The Best Pesto Recipe: Pesto Pasta With Chicken & Roasted Tomatoes

We made this Pesto Recipe several times over the summer and it was always a hit. Seriously, bookmark this pesto recipe! I'm not kidding when I say that everyone in my family loved this. And that includes a professional chef, a super picky preteen, a 7 year old and a 4 year old. It was lovingly called "the dinner with the yummy green sauce." This is a pesto recipe that I picked up a million years ago and modified over time 'til it was perfect. 

In terms of seasonality, I'd say this pesto recipe is a late summer type of dish. We were able to use our own basil from the backyard and had we followed through with all our springtime gardening plans, we could have used homegrown tomatoes as well.

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The sauce is the pinnacle of this pesto recipe, and it's easy to make in a blender or  Vitamix. What I like is that you can just throw everything in and blend, while slowly adding the  olive oil. The amount of olive oil is up to you. I just keep pouring it in until there's enough liquid for the pesto to blend evenly. While a pesto hand-ground with mortar and pestle is, I'm sure, the best...I don't have time for that. And I'm guessing you don't either. So, purists beware...we're blending this green sauce.

The traditional ingredients for pesto seem to be basil, pine nuts, garlic, parmesan and olive oil. But what I like to do is swap half of the basil for spinach. That way I can tell myself that we are all getting extra nutrients. Haha. So, really the only ingredients I'm adding to those traditional five are parsley and salt.

There are several other ingredient swaps one can make for their own pesto recipe. For instance, almonds and walnuts are often used instead of pine nuts. Toasted or raw is a preference, as well. I've heard that you can sub some water for the oil, if you're looking to cut down on the fat content, but I've never tried it. Some people like to add other greens, i.e. mint. And to make the pesto vegan, some use nutritional yeast instead of parmesan. So many ways to do this!