The Best Arugula Pesto

Photo: Heather

Ingredients

1/4 cup roughly chopped walnuts

3 garlic cloves

2 cups of arugula, packed

1/4 cup fresh flat leaf Italian parsley, packed

1/2 cup Extra Virgin Olive Oil

1 cup grated Parmesan cheese

Salt to taste

Preparation

The great thing about a pesto is that it is so simple to make! I can’t believe I don’t make it more often! You take all the arugula, walnuts, garlic and parsley and put it in your blender or food processor.

Give it a pulse a few times to chop everything down a little bit.

Now you are going to pour in the oil while you hit the pulse button to make sure the pesto is mixing while the oil is added.

Take off the lid and you are almost done! Scoop the pesto out and into a dish or a bowl or a jar.

Cooking Tip** At this point if you wanted to can this you could. Or you can scoop it into an ice cube tray and freeze it! after about 6 hours when it is frozen just pop them out and put the pesto cubes in a zip lock bag or air tight container and freeze them! They will keep for a month! Then anytime you want to add it to a recipe you can pop it out and toss it in and kick anything you are making up a notch! Once it is thawed out you can stir in the Parmesan cheese.

Now you want to add the grated Parmesan.

At this point you need to test it and see how much salt you need to add. You can add a dash in when you are blending it but the Parmesan cheese is salty so I like to wait until after and if it needs a little bit then I add it in at the end. This way I can make sure it is not too salty or too bland. Once you have salted it and stirred it up you are done!