Fresh Pesto Sauce Recipe (without nuts!)
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This nut free pesto sauce recipe can be used as a dip, a topping for bread, a sauce for pasta and so much more. It’s absolutely delish! Tastes like summertime. And a great way to use excess herbs from the garden!
It’s a great homemade flavoring that you can make yourself so much better than store-bought. And it can easily be turned into a meatless meal for dinner in no time flat! Or a dinner with meat! For all the best homemade dressing, dip, and sauce recipes check this out.
Nut Free Pesto
I am working on harvesting some of our garden surplus like the herbs that we haven’t used up and we had a ton of basil. I harvested two pounds of basil leaves from the walkways in the garden. Man did I smell good! What to do with all this basil? Make nut free PESTO!
I am allergic to nuts and I don’t know if I will react to pine nuts or not so I wanted to come up with a nut free pesto I could eat too, so I decided to roast up some sunflower seeds to use in place of the pine nuts. I used 1/4 a cup of seeds and toasted them lightly in a skillet.
Pesto without pine nuts
To use pesto as a pasta sauce, just cook your pasta, top with the desired amount of pesto and mix well. It’s a gorgeous sauce for pasta. It tastes so fresh and nourishing. My kids love this dish.
This pasta sauce freezes great too so you can have fresh pesto pasta all year round. Just put it in a jar, leaving room for it to expand and set it in the freezer.
Nut free pesto can also be used on crostini, as a dip for fresh garlic bread, as a pizza sauce, as a sandwich spread and so much more. Check out this incredible Focaccia Chicken Pesto Sandwich!
Sunflower seed pesto sauce
Nut Free Basil Pesto Sauce Recipe
Ingredients
- 2 c basil leaves washed and removed from stems
- 1/4 c sunflower seeds
- 1 thai pepper
- 1/4 c grated parmesan cheese
- 2 cloves garlic
- 1/4-1/2 c olive oil
Instructions
- Place sunflower seeds in a pan and toast on medium heat until they smell amazing.
- Place in blender with basil, thai pepper, parmesan cheese, and garlic.
- Blend well.
- Drizzle in olive oil until you get a sauce consistency.
For more flavor ideas, check out:
- Garlic and herb chimichurri sauce
- How to Make Fresh Homemade Ketchup
You can also try the pesto with different herbs. Excess mint makes a great pesto as well as spinach or lots of other herbs. And you can even make garlic scape pesto. It’s amazing!