Dips
Red pesto gluten-free, paleo, simple
Simple and healthy red pesto recipe that you can use in pasta, with zoodles, chicken, in a salad or as a toast spread. This recipe is vegan, low carb and paleo!
Making this healthy red pesto is fairly simple and doesn’t require a ton of ingredients! You can use it in pasta or in sandwiches, or with zoodles or chicken for a low-carb option!
There’s nothing better than pesto, ok? And this one is home-cooked. And when we say home, we mean heaven.
We made this pesto the other day with the intention to overuse it in lots and lots of dishes and we did just that. We've used it in sandwiches, pasta, pizza, but it can also work with chicken, zoodles or in salads.
You can also eat it directly from the little jar (or the food processor) with a tiny spoon. We did not do that.
We're lying.
We used walnuts instead of pine nuts in this pesto because we're cheap. Ok, also because we like walnuts and they make us smart, pretty and healthy…
Yeah, mostly because we're cheap.
We still don’t get why pine nuts cost more than a kidney.
Anyway.
We're not familiar with the magical Italian language which makes even the words “we crapped our pants” sound like a song, but we think they call this pesto, Pesto Rosso. And we think Rosso means ossom or awesome.
We should definitely put “Charging for language lessons” on our infinite to-do list.
Well, we're positive you appreciate this free advanced language lesson, but you can’t be enjoying it as much as we enjoy dipping our nose into this wonderful pesto. Pretty sure that’s what pesto is made for.
To make this fabulous little pesto you need just 5 ingredients, 5 minutes and a food processor.
After that you don’t need anything. Pesto will take care of everything in your life.
HEALTH AND BEAUTY BENEFITS
This pesto is a good addition to make your meals not just tastier, but also healthier.
It’s rich in omega-3’s (thank you, affordable walnuts!), Lycopene (thank you also, a little bit overpriced dried tomatoes), vitamin E (thank you, olive oil) as well as anti-viral and anti-bacterial molecules (thank you basil & garlic).
Hope you like the pesto, let us know how it goes!
- Yield: 1
- Prep: 10 minutes
- Total: 10 minutes
Ingredients
- 4-5 sun-dried tomatoes (soak in water for 30 min)
- 7-8 walnut halves
- 1 garlic clove (optional)
- 1 tbsp olive oil
- 1 ripe tomato
- 1 cup basil leaves
Method
- Soak dried tomatoes in water for 30 min, so they are easier to process. We did that because ours were not in oil, but really just dried.
- During this time let a crushed garlic clove sit in 1 tbsp olive oil, again 30 min.
- Wash and chop tomato, rinse basil leaves.
- In your food processor process walnut halves first.
- After the 30 min, remove garlic from olive oil and take tomatoes out of the soaking water.
- Add to the walnuts in your food processor the garlic-infused olive oil, the soaked tomatoes, the fresh chopped tomato, and the basil leaves.
- Process until smooth. Our pesto did not need any additional water/fluid since the tomato, basil and olive oil were enough, but if you need to add a tbsp. or 2 water, but don’t overdo it.
- We did not need to add salt, but this depends on the salt content of the sundried tomatoes, ours were salty. If you need to add some salt to taste.
