Vegan Raw Basil Pesto Sauce
Pesto is a traditional Italian dish. It is an uncooked sauce made from fresh Italian basil. Having freshly made basil pesto on hand gives you lots of flexibility for use as you prepare delicious healthy meals. If you store the pesto in a glass jar with a tight lid, it will keep fresh in the fridge for up to five days.
You may have noticed that of all fresh herbs, basil leaves are the ones that turn dark brown and go off the fastest in the fridge. Preparing a freshly made basil sauce is great way to be sure to use the entire bunch of basil at its freshest.
In this video Dr. Baylac shows you how to prepare a basic vegan pesto using a mini food processor (the recipe follows below).
Traditionally Italian basil pesto is made with olive oil, pine nuts, garlic, basil, salt, lemon juice and dry aged cheese like Parmesan. Of course, we omit dairy from our recipes as it’s pro-inflammatory and a common food allergen.
Here are several suggestions for using the delicious, freshly made basil pesto sauce:
- On noodles or pasta. We recommend spiralized zucchini or cucumber noodles or kelp noodles. You can find kelp noodles in the refrigerator section of a health food store.
Zuchinni noodles make in a spiralizer
Kelp noodles
- On roasted, baked or steamed vegetables. Simply bake or steam some vegetables. Think crimini or portabello mushrooms, eggplant, zuchinni, cauliflower, tomatoes, red or yellow sweet peppers and drizzle pesto sauce over the vegetables after they are cooked.
- As a dipping sauce for raw cut veggies. Use it on celery sticks, carrot sticks, or any raw veggie crudites.
- In salad dressings. Stir into salad as a dressing or use it as the base of a dressing you make by simply adding more lemon juice and olive oil.
- In soup. For example, you can stir some of the sauce into a cooked soup or a raw soup. Think fresh tomato basil soup for example.
- As a dipping sauce for baked sweet potato wedges, potato wedges or winter squash wedges. If you’re following the Gerson diet, you can make this recipe and replace the basil with parsley and the olive oil with flax oil. This is a variation on another Italian herb sauce called Gremolata.
- As an ingredient in another recipe. Try our recipe… Pesto Stuffed Heirloom Tomato.
Vegan Raw Basil Pesto Sauce
Equipment
- Mini Food Processor
Ingredients
- 2 Big Bunches (or about 6 cups gently packed) Fresh Italian Basil Leaves washed and removed from the stems
- 2-3 Cloves Garlic chopped
- 1/2 Cup Extra-Virgin Unfiltered Organic Olive Oil
- 1/2 Cup Pine Nuts (or Macadamia Nuts)
- 1/4 TSP or to taste Sea Salt
- to taste Black Pepper
- 2-3 TBSP Lemon Juice
Instructions
- Prepare the basil leaves by removing the leaves from the stems. Chop the garlic cloves so that they will process better in the mini food processor.
- Start with processing the basil leaves and chopped garlic with some of the olive oil in the mini food processor.
- Stop and add the pine nuts, some salt and black pepper. Add some more olive oil and fresh lemon juice to taste and process it further.
- Keep pulsing the food processor until you have the right consistency and you've processed all the ingredients.
- Be sure to taste to make sure you've added enough salt, pepper and lemon juice.
- Transfer to a glass jar with tight lid and store in the refrigerator.