Basil Pesto

With the mountain of Basil we’re harvesting this summer, we broke down and decided to freeze some pesto.

Basket o' Basil

Pesto is pretty easy to make, really.

Pesto 101 Recipe:

Start with a lot of basil.  Per 2 cups of washed and destemmed basil, use the following:

1/2 cup of extra-virgin olive oil

2-3 large cloves of Garlic, peeled

1/4 cup of walnuts or macademia nuts (Pine nuts are *very* expensive, and personally at least one of us prefers other nuts to them, don’t be afraid to experiment!)

1/4 cup Parmesan cheese

Salt and Pepper to taste

Pesto frozen in muffin tins

Throw all that into a food processor and grind.

The better your olive oil, the better this is gonna be.  If you have the chance to taste some different olive oils, find one that has a bright grassy flavor to it and use that one.

We froze most of this, so what we did was spoon it into muffin tins, and then put it in the freezer, with a layer of wax paper over each tin.  We have discovered this morning that it is better to underfill a bit, than to overfill.

Frozen pesto

Removed from tins and put in a freezer bag

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Tags: Basil, Cook, Cooking, Food, Freezing Pesto, Nuts, Pesto, Southern