Tips & tricks

This surprising ingredient makes your homemade pesto extra creamy and flavorful (with recipe!)

Groene pesto

Pasta pesto is one of those dishes you’ll keep making all your life. It was undoubtedly a hit during your student days, and in 40 years it will probably still be your favorite quick pasta sauce. Homemade is best. Want to give your homemade pesto a surprising twist? A twist that makes it extra creamy and flavorful? Try adding tahini.

Foto van culinair journalist Jeske van Steen

I know, the Italians will go berserk when they hear that you’re tinkering with a traditional pesto recipe. But believe me, this secret ingredient is worth a possible Italian uprising.

Creamy, nutty and dairy-free

Tahini is a sesame seed paste. It naturally has a buttery, nutty flavor: exactly what pine nuts (or walnuts or pistachios) bring to pesto. The mild flavor of the tahini also brings balance to your pesto, as it provides a lovely counterpoint to the herby basil. And one more thing that lactose-intolerant pesto lovers in particular will appreciate: tahini makes your pesto dairy-free. That’s because adding it means you no longer need to use Parmesan cheese.

Want to know how to make tahini pesto? This recipe from The Kitchn is a good one:

  1. Crush and peel 2 garlic cloves and put them in the bowl of your food processor (fitted with the blade attachment).
  2. Add 65 grams of well-stirred tahini.
  3. Squeeze the juice of half a medium lemon into the food processor (about 1½ tablespoons). Add half a teaspoon of salt and pulse until the garlic is roughly chopped (about 10 one-second pulses).
  4. Pick the leaves from 1 large bunch of fresh basil. Add the basil leaves and 1 ice cube to the food processor. Pulse until roughly chopped (6 to 8 one-second pulses).
  5. Add 60 ml olive oil and pulse until creamy and smooth (this takes 20 to 25 seconds). If necessary, scrape pesto from the sides and bottom of your food processor so everything gets incorporated.

If you want a spicy tahini pesto, add some chili flakes.

Delicious and inexpensive pesto

What’s notable about this recipe is that no pine nuts (or any other nuts) or Parmesan cheese are added. Tahini takes over the qualities of those ingredients. It also cuts costs, because pine nuts and Parmesan cheese are seriously expensive.

You can of course use the pesto as a base for your trusted pasta pesto. But also try the huge TikTok hits pesto eggs  and pesto cookies. Such rebellious ideas will probably also get the Italians on your case, but you’ll just have to take that in stride.

Also read:

Recipe: The Kitchn

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