In this episode, Kathy shares a recipe for making basil pesto and shares her tips on how to freeze pesto.

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In this episode you'll learn:
- How to make basil pesto
- Two methods for freezing pesto
- How to use frozen pesto
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Transcript
Hello and welcome back. Today we are going to be stocking our freezer with some of our summer produce. And the name of the game today is all about basil. We're going to be making basil pesto, and then I'm gonna share with you my tip on how I freeze it so I can use it all year long.
First, I have some basil planted in my garden. It has just come up and it has its second set of leaves, but it's not ready to harvest yet. But this spring, before I could plant anything outside, I bought one of those living basil plants that you find in your produce apartment, and I brought it home. Oftentimes I just set it in a cup of water and then I just trim off the leaves and use it straight from that plant.
But this time I brought it home and I separated out the plants. There were like five little plants in there, and I planted each of them into a large pot full of soil. And at first the plant kind of, oh, just kind of wilted over, and then all of a sudden just perked up and it's been thriving. I've been trimming several basil leaves off of there and using them in multiple recipes.
Once the weather turned warm, I set that pot outside on my deck and it's just thriving. I keep trimming those leaves and they keep coming back. So I want to use up some of my basil and make pesto.
For this recipe, you will need four cups of fresh basil, leaves, two cloves of garlic. Feel free to add more if you really love garlic, half a cup of olive oil.
A quarter cup of pine nuts. I use just the raw pine nuts, but you could also toast those pine nuts first and let them cool. Adds a little bit of different flavor. A half a cup of Parmesan cheese and a little bit of salt and pepper. About a quarter teaspoon of each. What I do is I start with my garlic cloves and I put them in my food processor and just chop those up, and then I add my basil leaves and I chop that until it's finely chopped.
And while the food processor is running, I pour the olive oil through the feed tube and it just starts to mix right in with the basil. Then I add my pine nuts, my Parmesan cheese, and my salt and pepper, and I mix that all together. I like it just slightly coarse, but you can keep processing it down further if you want it a little bit smoother.
If you find that this pesto is just a little bit thick, just add a tad more olive oil. You can use that pesto right away. You can cover and refrigerate it and use it up within about oh five to seven days. But one of my favorite things to do is to make extra and freeze it.
So there are two ways I like to freeze pesto. The first is in about tablespoon portions, which I use to add to sauces or just quick recipes and so I actually portion out into ice cube trays and I put a tablespoon in each of those little cubes, and I freeze it right in those ice cube trays once it's frozen. I take them out and remove them from the ice cube trays and put those cubes right into a freezer-safe bag, and then put that back into the freezer.
I really liked when I'm making spaghetti sauce to just take one out and add it right into that spaghetti sauce. It adds so much flavor. You don't really notice that it's. Pesto in there, but it just adds, I mean, you think about it. You've got all of that basil, you've got garlic, you've got Parmesan. It really enhances your spaghetti sauce.
The other way that I like to freeze the pesto is in larger portions, usually one-half to one-cup portions. So I use small plastic containers that we put leftovers in and I measure out either the half or one-cup portions and I freeze 'em right in there. And once they're fully frozen, I take 'em out and pop 'em out of those containers and then put the blocks of the frozen pesto right into a freezer-safe bag.
And then I just plop that into my freezer, and it's good to go for whenever I need it. When I'm ready to use pesto, I can take out a block as much as I'm going to need. I let it thaw, and then I use it in any recipe just like I would fresh pesto. Sometimes the pesto may darken just a tad, but that's okay.
The taste is still really good in there. I usually use my pesto up fairly quickly once I have it in there, and we're not getting basil from the garden anymore, but it will really last a good three to six months, especially in your deep freeze. So it's a great way to preserve that basal. Use what you have now so that you can use it later.
I hope that you give this a try and let me know how it works for you. I'll see you next week in the pantry. Bye.
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