Insider Chef Tips: From the importance of quality olive oil to the garlic and unique twist of citrus – and don’t forget the cheese. Discover a mouthwatering pesto that will elevate your dishes, and please your palate.
CHAPTERS:
00:05 Welcome Back!
00:51 Our Ingredients
01:32 Basil and Pine
02:25 Good Olive Oil
03:20 The Taste Verdict
03:56 Storage Cubes
TRANSCRIPT FROM VIDEO:
Chef Jayson (00:05):
Snappy snaps. Welcome back to the kitchen. We’re snapping in here. We are gonna make pesto in a snap. We had a ton of basil out in the garden. Gotta have basil. However you could use any green, cilantro, mints. I mean there’s a lot of variation. So you can look at this recipe and there’s a lot of interchangeable parts, but since we’re gonna do like the traditional pesto, we’re gonna use basil and we’re gonna use pine nut. However, you can use whatever you want. Check this in. You can use almonds. These are blanched slivered almonds. You can use sunflower seeds, you can use walnuts. You know, if you’re allergic to one seed or one nut, you can probably use a different kind. So it’s really just your preference.
Chef Jayson (00:51):
The next thing that’s pretty important is your olive oil. We are using Braggs Organic Extra Virgin. This is good. We’ve got lemon. We need a little bit of acid. We’ve got garlic ’cause of course garlic. And then we’ve got our farmhouse cheese. This is actually something that we made in-house. It’s very similar to Parmesan. It’s kind of hard. So let’s get to work. Just stripping the leaves off. We need two cups to get started. So let’s get these done. So I got a cup right here, all of that. Alright, that’s like one cup. That’s how much it breaks down. Big old pile.
Chef Jayson (01:32):
So the first thing we want to do is measure our our nuts. There we go. We’re gonna add our garlic smash that so it blends a little bit easier. And then we’re gonna add just a pinch of salt. Let’s get that blended. Looks pretty good to me. Now we can add our basil. Jam that in there. Basil. Basil everywhere. And we’re gonna add our lemon juice. So I’m just gonna squeeze this right in. Beautiful. And we’re gonna salt it again, just a pinch. Let’s get this blended out. There we go a couple more times. And now we’ve got a pretty even mixture.
Chef Jayson (02:25):
Yeah, so now I’m gonna let it run and I’m gonna add my olive oil. I’m gonna start with a half a cup and if we wanna add any more, we definitely can. Nice. It’s pretty smooth. Now we’ve gotta add the coup-de-grâce here. Our cheese. So let’s grate a little bit up. Slice a slice. It is tangy. This is crazy. I don’t know if I’ve ever had like kind of a citrus bite to the cheese before. That’s a really nice s shred. Let’s add our Parmesan. Or, farm cheese. I don’t want to be besmirch the good name of Parmesan. There we go.
Chef Jayson (03:20):
Let’s try it again. I would crush that on a pasta. So that is how you make pesto. I think the only thing I’m really forgetting is the pepper. I’m gonna add a little bit of pepper and we’re gonna be good to go. So I hope you enjoyed that. I hope you learned how to make pesto if you didn’t already. If you have any pesto tips, like you got a cool family recipe or a little trick or something, put it in the comments. I would love to hear it.
Chef Jayson (03:56):
Bam. Pesto cubes. I hope you dug it. I mean this, I’m actually really excited to use these ’cause this is the first time I’ve had fresh basil here at the garden. We have a bunch of different kinds of basil, but you know, like holy basil and Thai basil. But those are kind of different flavor profiles. You wanted to go for the real Italian here. So pretty excited about this. So thank you for joining us. Pesto your faces off. Take care.
