A homemade sun-dried tomato pesto recipe. Tomato pesto is the secret ingredient in my homemade minestrone soup. It’s delicious mixed with warm pasta too!
Ingredients
- 1 cup sun-dried tomatoes
- 3 cloves garlic
- ½ teaspoons salt + ¼ teaspoon black pepper
- 1 cup basil leaves
- ¼ cup pine nuts
- 1 pinch red pepper flakes (or more to taste)
- ⅓ cup parmesan cheese
- ⅓ cup extra virgin olive oil (add more oil to make it thinner)
Instructions
- Blend all the ingredients in a food processor except the olive oil. Start the food processor and drizzle in the olive oil slowly while still mixing.
- Stop the machine, scrape down the sides, and adjust salt nad pepper to liking.
- STORING: leftover pesto can be stored in a jar that has a tight fitting lid. Pesto can be refrigerated for up to one week. You can also place pesto into ice cube molds and frozen for up to 2 months.
Tomato pesto is the perfect sauce for a variety of uses. It’s cheesy, garlicky, and nutty goodness just can’t be beat.
Here’s just a few serving suggestions:
- A small spoonful is perfect to flavor freshly cooked pasta.
- A little bit would make boring old grilled chicken, so much tastier!
- It’s also amazing smeared on french bread with a generous sprinkling of mozzarella or provolone on top. And just baked until the cheese is so bubbly and perfect that it makes your heart skip a beat. it’s like pizza but so much more sophisticated. YUM!
- On this panini sandwich in between layers of melted mozzarella cheese and fresh basil leaves.
- Ever heard of sun-dried tomato basil hummus? AMAZING. Here’s a basic hummus recipe, add as much or as little of the pesto as you’d like.
- And last but certainly anything but the least, it’s the secret ingredient in my homemade minestrone soup recipe.