Fresh Herbs are the Best Herbs.
Pesto is a great addition to any meat dish! We love smothering chicken breast in it or a nice lime marinated skirt steak. We’ve also experimented with adding it to our morning omelette with feta cheese. This result? One awesome feta & pesto omelette!
It’s traditionally made with basil and pine nuts which is how we prepared it. It’s got a fresh, earthy taste and it’s quite strong. We planted a few basil and parsley seeds and have been growing them with the intention of making pesto months ago. Our plant was finally big enough to prune a good amount of leaves so we whipped out the food processor and got started!
The entire process took about 5 minutes and the ingredients are readily available in most supermarkets. You can buy fresh basil in a container, a bag or still in the pot! We recommend buy a potted basil plant because you can care for it and have basil on hand for any recipe! Buying fresh basil can become expensive; buying basil seeds once and enjoying basil any time you want is just economical :).
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For the oil portion, you can use any mild-tasting oil. We recommend olive, coconut or avocado oil.
The rest of the ingredients are pretty standard. Add or subtract garlic as you prefer it. We used raw garlic cloves but not too many of them, for just a hint of garlic flavor. The basil should really be the stand out flavor in pesto. If you’re sensitive to the taste of garlic, try frying the cloves a little first, for a slightly different flavor with a hint of garlic still present.
This recipe is primal friendly, but if you’d like to make it strictly paleo, omit the Parmesan cheese! The finished product will still be absolutely delicious on anything you can think of!
If you don’t have enough basil, you can supplement in some spinach for added nutrients. It’s pretty mild in flavor so it won’t throw off the pesto’s taste too much. And if pine nuts aren’t available around you, you can also use walnuts for a walnut pesto!
The pesto doesn’t need to be refrigerated but will last longer if you do. Store it in an airtight container or a mason jar to extend its shelf life.
If you are looking for a pesto recipe without nuts, try this nut-free pesto from Joy Filled Eats!
| Servings: cup |
- 2 cups fresh basil
- 1/3 cup pine nuts
- 1/2 cup olive oil
- 1/3 cup Parmesan cheese
- 2 cloves garlic
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1/4 tsp black pepper
- Take 2 cups of fresh basil leaves packed into a measuring cup and place them in a food processor.
- Add pine nuts and 2 garlic cloves to the food processor.
- Then add your oil of choice (olive, avocado, coconut are good choices) and parmesan cheese. To make this a paleo pesto, omit the cheese.
- Sprinkle salt and pepper and blend!
- Let the food processor run for about 5 minutes so the oil emulsifies and everything is evenly combined.
- Do a quick taste test to check that the pesto is seasoned well enough.
- Transfer to a mason jar with an air-tight seal. No refrigeration is necessary but to stretch its shelf life, you can refrigerate it.
- Enjoy on chicken, a caprese salad, on zucchini pasta aka zoodles, or as a spread on oopsie bread!
Loved this recipe? Let us know! Something didn’t quite turn out right? Ask us in the comments below or contact us– we respond to comments every day and would love to hear from you and help you out! And check out all our low carb recipes to learn to make more delicious and healthy meals!
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The content on this website should not be taken as medical advice and you should ALWAYS consult with your doctor before starting any diet or exercise program. We provide nutritional data for our recipes as a courtesy to our readers. We use Total Keto Diet app software to calculate the nutrition and we remove fiber and sugar alcohols, like erythritol, from the total carbohydrate count to get to the net carb count, as they do not affect your blood glucose levels. You should independently calculate nutritional information on your own and not rely on our data. The website or content herein is not intended to cure, prevent, diagnose or treat any disease. This website shall not be liable for adverse reactions or any other outcome resulting from the use of recipes or recommendations on the Website or actions you take as a result. Any action you take is strictly at your own risk.
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Dr. Rosmy Barrios, MD is an aesthetic medicine specialist whose work focuses on patients who are treated for obesity, metabolic syndrome, and other weight-related issues through nutritional analysis, keto diet programs, and supporting medications.
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Made today, served with courgetti ( Zoodles) and delicious! Non Keto and pesto loving son commented that all he’d eaten so call high-end pesto all those years were lie. I’ve been avoiding pesto because of high calorie high fat. Love Keto lifestyle now. Big thank you for sharing recipes.
That’s awesome! Enjoy the pesto, guilt-free 🙂