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Pasta with pesto is one of my favourite, simple and quick meals on weekday nights. It’s tasty, perfectly doable with vegan ingredients and you only need to boil the pasta – the rest happens in a food processor. Therefore, no method needed when sharing these recipes, because you just put all the ingredients into the food processor and blitz them. A blender can also work. I do like to switch this regular meal up from time to time with different versions of it – so I thought I share my 5 favourite vegan pesto recipes in one article for some midweek meal inspiration.
Staple Vegan Ingredients
Nutritional yeast
It’s a great dairy-free alternative to parmesan and any cheese when cooking or baking. This vegan ingredient is packed with plant-based protein (4g/tablespoon) but it’s also usually fortified with B12, B6 vitamins, Niacin, and Zinc.
Garlic
All pestos need some garlic, depending on your taste it can be garlicky or not. I prefer everything with lots of garlic. Garlic is really good for you, it has medicinal properties such as it may reduce the risk of heart attacks, anti-cancer properties, may help with high blood pressure and more.
Good quality extra virgin olive oil
When used in salad dressings and uncooked sauces, the quality of the extra virgin olive oil makes a real difference. Extra virgin olive oil has many health benefits but the way extra virgin olive oil is produced leaves its mark on quality. For example, how quickly the olives go from harvest to being processed into oil, when the olives are picked and other factors matter.
Vegan Pesto
The basic – or shall we say classic – pesto recipe, simply swapping the ingredients for vegan ones.
Ingredients:
- 50g fresh basil, packed
- 3 tbsp pine nuts
- 2 cloves of garlic
- 2 tbsp lemon juice
- 3 tbsp nutritional yeast
- 3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
- 3-4 tbsp water
- salt and pepper to taste
Vegan Nut-free Pesto
I used to make these for ages when my daughter was in kindergarten age and she was addicted with pesto with pasta – however, nurseries naturally are all nut free so traditional pesto was not an option. But this nut-free pesto worked just as well.
Ingredients:
- 50g fresh basil leaves
- 2 cloves of garlic
- 1 tbsp sunflower seed butter
- 1 tbsp nutritional yeast
- 1 tbsp fresh lemon juice
- 50ml extra virgin olive oil
- salt and pepper to taste
Vegan Sun Dried Tomato Pesto (Pesto Rosso)
Striking red colour sets this pesto aside from the other traditionally green pestos. It’s probably my favourite in summer time and if you add a little chilli oil to it, it gets even more interesting.
Ingredients:
- 60g fresh basil packed
- 50g sun dried tomatoes in olive oil
- 30g nutritional yeast
- 30g pine nuts
- 2-3 garlic cloves
- 60ml extra virgin olive oil
- juice of 1/2 lemon
- salt and pepper to taste
- 1-2 tablespoons of water
Vegan Wild Garlic Pesto
Forage for wild garlic in late April and May for this gorgeous recipe. Pretty straight forward as any pesto recipe. The most important thing is when making wild garlic pesto – to wash the leaves thoroughly.
Ingredients:
- 100g wild garlic leaves only
- 65g mix of walnuts and pine nuts toasted
- 1 whole lemon juice
- 50ml extra virgin olive oil
- 4 tbsp nutritional yeast
- salt and pepper to taste
Vegan Spinach Pesto
This pesto will help you to get more fibre and vitamins, so every other occasion, you could consider this rather than the traditional, basil pesto. It still has basil in there!
Ingredients:
- 200 g fresh spinach
- 60 g fresh basil leaves
- 4 tbsp nutritional yeast
- 60 g pine nuts, toasted
- 2 cloves of garlic
- 50 ml extra virgin olive oil
- 1 whole lemon’s juice
- salt and pepper to taste