Easy Homemade Nut-Free Pesto

This Easy Homemade Nut-Free Pesto recipe is super simple to make and tastes just as delicious as traditional basil pesto. It swaps the pine nuts for sunflower seeds so you still get the nutty texture with no nuts. Use it on fresh pasta, fish, steak, veggies, or add a little more olive oil to make it a salad dressing. Homemade pesto truly blows store-bought pesto out of the water and it's so easy to make, I highly recommend giving it a try.

Consult your doctor and/or double check packaging to ensure nut free ingredients used.

Jump to:

• Ingredients
• Step by step instructions
• ​Equipment
• Tips and tricks
• The difference between extra virgin olive oil and olive oil
• Storage 
• FAQs
• 📖 Recipe

Ingredients

Nut free pesto is made with the same ingredients of classic pesto, just uses sunflower seeds instead of pine nuts to adhere to any nut allergy needs. 

• Basil: Classic pesto herb, plenty of fresh basil leaves. 
• Sunflower seeds: Raw, unsalted sunflower seeds are used in place of pine nuts (or other nuts such as pistachios, almonds, etc.). They have a mild nutty flavor and are similar in texture to pine nuts, so it’s an almost unnoticeable difference.
• Garlic: One clove of garlic brings so much flavor and a little bite.
• Extra virgin olive oil: A good quality flavorful extra-virgin olive oil (EVOO) is important here because fresh pesto is so simple, all the flavors really shine through. Since the pesto is not being cooked at a high temperature for most applications, you can use a good EVOO (lower smoke point). 
• Grated parmesan cheese: Parmigiano Reggiano is always best because it’s PDO (protected designation of origin) which means it’s made in Italy using the traditional methods. However, I know that’s not always possible to get in the States, so “parmesan” is totally fine.
  • If you need the recipe to be vegan, try substituting nutritional yeast for parmesan cheese. 

Step by step instructions

This homemade fresh pesto without pine nuts is truly super simple and follows just about the same process as traditional pesto – full recipe with ingredient quantities can be found in the recipe card at the end of this post. 

​Equipment

My favorite way to make pesto is with a mini food processor (or a regular sized food processor if I'm doubling the batch). However, you could also use a mortar and pestle to grind everything together by hand – it's a very therapeutic process!

Tips and tricks

• I always like to grate the Parmigiano Reggiano myself because I think the texture is better, but you can totally use pre-grated for this recipe. 
• If you can’t find sunflower seeds, you could simply omit them altogether; however, the texture will be a little different. Alternatively, you could substitute pumpkin seeds (pepitas) or hemp seeds. 
• There's a surplus of basil in the summer when it's at its peak, so if you’re making this recipe in warmer months using local (or home grown!) basil, it’ll be much more delicious. However the grocery store always has pretty good quality even in the colder parts of the year. 
• If you want your pesto to have a really bright green color, blanch the basil before using it – just make sure you squeeze out all the excess moisture. 
• If you want to make the pesto more saucy to put on hot pasta, I suggest warming it in a pan, then adding the cooked pasta and some reserved pasta water to loosen the pesto up and make it saucier. 
• If you want to add a little citrus, some fresh lemon juice or lemon zest would be great – it also helps retain the green color. 
• Always taste your food – if you feel it needs a bit of salt, add a pinch of kosher salt. But don't add it to start, because the parmesan cheese might make it salty enough. 

The difference between extra virgin olive oil and olive oil

Extra virgin olive oil is the least processed form of olive oil, therefore retains the most flavor and nutrients, but the lowest smoke point. So, extra virgin olive oil is best used in fresh / non-cooked instances (pesto, dressing, finishing oil, etc.). Olive oil is more processed, and therefore has less of the natural nutrients, and because of that a higher smoke point – so you'll often see this one more recommended for cooking and sautéing. More on this here.

Storage 

If you have leftover pesto, here's what you can do with it:

• Store in an airtight container in the fridge for up to 4 days. The olive oil may solidify, and if that happens it’s nothing to worry about, just leave it out at room temperature for a few minutes. 
• This nut free pesto can also be frozen - put it in a freezer safe container and it’s good for up to 3 months. You can also freeze it in an ice cube tray and then transfer to a freezer-safe bag, this gives you more singled out serving sizes vs. all one chunk. 

FAQs

📖 Recipe