🌱 The Best Spinach Pesto Recipe

🌱 The Best Spinach Pesto Recipe

Our spinach pesto recipe is the only pesto you'll ever need, promise! My kids totally dig the 'yummy green sauce' and we think yours will too!

Course Dip, Dressing, Sauce

Cuisine Americanized Italian, Italian

Total Time 10

Servings servings

Calories 137kcal

Author Marcie & Julie

Equipment

Vitamix or blender

Ingredients

½ cup spinach packed firmly
½ cup fresh basil leaves packed firmly
½ cup fresh parsley packed firmly
½ cup parmesan cheese finely grated
¼ cup pine nuts
1-2 cloves garlic quartered
¼ teaspoon salt
⅓ cup olive oil add more, as needed
¼ - ½ cup water if you're making pasta, set aside some of the pasta water for this

Instructions

Combine greens, cheese, nuts, garlic, salt and a small amount of the olive oil into a Vitamix or blender. Blend for a few intervals, stopping to scrape sides down with spatula in between. Turn machine on low and gradually add in remaining olive oil and water, increasing speed slowly. Again, stop to scrape the sides as needed.

Video

Notes

🌱 Yield: This recipe makes roughly 400 mL or 1 ⅔ cup pesto.

🌱 Ingredient swaps: there are many! For greens, you can use spinach, basil, parsley, arugula or kale. For nuts, pine nuts, almonds, walnuts, cashews, pumpkin seeds and sunflower seeds all work.

🌱 Flexible amounts - feel free to increase or decrease anything in this recipe. The water and olive oil amounts depend on how well the sauce is blending. You may need more or less liquid.

🌱 If you're making pasta, set aside a cup of the pasta water for the pesto. Use it when you make your pesto.

🌱 To make it vegan, replace the parmesan with 2 tablespoons of nutritional yeast.

🌱 If you can splurge on any one ingredient, choose a great olive oil...extra virgin olive oil, either Italian or Spanish, stored in a dark glass bottle.

🌱Tools: In addition to the Vitamix, we recommend using kitchen shears (if you need them), a garlic mincer, Thermoworks silicone spatula, and Core mini spatula for this recipe.

Nutrition