Basil, olive oil, pine nuts, and Parmesan cheese are the basic ingredients for pesto. The inclusion of parsley to this recipe sets it apart from traditional cooking. If you’d like, you can increase the amount of Parmesan in the mixture.
| Prep Time: | 5 mins |
| Total Time: | 5 mins |
| Servings: | 16 |
| Yield: | 2 cups |
Ingredients
- 3 cups packed fresh basil leaves
- ¾ cup grated Parmesan cheese
- ½ cup olive oil
- ¼ cup pine nuts
- 4 cloves garlic, or to taste
- 2 lemon juice, or more to taste (optional)
Instructions
- Combine basil, Parmesan cheese, olive oil, pine nuts, and garlic in the bowl of a food processor or blender. Blend to a smooth paste. Add lemon juice, if desired, and quickly pulse to combine.
- Allrecipes Video
Nutrition Facts
| Calories | 92 kcal |
| Carbohydrate | 1 g |
| Cholesterol | 3 mg |
| Dietary Fiber | 0 g |
| Protein | 2 g |
| Saturated Fat | 2 g |
| Sodium | 59 mg |
| Sugars | 0 g |
| Fat | 9 g |
| Unsaturated Fat | 0 g |
Reviews
All I added extra was a pinch of salt. Adding lemon topped it off nicely! Very easy to make! Delicious!
I made it and love it!!
Needed salt.
So, sadly I didn’t have pine nuts, it’s going to be a bit until I can get them, and I had a huge bunch of basil that I needed to get used. I decided that the best thing to do was substitute with lightly toasted pecans. While it’s missing that distinctive pine zing, it’s still lovely! I am going to put it in the freezer for now. It will either go on noodles and shrimp, or pizza! Thank you!
Great taste and very easy to prepare. I place the pesto in a clean dry ice cube tray and freeze for about 2 hours then I pop them out and wrap each in Saran and place them in a freezer zip lock bag for future use. I found this recipe will fill a 12 ice cube tray with some left over.
I added extra olive oil to loosen the mixture a bit. Delicious!
I reduced the garlic to 2 gloves and the flavor was perfect will make again soon!
This is the best pesto I’ve ever made. The key ingredient, in my opinion, is really good quality parmesan cheese. Excellent!
Delicious! I love the garlic flavor as well. If you want a more subtle garlic flavor, then I would reduce by one clove.
So quick, and so simple! I did add the toasted pine nuts, but I think it would be perfectly fine without if you don’t have those. It produces a thick, creamy pesto!
Perfect! Just like mom’s recipe! Used fresh basil from the garden, plus a few ginger mint leaves, and added in some arugula we needed to use up. Making a batch with basil and kale next!
made it but used half the amount basil and made the other half cilantro instead and wasabi almonds instead of pine nuts. It was so awesome
This is a great, simple recipe, but I dislike the after taste of pine nuts. I substitute walnuts in the same amount. Sometimes I also use parm/reggio, or mix it half and half with the parm.
This tastes as good as any pesto I’ve had at gourmet restaurants. This is the one.
This is a great recipe. I’ve made this several times.
It turned out delicious and was so easy to make.
super simple and lots of great fresh flavor
i love garlic, but i agree that using 2 vs 4 cloves keeps the flavors more balanced. for those wanting to freeze but mentioned it was messy to do so, freezing in silicone ice cube trays makes it easy to pop them out vs a hard tray 😉
I substituted walnuts, for the pine nuts. I toasted them With the garlic 1st, lightly and added a pinch of pink Himalayan salt. Delicious!!
I added one more cup of basil. very good
Excellent and perfect proportions.