Roasted Garlic Basil Pesto
Roasted Garlic Basil Pesto is perfect for your summer abundance of basil! Enjoy it with pasta, pizza, chicken and more.
My garden has really taken off the last few weeks and it was time to make pesto. Pesto is so simple to make and is one of my favorite ways to really boost the flavor in a dish.
Pesto is basically basil, garlic, Parmesan cheese, nuts, olive oil and salt and pepper. I changed up my basic pesto recipe by using roasted garlic and I used smoked almonds in place of the usual pine nuts. Pine nuts are a little hard to come by in my little town and the smokey almonds were a great substitution.
There are lots of ways to make pesto and a few of our favorites are Rosemary Pesto Spinach Pesto and basic Basil Pesto.
For the roasted garlic, I just cut the tops off of the heads of garlic, placed them on a baking sheet, drizzled with olive oil and popped them in a 375 degree oven for about 20 minutes.
Making pesto couldn’t be easier, just toss it all into the food processor and in just a few pulses you and a drizzle of olive oil, have delicious pesto. It literally takes 5 minutes.
My KitchenAid 13-Cup Food Processor makes it so easy! This thing is a work horse. Pesto in five minutes or less, seriously you have to make it.
I will be sharing a couple of the wonderful meals that we enjoyed using this Roasted Garlic Basil Pesto later on this week so be sure to check back in.
Have you made pesto? What’s your favorite version?
One of our favorite past dishes using pesto is Creamy Pesto Sausage Pasta. It has grilled Italian sausages and mushrooms mixed into creamy pesto spaghetti.
Roasted Garlic Basil Pesto
Ingredients
- 4 cups fresh basil leaves
- ⅔ cup smoked and salted almonds
- 4 roasted garlic cloves
- 1 cup finely grated Parmesan cheese
- ½ cup olive oil
- ½ teaspoon kosher salt
- ¼ teaspoon fresh ground pepper
Instructions
- Add basil, almonds and garlic cloves to a food processor bowl and pulse 8 to 10 times or until finely chopped.
- Add Parmesan and pulse 2 to 3 times. With processor running, drizzle olive oil in slowly. Scrape sides of bowl and stir in salt and pepper.
- Place in an airtight container and drizzle with enough olive oil to coat the top. This will keep the pesto bright and green.