Pesto Pasta (2024)

FAQs

What goes well with pesto pasta? ›

Serve the pasta with some crusty bread or freshly baked Rosemary Focaccia with Roasted Garlic to capture any creamy pesto left on your plate. For a side, I suggest staying light and fresh to balance the rich pasta sauce. A bright and crunchy Lemon Parmesan Lettuce Salad is this pasta recipe's perfect match.

Pesto Sauce

This fresh and fragrant pasta sauce is served uncooked, so choose a pasta shape that won't overwhelm it. Similar to oil-based sauces, pesto is served best with longer cuts of pasta, like the corkscrew shape of Fusilli. Pesto works best with Bucatini, Capellini, thinner Spaghettini, and Fettuccine.

What are some ways to use pesto sauce? Other than pairing it with pasta, pesto sauce is a great way to add flavoring to soups, dips, or vegetables. Add pesto sauce as a condiment on sandwiches or use it to make compound butter. Finally, adding pesto to scrambled eggs introduces bold flavoring to this simple dish.

Italian Tradition

Pesto is the perfect sauce to enjoy with a dish of trofie (the traditional Ligurian short pasta), lasagna, potato gnocchi or as a topping for a bowl of minestrone.

The amount of pesto sauce needed for pasta per person would be about . 75 ounces of sauce for each 2 ounce (about 1 cup cooked) serving of pasta.

The primary ingredients in pesto — basil and olive oil — are sensitive to heat. Basil can lose its vibrant color and fresh flavor when exposed to high temperatures, turning it a darker, more muted green. Olive oil can also lose some of its health benefits and can develop a bitter taste when heated excessively.

Almost all the jarred pestos you find in the supermarket will have been pasteurised to not only ensure that they can last a long time unopened, but so they are perfectly safe to eat straight from the jar. There is no need to heat pesto, although too many people do.

As long as you don't have allergies, the ingredients used to make pesto are generally good for you. In fact, they may help reduce your blood sugar, cholesterol, blood pressure, and cancer risk. Homemade pesto is easy to make.

We recommend 50 grams of pesto per person if serving as a simple pasta dish. Our accountant recommends more. In Italy, you'll find that chefs use just enough pesto to coat the pasta, and they certainly don't allow the dish to drown in it.

What can I put pesto on besides pasta? ›

Mix pesto into creamy dips, use it as a pizza sauce, spread it on sandwiches, add it to your favorite salads, toss it with roasted summer vegetables, and use it as a sauce for grilled chicken or grilled fish.

Just be aware that exposing pesto to too much heat for too long will change its flavour. Whenever possible, therefore, we add it right at the end of the cooking process to minimise any flavour loss.

It originated in the Italian city of Genoa, and is used to dress pasta and sometimes soups.

What to Serve With Pesto Pasta. This versatile pesto pasta recipe is easy to customize by adding your favorite protein, if you like. Chicken, sausage, and chickpeas are all delicious mix-ins.

You are unlimited in choices for pairing proteins with pesto pasta. Some great options are chicken, shrimp, pork and beef. What is the secret to perfect pasta? Adding salt to the pasta cooking water and allowing the saucepan to come to the boil will help to ensure perfectly cooked pasta.