Tested: supermarket pesto (and it’s not great)

Raise your hand if you genuinely like pesto from a jar. No? Us and our colleagues at Italiamo neither. And yet we buy it from time to time. Out of convenience, because in a moment of temporary insanity we think it might not be so noticeable in a dish after all, or because (huh, really?) we hope that one day they’ll magically improve the flavor. It always ends in disappointment and despair. Have we been picking the wrong one every time? Or is there simply no good pesto from a jar? Time for a (obviously blind) taste test.

Making pesto yourself is the first thing FavorFlav’s Sharon taught her stepdaughter in the kitchen. Because it’s easy, quick to make and delivers an instant flavor sensation. The du jour pesto hit in the FavorFlav office is pistachio pesto—because you can vary endlessly with pesto. For example, also make a coriander pesto—provided you’re not a coriander hater.

Supermarket pesto test

But you’re short on time and don’t feel like cooking. There you are, in the supermarket. Which pesto are you going to buy? Our test panel selected six types of supermarket pesto, ranging from store brands to major brands and even a seemingly local product. Is there a jar that—even in terms of ingredients—comes close to our homemade pesto, made with love and dedication?

Pesto Grand’Italia

Price: € 2.69 (185 grams)
Ingredients: Sunflower oil, 30% basil, potatoes, glucose syrup, almonds, Grana Padano (4.5%) and Pecorino Romano (4.5%), plus a little salt, olive oil, pine nuts, natural flavoring, garlic and lemon juice.
Appearance: Brownish-green color, stringy and lots of oil.
Recognizable ingredient flavors: Actually very few, no matter how hard we try.
Sour/salty/sweet: Not very sour, but somewhat too salty and too sweet. Maybe the glucose syrup could simply be left out?
Overall flavor: It doesn’t really resemble homemade pesto and it fades a little in the mouth, but for a supermarket pesto it’s not too bad.
Score: 6

Sacla

Price: € 2.99 (190 grams)
Ingredients: Sunflower oil, 36% Italian basil, cashews, sea salt, Grana Padano and Pecorino Romano, glucose, potato and finally pine nuts, extra-virgin olive oil, flavorings, natural garlic flavoring and an acidity regulator.
Appearance: Not as stringy as some other pestos, but runny and with lots of oil.
Recognizable ingredient flavors: No, not at all.
Sour/salty/sweet: Mainly too sour.
Overall flavor: It’s a shame about the fairly generous amount of Italian basil, because we can’t taste it. To be honest, both the smell and the flavor remind us of Cheetos. Maybe that’s the Grana Padano and Pecorino?
Score: 4.3

Jumbo store brand

Price: € 1.15 (190 grams)
Ingredients: 38.8% basil, sunflower oil, water, yogurt, cheese, cashews, pea fiber, sugar, rice flour, lactic acid, garlic powder, natural flavoring, salt, olive oil and 1% Pecorino Romano.
Appearance: Bright green, with not only strands but also other pieces, and less oil than many others.
Recognizable ingredient flavors: We mainly taste chemical lemon. Fresh, but not pesto.
Sour/salty/sweet: Too sweet and too sour.
Overall flavor: With so many strange ingredients, you expect all sorts of things, but not to mainly taste lemon. Unfortunately, we can’t taste the almost 40% basil, nor any of the other ingredients.
Score: 4.6

Barilla pesto

Price: € 4.19 (190 grams)
Ingredients: Sunflower oil, 30% fresh basil, cashews, Parmigiano Reggiano (5%), corn fiber, whey powder, salt, milk proteins, natural flavorings, acidity regulator lactic acid, sugar, basil extract and olive oil and garlic.
Appearance: Very different from the other pestos tested. Light green and smooth, almost hummus-like. It does also contain some pieces and strands.
Recognizable ingredient flavors: Not this time either.
Sour/salty/sweet: Too sweet and too salty.
Overall flavor: Such a shame—the smell almost reminds us of homemade pesto, but the flavor doesn’t live up to it. It tingles a little at the back of the mouth and once again we taste Cheetos. Still, this pesto stands out because of its reasonably acceptable flavor.
Score: 6

Costa Ligure

Price: € 3.90 (135 grams)
Ingredients: 37% ‘Basilico Genovese’, sunflower oil, cashews, whey, hard cheese’ Parmigiano Reggiano (2.5%), extra-virgin olive oil, salt, pine nuts, garlic and finally wine vinegar and acidity regulators.
Appearance: Lots of oil, but are those pieces of nuts we see?
Recognizable ingredient flavors: A little cheese, a little of the freshness of basil.
Sour/salty/sweet: Somewhat salty, but for a change not too sweet or too sour.
Overall flavor: Actually quite okay, especially if you’re expecting supermarket pesto. The proportions seem right and we taste very little that’s strange.
Score: 6.3 (winner!)

Albert Heijn store-brand pesto

Price: € 1.15 (190 grams)
Ingredients: Vegetable oil (sunflower, 11% olive), 38% basil, cashew, milk, yogurt, natural flavoring, sugar, salt, sheep’s milk, 1% pine nuts, garlic powder, acidity regulator, preservative, rennet.
Appearance: Pale green and, once again, those strange strands. Dry; even if you hold the pesto upside down, no oil comes out.
Recognizable ingredient flavors: If we try hard, we can taste basil.
Sour/salty/sweet: Especially very salty, with a sour aftertaste.
Overall flavor: A kind of mushy basil with an unidentifiable aftertaste. You can feel the texture of the basil leaves, but there’s also something abrasive. A kind of crystals that almost feel like sand. Could that be the sugar?
Score: 5

The best supermarket pesto

After this blind test, it turns out that the pesto with the fewest strange ingredients (the stuff you don’t have in your kitchen cupboard, so to speak) really does perform best. Unfortunately, it’s also one of the most expensive jars of pesto, and even then you still don’t get a flavor sensation. All the other pestos are very distant relatives of the pesto we make at home. Makes sense, too, when you look at the ingredient list.

What stands out is that sunflower oil is used across the board instead of olive oil. The pine nuts are also absent or present in minimal quantities. They are almost always replaced by cashews. In addition, we see unusual ingredients such as potato, glucose (syrup), pea fiber and yogurt. They add flavor, but you have to wonder whether this is the flavor you want to find in a jar of pesto.

Our tip—we can’t say it often enough: make your own pesto, or if you really don’t have time, choose a fresh version at the supermarket. We’ll test those for you soon.

Also read:

• Oh no! This may make a holiday to Italy considerably more expensive
• Let’s go: there’s a fountain in Italy that dispenses free red wine
• Seriously: you’d better not eat this in Italy

Source: Italiamo