Homemade pesto sauce is made with very few ingredients but how it is prepared is entirely up to you. Its flavor depends upon its technique.
You can use any blender for making this sauce, but since this is a traditional recipe, we’d be using a mortar and a pestle.So use the recipe below to prepare your own homemade pesto the traditional way and impress everyone!
Equipment
- Mortar and Pestle
Health Benefits
Pesto is one of the healthiest sauces you can ever have. By using a mortar and pestle to blend basil, you ensure that the fiber in the basil remains intact. Blending basil using an electric blender causes the ingredient to lost some of its natural fiber.
Basil also contains a good amount of calcium, iron, and vitamins A and C.
Generally, only about a spoonful of homemade pesto sauceis needed for adding flavor to your food.
Ingredients
bunch basil Leaves – a flowering bunch: 1
garlic cloves: 6-8
slab parmesan cheese--grated: 1
cup pine nuts: 1/2
tbsp olive oil: 5
couture salt to taste
How To Make Homemade Pesto
- Crush raw pine nuts with a pestle to a coarse powder. Set aside.
- Add garlic cloves and couture salt into the mortar and blend coarse. Add some basil leaves and the crushed pine nuts into the mortar. Crush to rough paste. As soon as you are done add more basil leaves and crush them as well. Continue until you have exhausted all the basil leaves.
- Add parmesan cheese to the basil-garlic paste and blend until you get a fine paste.
- Gradually stir in olive oil into the paste.
- Enjoy your favorite bread, pizza, or pasta with some fresh, old-school, homemade pesto sauce!
Trivia
- Traditionally, pesto is made with basil that grows in Genoa. That was where it started first.
Pesto is often confused with Pistou which is made in Provence with a different recipe.