Tried It, Liked It Tuesday: Homemade Pesto

I love pesto. It's great on pizza, pasta, paninis...basically anything that starts with a "p." We have so much basil growing, so I looked up on Pinterest how to make your own pesto and freeze it for use later in the year. Oh, and I used my food processor for the first time. WHY did it take me 3 years to use it?! It's amazing! Here's what I did.

Homemade Pesto

adapted from The Secret Life of a Chef's Wife

Please note that I only had 2 cups of basil although the recipe called for 4 cups. Therefore, I basically divided the recipe in half.

Ingredients:

• 2 cups fresh, rinsed basil
• 1/2 cup pine nuts
• 2 garlic cloves
• 1/2 cup grated parmesan
• 1/4  tea­spoon kosher salt
• 1/4  tea­spoon black pepper
• 1/2 tea­spoon sugar
• 1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil
• addi­tional olive oil if needed

Directions:

Cut, rinse and dry your fresh basil. Place the basil in the food processor and pulse until basil is lightly chopped. Add in the pine nuts and garlic cloves and continue pulsing. Add in the parmesan, salt, pepper, and sugar. Finally, drizzle in the olive oil pulsing continuously. You still want the pesto to have some texture and not be completely liquidy or a pasty so don't overpulse.

Thanks to the internet and youtube, I learned how to correctly cut basil. Let me tell you, my basil grows like it is on crack. Snip off the stem of the basil where two more stems are growing out. I'm about to cut the basil directly below my fingers in this photo.

I then scooped the pesto into an ice tray to be frozen and used for another time. I'm planning on just popping out a couple of the "pesto cubes" and placing them in a ziploc bag or tupperware container to let them thaw when I'm ready to use them. Oh, and I did a little taste teste before I placed the pesto in the tray and let me just say, YUM!

Does anyone have any good recipes involving pesto? If so, please share!