Pesto doesn’t need basil. Or pine nuts or Parmesan, or even pasta.

The word comes from pestare, the Italian verb for pound. That means countless combinations of ground vegetables, herbs, cheese and nuts can be considered a pesto to dress vegetables, stir into soups, and yes, use as a pasta sauce like the classic basil Pesto alla Genovese.

At Milk Street, we’ve tasted more than a dozen, like Sicily’s version with a creamy blend of pistachios, ricotta and mixed herbs, and a Calabrian pesto of charred peppers, almonds and sun-dried tomatoes. And Pasta with Peruvian Pesto (Tallarines Verdes) is made with spinach instead of basil, Parmesan instead of pecorino, and no nuts at all.

Simply put, there are no real rules. In that case, how do you make a good pesto? Does the order of ingredients matter? How do you know if the consistency is right? We’re here to answer all your pesto questions, but for more, check out Milk Street Cooking School’s class, Hold the Basil: Regional Italian Pestos, on April 21. In this class, we teach you how to make Sicilian pistachio pesto, garlicky Calabrian charred pepper and tomato pesto, and a wild and addictive Amalfi lemon pesto.

So, what is pesto if not a basil sauce?

“It’s easier to think of pesto as a technique rather than a product,” says April Dodd, assistant director of Milk Street Cooking School. “It can be made from lots of different things, and it’s really just this technique where you take ingredients that are available and practical to you and combine them.”

Nothing makes this clearer than the numerous variations found across Italy, where each version is shaped by whatever ingredients are available to the region. What they do have in common is that pestos usually are not cooked.

How do you make good pesto?

Traditionally, Italian pesto is made in a mortar and pestle, and any Italian chef worth their salt will argue anything else is not real pesto. But for those who don’t have one, or prefer the convenience of a food processor, we did several tests and concluded a food processor can still produce high quality, extremely flavorful results. Mainly it comes down to the order of ingredients.

“There’s value in thinking carefully about the order you add your ingredients,” Dodd explains. “If you are using a food processor, it might not be a dump everything in and blend situation. The order really depends on what kind of pesto you’re making.”

This could mean starting by breaking down cheese into a sandy texture, removing it and then pulsing garlic and pine nuts before adding the rest, like we do in our Pesto all Genovese. Or it could mean blending lemon zest, almonds, parmesan and sugar all together before adding a glug of oil like we do in our Spaghetti with Lemon Pesto. Or it may just mean throwing everything in at once, similar to our Fennel, Lemon and Pine Nut Pesto.

What consistency should pesto be?

To determine the proper consistency, the real rule of thumb is considering “what will happen to your pesto down the road,” Dodd explains. “Something that trips up a lot of people in the U.S. is that the pesto you buy in a jar is pretty thick. Sometimes it’s kind of stodgy or gluey, but people just use it as is.”

That could be a mistake. A too-thick pesto may not marry well with whatever it’s being served with. So, if you’re making pesto that’s meant for pasta, you can thin it with a bit of the starchy cooking water, which also helps the sauce cling to the noodles. If you are aiming to drizzle it over a protein, vegetables or slather it on bread, it also may benefit from a slightly thinner consistency.

A few pesto tips or tricks

Should you ever toast your nuts? “My personal answer is sometimes,” says Dodd, who admits it may be contentious. Purists always say no because they will only use the freshest ingredients, and toasted nuts can overpower more delicate flavors like the pepperiness of fresh summertime basil. “But the way I see it, toasting is a technique that gives something a little more richness and savoriness,” she says. “So if it’s wintertime and your basil may not be as fresh and bold, a little bit more richness from toasted nuts might be a welcome addition to the overall flavor of your pesto.”

Should you ever chop your basil or garlic before grinding it? “Yes, especially when your basil has larger leaves. They can get entangled and mashed up in the food processor and can muddy the flavor and even discolor the basil,” Dodd says. Instead, she suggests tearing the leaves, as a ripped leaf won’t oxidize as quickly as a chopped leaf. “For garlic,” she says, “grab a paring knife to break it down into quarters; it doesn’t need to be finely chopped. There is nothing more frustrating than having a blob of garlic stuck in the food processor when all of the other ingredients are at the perfect consistency.”

How should you take care of the cheese? “It can depend on the recipe,” Dodd explains. A general rule of thumb is that if you’re adding cheese early in a recipe, you can break it down into about 1-inch cubes, being sure to remove the rind. The food processor will do the rest of the work of breaking those pieces down into a sandy or creamy texture. But if you’re instructed to add the cheese at the very end, it’s safe to assume that you’ll want a finely grated—or even microplaned—cheese, so that it’s easy to incorporate.

What else can you add pesto to?

Dodd suggests a simple combination of pesto and yogurt for a savory, creamy dip that is great served toasted bread, chips or even dolloped underneath a fried egg. She also proposes pesto drizzled over roasted vegetables or meat, to give an herbaceous finishing touch to your dish. The key is to remember “a pesto is a form of a dressing. So it can be used to a higher power to make something like a simple roasted vegetable more elegant and flavorful. Pesto does not just have to go on pasta!”

Here are some of our other favorite ways to use pesto:

• Pumpkin Seed Pesto with Cilantro and Chipotle: Serve on roasted winter squash
• Red Beet and Walnut Pesto: Add to pizza or spread on sandwiches
• Soupe au Pistou: Swirl into soup
• Fluffy Olive Oil Scrambled Eggs: Drizzle on top of eggs




If you would rather buy pesto, here are our picks for best flavor:

• Roi Basil Ligurian Green Pesto: With its deeply-concentrated flavor and fragrant ingredients, a little of this vibrant green pesto goes a long way—waking up the palate with an initial hit of salt and then blooming into an herbaceous and slightly-earthy sauce that doesn’t overwhelm with garlic, as many store-bought pestos do.
• Roi Sicilian Style Red Tomato Pesto: This Sicilian Red Pesto yields the same freshness and versatility as green pesto while showcasing olive oil from its multi-generation producer, sun-dried tomatoes and buttery cashews as the star ingredients. The sauce is tomato forward, with a rich and robust taste that encompasses the sweetness of sun-dried tomatoes and deep umami of well-browned tomato paste, rounded out with nutty notes from the cashews and salt from the Parmesan.

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