When I was still vegetarian I loved eating pesto pasta. At that time I always made pasta with store bought pesto. Since becoming vegan I wanted to create a vegan pesto recipe that will be as flavourful as the original one I remember. The secret to achieving this was roasting the pine nuts and substituting the original parmesan with cashews and nutritional yeast. It also contains just the right amount of olive oil so that it’s rich but not too oily.
I’m obsessed with this vegan pesto, it’s so amazing. The taste can really compare to any non-vegan pesto out there. I love also that it’s very versatile and I can incorporate it in many recipes. If you want to impress somebody with a homemade recipe, I would recommend you make any of the recipes that uses my vegan pesto.
Use vegan pesto in these delicious recipes:
- Vegan Pesto Pasta
- Vegan Pesto Potatoes
- Vegan Pesto Pizza
- Green Goddess Sandwich
- Vegan Cheese Board
- Beetroot Noodles Pesto Pasta
Vegan Pesto (GF)
Ingredients
- 135 g pine nuts roasted
- 40 g cashews
- 30 g fresh basil leaves
- 80 ml (1/3 cup) olive oil
- 1 tbsp nutritional yeast (I used fortified with B12)
- 3/4 tsp salt
- 1/2 tsp ground black pepper
Instructions
- Heat the oven to 180 °C. Arrange the pine nuts over the baking tray with baking paper and roast them for 5 min. If you are making a bigger batch perhaps an additional minute of roasting is necessary but otherwise 5 minutes is perfect.
- Put all the ingredients in a blender and mix everything well together so it gets the texture of a sauce. (I like to crush pine nuts and cashews in the blender first and then add other ingredients. If you are making a bigger batch pine nuts and cashews will transform into nut butter which will make a really creamy texture for vegan pesto. If you prefer a chunkier vegan pesto, grind pine nuts and cashews in smaller batches then mix all ingredients together.)
- Transfer the mixture into a small jar and store it in the fridge. Use it in pasta, on pizza, in a sandwich …
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