Pesto Sauce
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Homemade pesto sauce is easy to whip up and delicious on just about everything—from pastas and pizzas to salads and sandwiches.
One of my favorite things about summer cooking is stepping out my back door to pick fresh herbs from my potted herb garden. It always amazes me how the tiny seedlings I plant in May grow into more herbs than I can possibly use up by August. When the basil is overflowing, it’s pesto sauce time!
Pesto, or pesto alla Genovese, is a vibrant, garlicky green sauce from Genoa, Italy. While the traditional method uses a mortar and pestle, these days, a food processor makes it a breeze. This versatile sauce is fantastic on everything—from homemade pasta and pizzas to salads, vegetable soup, and sandwiches. What’s even better? It freezes like a dream, so you can enjoy a taste of summer all year long! Try it in my favorite pesto pasta.
“Simply, my favorite pesto recipe!”
What You’ll Need To Make Pesto Sauce
- Walnuts: Add richness, nutty flavor, and help create a creamy texture. I use them instead of traditional pine nuts because they’re more affordable, always in my pantry, and don’t come with the risk of Pine Mouth Syndrome—a strange metallic taste that can linger for weeks after eating certain pine nuts. Almonds, pecans, and pistachios work well too. Pro tip: Toast the nuts in the oven or a dry skillet for a few minutes to deepen their flavor.
- Garlic Cloves: Bring bold, punchy flavor that is key to the flavor of pesto.
- Fresh Basil Leaves: The heart of any classic pesto—fresh, fragrant, and full of vibrant flavor. If your basil is freshly washed, make sure it’s completely dry before adding it to the food processor—excess water can make the pesto too loose or dull the flavor.
- Extra Virgin Olive Oil: Binds everything together and adds smooth, fruity richness.
- Grated Parmigiano-Reggiano: Adds salty, nutty flavor. Always use authentic Parmigiano-Reggiano from Italy—look for the name stamped on the rind or clearly labeled on pre-grated packages. Avoid anything simply labeled “Parmesan” or “Parmesan cheese.”
- Jump to the printable recipe for precise measurements
Step-by-Step Instructions
Step 1: Chop the walnuts and garlic. Add the walnuts and garlic to the bowl of a food processor and pulse until coarsely chopped. Pulsing instead of processing continuously helps prevent the mixture from turning into a paste too early—this gives your pesto better texture.
Step 2: Add the basil and seasonings. Toss in the fresh basil leaves, salt, and pepper.
Step 3: Process. Blend until everything is finely chopped.
Step 4: Stream in the olive oil. With the machine running, slowly pour the olive oil through the feed tube and let it blend into a sauce. Adding the oil gradually while the machine is running helps emulsify the sauce, giving your pesto a smooth, cohesive consistency.
Step 5: Add the cheese. Add the Parmigiano-Reggiano and process again until the cheese is combined with the remainder of the ingredients and the pesto is smooth.
How To Store & Freeze Pesto
Use the pesto immediately or store it in a tightly sealed jar or air-tight plastic container, covered with a thin layer of olive oil (this seals out the air and prevents the sauce from oxidizing, which would turn it an unappetizing brown color). It will keep in the refrigerator for about a week.
Pesto can also be frozen in an airtight container for up to 6 months. I suggest dividing it into the compartments of an ice cube tray and freezing. Once frozen, remove the cubes from the tray and put in a sealable plastic bag or airtight container. You can add the defrosted cubes to pasta salad with pesto, zucchini noodles, pesto pizza, scrambled eggs, sandwiches, or baked potatoes.
Video Tutorial
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The Best Basic Pesto
Homemade pesto is easy to make and so much better than store-bought—perfect for pasta, sandwiches, soups, or the freezer.
Ingredients
- ⅓ cup walnuts, toasted if desired (see note)
- 2 large garlic cloves, roughly chopped
- 2 cups packed fresh basil leaves
- ½ teaspoon salt
- ¼ teaspoon ground black pepper
- ⅔ cup extra virgin olive oil
- ½ cup grated Parmigiano-Reggiano
Instructions
- Place the walnuts and garlic in the bowl of a food processor fitted with a steel blade. Process until coarsely chopped, about 10 seconds. Add the basil leaves, salt, and pepper and process until mixture resembles a paste, about 1 minute. With the processor running, slowly pour the olive oil through the feed tube and process until the pesto is thoroughly blended. Add the Parmesan and process a minute more. Use pesto immediately or store in a tightly sealed jar or air-tight plastic container, covered with a thin layer of olive oil (this seals out the air and prevents the pesto from oxidizing, which would turn it an unappetizing brown color). It will keep in the refrigerator for about a week.
- Freezer-Friendly Instructions: Pesto can be frozen in an airtight container for up to 6 months. You can also divide your prepared pesto into the compartments of an ice cube tray and freeze. Once it’s frozen, remove the pesto cubes from the tray and put in a sealable plastic bag or airtight container. You can add the defrosted pesto cubes to soups, pasta dishes, eggs, sandwiches, and potatoes.
- Note: Toasting the walnuts isn't essential, but it brings out their flavor. To toast them, preheat the oven to 350°F. Arrange the walnuts on a baking sheet in a single layer. Bake, checking frequently, until lightly toasted and fragrant, 6 to 8 minutes. Transfer immediately to a plate to cool.
Nutrition Information
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- Serving size: 2 Tbsp.
- Calories: 159
- Fat: 17 g
- Saturated fat: 3 g
- Carbohydrates: 1 g
- Sugar: 0 g
- Fiber: 0 g
- Protein: 3 g
- Sodium: 161 mg
- Cholesterol: 4 mg
This website is written and produced for informational purposes only. I am not a certified nutritionist and the nutritional data on this site has not been evaluated or approved by a nutritionist or the Food and Drug Administration. Nutritional information is offered as a courtesy and should not be construed as a guarantee. The data is calculated through an online nutritional calculator, Edamam.com. Although I do my best to provide accurate nutritional information, these figures should be considered estimates only. Varying factors such as product types or brands purchased, natural fluctuations in fresh produce, and the way ingredients are processed change the effective nutritional information in any given recipe. Furthermore, different online calculators provide different results depending on their own nutrition fact sources and algorithms. To obtain the most accurate nutritional information in a given recipe, you should calculate the nutritional information with the actual ingredients used in your recipe, using your preferred nutrition calculator.
Gluten-Free Adaptable Note
To the best of my knowledge, all of the ingredients used in this recipe are gluten-free or widely available in gluten-free versions. There is hidden gluten in many foods; if you're following a gluten-free diet or cooking for someone with gluten allergies, always read the labels of your ingredients to verify that they are gluten-free.
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This is an excellent, affordable, pesto. I’ve made better pesto, but it involved spending a whole lot of time with a mortar and pestle. This is the pesto I make and freeze in the summer.
Great pesto. I use walnuts because I have gotten Pine Mouth Syndrome before. It lasted two weeks and was so annoying. I attributed it to the source of the pine nuts. I had bought a big bag at Costco and I’m sure the nuts were from China. I have nibbled on pine nuts since then that were from Italy (I think) and they were fine.
I just made the pesto, using pine nuts and fresh basil, however when I tasted it, it has quite a bitter after taste. I thought maybe I had used too much basil. I re-read your recipe and see that maybe it’s the pine nuts??
I didn’t want to sacrifice on the authenticity the pesto by swapping out the pine nuts for walnuts but i like this bitter taste even less. Will the walnuts affect the taste much?
Hi Vicky, I haven’t heard much mention of pine mouth syndrome lately but I assume it’s still out there. Are you still experiencing a bitter, metallic taste? If so, unfortunately, it may have been the pine nuts that caused that. If not, not really sure why you’re getting a bitter taste from the pesto — did you make any adjustments to the recipe aside from using pine nuts?
This was great. My guests enjoyed it very much – so much that we had it on toast the next morning!
Love this recipe! The only difference is that I toast the walnuts first and add a splash of lemon juice.
Or lemon zest
I made this recipe all summer last year, using sunflower seeds – which are even cheaper than walnuts, and quite tasty. Looking forward to starting the routine again this year with my aggressive basil.
|This is delicious!! This is my first time making it and I used pecans, no walnuts on hand. I also added sundried tomatoes and some of their oil. I’m not a big Pesto fan but I had a bunch of basil and this is what my search brought me to. Amazing!!
Hi Jenn,
First, I must tell you how much I love your blog! I find your stories and recipes so encouraging and reliably delicious I want to try them all. I will now make your pesto with walnuts. Have you tried Marcella Hazan’s blender pesto? That has been my go-to pesto recipe for years. She adds butter to it at the very end. I’ve learned I can reduce the quantity of olive oil she calls for and add less butter. But after making it with and without the butter, including it does provide an added creaminess.
And I also wanted to tell you I have taken your yummy peanut sauce for the Asian slaw (a summer staple for me) and made a new recipe with it: a vegetable rice salad, with the peanut sauce as the dressing. One of the old Vegetarian Epicure cookbooks by Anna Thomas has a veggie/rice salad with an olive oil/parm cheese sauce. Delish but I love the flavors in your Asian slaw sauce! Cooked white jasmine rice with an assortment of chopped raw veggies based on color so it turns into a very colorful salad. Purple onion, orange carrots and/or peppers, red/yellow peppers, green zucchini and yellow summer squash….
Thanks again for your recipes! Sally
Thanks for all your kind words, Sally–so glad you like the blog! And thanks also for sharing how you’ve put the peanut sauce from the Asian slaw to good use. Your take on it sounds delicious! And good to know about the pesto; a little butter never hurt anything! 🙂
Hi Once Upon a chef your Pizza is the best, question do you roast your walnuts for this pesto? I mention this as I got a little bit of metallic taste on the roof of my mouth or could this be something else?
Hi Sue, Did you by chance make the pesto in a blender?
We made this pesto tonight. Since it’s still early spring, my windowsill basil could only offer me 1 cup of leaves. I made up the balance with spinach and it was still great! We appreciated the walnuts instead of pinenuts. We have had trouble sourcing pinenuts without peanut traces (a problem for our house). Thanks for the recipe!