Excellent! Loved this one & easy to make too. One thing about the almonds that I really like instead of the pine nuts is the COST! The toasted almonds were very tasty & so much less $$. Also...a tip on toasting the nuts, don't bother with the oven, simply heat a (dry) non stick heavy skillet on the stove, and saute' the nuts until toasted with no butter or oil. They are super easy & quick to do this way. Great recipe!
I tried halving this recipe and ran into difficulties. In particular,
with half the material, after the initial blender pulse, all the material
-much more compact- now could lay beneath the blades. Additional blending
didn't do anything. I had to manually raise of the material and try to
blender again, but this achieved little because it quickly went below the
blades again, and in the end I was left with pesto with many practically
unchopped garlic and nuts. This is posted here as an unrated review to
warn others that before reducing the size of the recipe, think about the
size, shape, and abilities of your food processor/blender. (With more
material, I think that the convection in my blender would chop everything
without difficulty.)
Wow! Do I like this recipe! It's quick and yummy. Just the thing to do with a handful of fresh basil straight from the farmer's market. I simply toasted slivered almonds on a hot, dry skillet until lightly toasted and fragrant. Forget the oven!
This recipe really can be adjusted and probably should be depending on your taste. We used about 1/2 a cup of toasted pine nuts added a tbl of shaved parm. added a bit of mint and played with the olive oil till it was the right texture. But this recipe shows you all the basic elements...adding sundried tomatos is fun too or olvies.
I amgiving this recipe 5 stars simply because of the fact that it uses nutmeg!! That is a wonderful addition to any pesto sauce!! I did modify it for other things however, I added lemon juice and parmesan cheese, and used pine nuts instead. This is a great base however, and the nutmeg really does add an impressive taste! Thanks for sharing!
This is a great basic pesto recipe- I use pine nuts and possibly any other nuts I have around (pecans). I also add parmesan cheese as I'm a big cheese fan. You can substitute water for some of the oil if you'd like a lower-fat version. Very versatile recipe!
I had a ton of basil that I needed to use up. It doesn't tolerate cold at all, so it's streching it to keep it into October in Minnesota. I was struggling to choose a recipe, so I decided to try three different pesto recipes from this site. In A-typical allrecipes fashion I actually stuck exactly to each recipe so that we could truly judge them fairly. The recipes were Easy Pesto by Rebecca Jane Thompson, Pesto Sauce by Sara, and Simple Garlic and Basil Pesto by FuzzyGreenMonkey. My favorite was Easy Pesto. It had a nice nutty flavor because of the toasted almonds. It's also nice if you don't have much basil on hand because it uses half as much as the other recipes. My husband liked Simple Garlic and Basil Pesto the best, it was my close second. The parmesan cheese and pine nuts really make that recipe. We both agreed that by far our least favorite was Pesto Sauce. It was very bland compared to the other two. I would attribute that to the 1 1/2 cups of walnuts. I would not recommend that recipe at all. It was a fun experiment and the other two recipes will go into my permanant file.
I have never made Pesto before and honestly didn't know what it was until I made this and put it in a pasta dish then voila! I realized the glob I dug out of the food processor was a familiar taste and made the pasta dish wonderfully delicious. I used raw almonds and did not toast them and used dried basil instead of fresh leaves. I will definately make again and not sure I can make another pasta dish without it. Thank you!
This was an awesome recipe! I added about 3 tbsp of parmesan cheese and used the pesto to make a cream sauce. I will make this again!
