Basil Pesto

Garden fresh basil combined with several other ingredients like sunflower seeds and parmesan cheese to make a bright and fresh tasting basil pesto.

I love to grow basil. Once it gets to where it is taller and has lots of leaves, it is easy to have more than enough to make a batch of pesto.

Most pesto’s are made with pine nuts, but they are expensive and not the most accessible ingredient. For just 2 ounces of them, they cost almost $7. To me, that defeats the purpose of making your own pesto because it’s more expensive than just buying a jar of it.

I used sunflower seeds in this recipe, and I was actually surprised at how wonderful and similar it was to pesto with pine nuts. Plus, you can get 16 ounces of sunflower seeds for just a little over $3. That’s more like it!

Be sure to check out a couple of my other posts about basil, like How To Prune Basil and How to Dry Basil.

Ingredients

• Basil
• Roasted Sunflower Seeds
• Parmesan Cheese
• Olive Oil
• Garlic
• Lemon Juice
• Salt

Instructions

• Wash and dry the basil. Remove and discard the stems.
• Put the basil, sunflower seeds, garlic, salt, parmesan cheese, and lemon juice in a blender or food processor. Pulse a few times until everything is finely chopped and mixed together.
• Drizzle in the olive oil while the food processor is running on low speed. Continue to do this until all the olive oil has been incorporated. This should take about 2 minutes or until all the ingredients are finely chopped and well incorporated together.
• Store in an airtight container in the refrigerator or freeze in an ice cube tray and then put the cubes in a freezer safe bag for long term storage.