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A simple and flavorful nut-free vegan pesto made with love and just a handful of ingredients. It’s ready in just minutes and can be used to bring your dishes to the next level.
Who doesn’t love pesto, right? We can slather it on any dish and be well on our way to flavor town.
It’s also fun that you can make pesto from a variety of different nuts and seeds. The most traditional way of making pesto is with pine nuts, but we’ve found that they are often costly. Instead, we like to use either sunflower seeds or almonds because they’re a bit more affordable (especially sunflower seeds).
For this recipe, we chose to use sunflower seeds because we really enjoy the flavor and consistency they provide. We also always had a bunch of sunflower seeds on hand from after we made our nut-free mac and cheese, so it worked out perfectly.
This vegan pesto is the perfect addition to so many dishes. It’s great on everything from pizza to pasta to sandwiches, and beyond. We actually recently made a vegan chicken pesto pizza with it, and it was so dang good.
What’s your favorite way to enjoy pesto? Let us know in the comments below.
If you want some more pesto-centric recipes, here you go:
- Vegan Chicken Pesto Pizza
- Easy Avocado Pesto Pasta w/ Sundried Tomatoes
- Baked Tofu and Pesto Sandwiches
- White Bean & Pumpkin Seed Pesto
- Grilled Fall Vegetable Bread Boat w/ Pumpkin Seed Pesto
Make sure you tag us on Instagram @sweetsimplevegan and @consciouschris and hashtag #sweetsimplevegan if you recreate any of our recipes, we love to see your photos!
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Easy Nut-Free Vegan Pesto
- Total Time: 5 minutes
- Yield: 1/2 cup
Description
A simple and flavorful nut-free vegan pesto made with love and just a handful of ingredients. It’s ready in just minutes and can be used to bring your dishes to the next level.
Ingredients
- 1 cup fresh basil, packed
- 1/3 cup sunflower seeds*
- 3–4 cloves of garlic
- 2 tablespoons nutritional yeast
- Juice of 1/2 of a small lemon (about 1 tablespoon)
- 1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
- Salt & pepper to taste
Instructions
- Into the bowl of a food processor fitted with the S blade, add in the basil, sunflower seeds, garlic , lemon juice and nutritional yeast. Pulse until everything is well combined and coarsely ground, about 30 to 60 seconds.
- Next, process everything on high speed and begin to slowly drizzle in the olive oil until you have added the full 1/2 cup. Stop the food processor and season with salt and pepper to taste. Pulse a few more times to combine and then dig in!
Notes
- If you do not want to use sunflower seeds in this pesto and are okay with using nuts, raw slivered almonds and/or pine nuts also work very well in this!
- Prep Time: 5 minutes
- Category: Side, Condiment
- Method: Food Processor
- Cuisine: Vegan, Italian
Nutrition facts label provided by Nutri Fox.
Disclaimer: The nutritional information shown is an estimate provided by an online calculator. It should not be considered a substitute for a professional’s advice. This page may contain affiliate links, which simply means that we earn a commission if you purchase through those links, but your price remains the same. Thank you for supporting Sweet Simple Vegan!
oh my! look at that colour! so so good.