of water in the leaves changes from time to time, you may need to add a little more olive oil.
2. Your blender. And yes, they are not all equal in power. So if after a minute you don't get a smooth pesto, then forget it.
   You can use a blender or a hand blender. And if you're a purist a pestle.

Where to use pesto?

I can see you have the answer, with pasta! But you can do so much more…
My list is not exhaustive but can give you some ideas.

• Pasta with pesto
• Risotto
• bruschetta
• Pasta, rice or potato salad
• Dressing
• Dip for the aperitif
• Sauce for meat
• In the stuffing of zucchini flowers
• On the pizza dough

How to keep it?

I advise you to keep it in the fridge in a hermetically sealed glass jar.
If you add a drizzle of olive oil on top and smooth it out each time you use it, you can keep it for a week.

You can also freeze it easily. In an ice cube tray for example to make it easier to measure out.
You can keep it for up to 3 months.

Go ahead and buy the ingredients and enjoy your homemade pesto.

Try it out with the pesto pasta recipe.

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📖 Recipe