Quick & Healthy Vegan Pesto Sauce

Marisa Kroes
Apr 2, 2019
3 min read

Pesto is one of the most flavorful and versatile sauces in a kitchen, and just so happens to be one of my favorite foods. I spent a semester studying in Tuscany during college and probably consumed a good gallon of pesto sauce during my time there. Honestly, there are few things pesto can’t improve whether it be pasta, a sandwich, salad, crostini, or even just a drizzle over soup.

As flavorful as pesto might be, it's not exactly healthy and it certainly isn't cheap. Olive oil, parmesan, basil, lemon, and especially pine nuts, are all pretty expensive ingredients. Also, pesto is exponentially better fresh and grocery store brands usually cut their olive oil with canola or other flavorless refined oils. Yuck. Even when made fresh, your standard pesto sauce can contain over 30 grams of fat and that’s just in a two tablespoon serving. I mean, who wants to eat only two tablespoons of pesto?! What a tease!

Anyway, as much as I usually prefer plant-based recipes, it took me a surprisingly long while to experiment with vegan pesto. Once I did though, I never looked back. Nutritional yeast brings everything parmesan brings to the table in a good pesto minus the saturated fat, dairy, and the high price tag. Not to mention, you can just as easily switch up the nuts and greens as you would a regular pesto sauce to make it new and exciting. I like to use walnuts because they are significantly cheaper than pine nuts and really enhance the creaminess of the sauce, making it easier to coat pasta and veggies for even more pesto flavor.

So as much as I loved my vegan pesto sauce, I still used it sparingly knowing how much oil it contained. It wasn’t until I enrolled in the Plant Based Nutrition program at the Center for Nutrition Studies back in December that I began to reevaluate all of the refined oils in my diet. Since pesto is one of my favorite foods, it was one of the first to get an oil-free makeover.

Let me just tell you, this oil-free vegan pesto is amazing and I only wish I’d had the idea sooner. Super flavorful and fresh. The use of vegetable stock and fresh lemon juice highlight the fresh garlic and basil more than the original. This pesto is affordable, comes together in under five minutes and is so incredibly light and healthy, you can pour as much as you want over whatever you want and you don’t have to feel even the slightest bit guilty. I’m telling you, it’s amazing. Just try it.

Recipe yields about one cup

1 bunch of fresh basil

3 gloves of garlic

6 Tbs fresh lemon juice

¼ tsp sea salt

¼ cup vegetable stock

¼ cup nutritional yeast

1/3 cup walnuts

Instructions

First step is to juice your lemons. Strain the juice into your blender or food processor. Then roughly chop your garlic and let it rest in the lemon juice for 1-2 minutes. This process eliminates the pungent, and often overpowering effects of raw garlic. For more info on the interesting science behind garlic, check out this fun article on Serious Eats. If you prefer a raw garlic bite in your sauce, then eliminate this step and add your garlic to the blender last.
Next, wash, and trim your basil leaves, removing the stems. Place the basil in the blender with the walnuts, salt, nutritional yeast, and vegetable stock.
Pulse until smooth. Usually just a minute or two. Add to your favorite pasta, or as a dip for bread or veggies. Options are endless! Store remaining sauce in fridge for about a week. This makes enough sauce for roughly 2-3 servings of pasta.