| Level: | Easy |
| Total: | 11 min |
| Prep: | 10 min |
| Cook: | 1 min |
| Yield: | 2 cups |
Ingredients
- 4 cups packed fresh arugula
- 1 tablespoon minced garlic
- Salt and freshly ground pepper
- 1 cup pure olive oil
- 2 tablespoon pine nuts, toasted, plus 1 tablespoon
- 1/8 teaspoon vitamin C (optional)
- 1/2 cup freshly grated Parmesan
Instructions
- Prepare an ice water bath in a large bowl, and bring a large pot of water to a boil. Put the arugula in a large sieve and plunge it into the boiling water. Immediately immerse all the arugula and stir so that it blanches evenly. Blanch for about 15 seconds. Remove, shake off the excess water, then plunge the arugula into the ice water bath and stir again so it cools as fast as possible. Drain well.
- Squeeze the water out of the arugula with your hands until very dry. Roughly chop the arugula and put in a blender. Add the garlic, salt and pepper to taste, olive oil, 2 tablespoons of the pine nuts, and the vitamin C, if using. Blend for at least 30 seconds. In this way the green of the arugula will thoroughly color the oil. Add the cheese and pulse to combine. The pesto will keep several days in a tightly sealed container in the refrigerator.
- Pull out before dinner to get to room temperature. Before serving, add the remaining 1 tablespoon toasted pinenuts.
Nutrition Facts
| Serving Size | 1 of 16 servings |
| Calories | 150 |
| Total Fat | 16 g |
| Saturated Fat | 3 g |
| Carbohydrates | 1 g |
| Dietary Fiber | 0 g |
| Sugar | 0 g |
| Protein | 2 g |
| Cholesterol | 3 mg |
| Sodium | 66 mg |
Reviews
I made this as directed (though without the Vitamin C). I thought it was great. I think it’s a good thing to blanch the arugula if, like me, you have a lot of it from fairly old plants. I think the taste would otherwise be overpowering – I personally couldn’t eat a salad made entirely from the arugula I used in this pesto. I have raw Vitamin C tabs at home, but didn’t use any because we ate the pesto immediately. I think he advises you to put the Vitamin C in there so the pesto doesn’t turn brown and you maintain the arugula’s vibrant green. Very slight changes to recipe: 1) I used some green garlic to mellow out the garlic flavor a bit (since I had it on hand). I probably wouldn’t put that much regular garlic into my pesto. 2) I stirred the olive oil in at the end with the cheese. I’ve found that you can make some olive oil bitter by agitating it in a food processor.
“Guest” down below here is right. The fact that this comment was nearly 4 years ago tells you how long this recipe has been up on the site. The oldest comment was over 10 years ago. I don’t risk eating pine nuts anymore because you have to look hard to find ones that are not from China. I use macadamia baking pieces for all my pestos. Also, who in the world has vitamin C in their spice cabinet?Michel doesn’t even acknowledge that this is a somewhat bizarre ingredient. Do people crush vitamin C from the medicine cabinet? I keep citric acid on hand but didn’t use it in this recipe, opting for fresh lemon juice instead. Vitamin C is ascorbic acid, similar to citric acid, but I can’t imagine why this is part of the recipe. Lemon goes so well with arugula…vitamin c is just weird. I used two small arugula “bushes” culled from my garden that were going crazy and starting to flower, so there is no lack of pungent flavor with the greens I used. Blanching the arugula did seem to remove all of the flavor of the arugula. I am going to try this without blanching next time. All you could taste in this was the nuts and the parmesan. The arugula was more of a coloring and texture role in this recipe. Pretty unremarkable but quite edible as it has little flavor. A decent base for pesto. A bit heavy on the oil ratio but I keep some good stuff that I could drink from the bottle so that doesn’t bother me. Skip the blanching,especially if you have young tender arugula.
I prepared the pesto as published, omitting the Vitamin C. I spread the pesto on thin boneless skinless chicken breasts that I broiled a few minutes on each side. I tossed the remaining pesto with pasta and additional cheese. My family asked I add this to ‘the rotation’ – they very much enjoyed it! I am thinking of other ways to use the pesto.
I definitely didn’t follow the recipe exactly, but was pleased to find the idea to make pesto with my arugula!
I changed the recipe around a little. First of all, I didn’t blanch the arugula….just washed it well and spun it dry. I used some lemon zest and lemon juice instead of Vitamin C. I also used pine nuts but didn’t toast them. I process it well in the food processor and then scooped the pesto into an ice cube tray and froze the cubes. When frozen, remove the cubes from the tray and wrap each cube individually in foil and then store in a plastic bag in the freezer. They stay fresh for months and easy to pull out a cube or two when needed in a recipe!!
I LOVE arugula so this recipe is a great find. I toasted up walnuts and used those instead of pine nuts, also lemon squeeze and zest instead of VitC. Did not blanch the arugula and still, it was perfect: bright green, stays so if tightly covered. Added oil amount to the consistency I like: more thin than thick. Taste for salt after adding the cheese.
This recipe tasted very good. I used what I had on hand and wound up substituting pecorino romano for parmesan and toasted sunflower seeds for the pine nuts.
I can’t figure out why everyone gave this such positive reviews! I make many different types of pesto–basil, mixed herb, parsley, arugula–and this recipe just does not measure up. The blanching of the arugula completely wipes out the nutty flavor of the arugula, leaving the pesto tasting more like garlic-scape pesto than anything having to do with arugula. There are better arugula pesto recipes out there!
Was great. Used toasted walnuts instead. Perfectly suitable for guests. Do it!
The flavors and color of this pesto are amazing. It even retains its gorgeous color after freezing. I followed other reviewers advice and added a little lemon juice instead of the vitamin C and threw in some basil as well. I make a double batch, freeze it in ice cube trays. When frozen I put the pesto cubes into a zip lock freezer bag. This way I can take out as much as I need at a time. Makes amazing pesto-mayo for sandwhiches and burgers. yum 🙂