Homemade pesto is a quick and easy sauce to serve with pasta, chicken, and as a spread for sandwiches. Since fresh basil is incredibly easy to keep on hand year round if you have a sunny window, it doesn't have to be expensive to make pesto. You can purchase pots of living basil at most grocery stores for under five dollars and if you keep them watered and place them in a sunny location, they will live for months.

Photo is a pile of basil leaves, a glass measuring cup with olive oil, a pile of shredded parmesan cheese, garlic cloves, and a pile of pine nuts, on a wooden cutting board.

Occasionally I will have to replace my plants once during the year—mid-winter during the shortest days of the year—but even that is inexpensive. Compared with the price of purchasing fresh cut basil, it's a no brainer to me to keep living basil growing all year round. (learn more about basil with this Basil Fact Sheet.)

Keeping fresh basil on hand makes homemade pesto easy. Basil is the basis for pesto, and using fresh basil that you have just cut from the stem makes your pesto incredibly flavorful. This recipe for homemade pesto calls for 2 cups of basil, so even if you aren't growing basil you should be able to get that much from a single potted plant from the produce section of the grocery store.

a cutting board with a pile of basil leaves, cloves of garlic, a pile of pine nuts, a pile of shredded Parmesan cheese, and a measuring cup with oil

If you are serving pesto with pasta, the pesto can be made in the time it takes for the pasta to boil, so this is really a quick stovetop meal.

Recipe

Homemade Pesto

No ratings yet

Delicious homemade pesto is easy to make and needs no cooking, just blending.

Mary Ann

Add to Collection Add to Shopping List

Prep Time 10

Total Time 10

Course Sauce

Cuisine Gluten-free, Italian, Vegetarian

Servings recipe

Calories 1278

Ingredients

2 cups fresh basil leaves, washed, stems removed, and packed into cup
¼ cup Parmesan Cheese
½ cup olive oil
3 tablespoon pine nuts
3 large garlic cloves, minced

Instructions

Place basil leaves in small batches into a food processor and process until well chopped.
Add about ⅓ of the nuts and garlic and blend again.
Add about ⅓ of the cheese and blend slowly while adding about ⅓ of the olive oil.
Stop to scrape food processor contents down the sides of container towards the bottom. Process until a smooth thick paste is formed.
Repeat process until all ingredients are used.