This pantry pesto is the answer to the question: "Can you make pesto with dried basil?" (Yes!) Pesto made with dried basil is the perfect budget-friendly, shelf-stable blend for when you have a pesto craving and no fresh basil on hand. It's also a great dinner shortcut to stash in the pantry.
To serve, just toss a few tablespoons of dried basil pesto with a few glugs of olive oil on your fave pasta, veggies, or protein. So easy!
5 star reader review
“this pantry pesto is SUCH a handy staple to have around! really easy to make, even quicker to use, and tastes great. [...] so far weve also used it on: sheet pan sausage and peppers, as a mix in for mashed potatoes, scrambled eggs, mixed in to meatloaf, sprinkled over buttered and garliced bread, seasoned chicken to make chicken salad sandwiches, and baked with a heap of tomatoes and feta in the famous tiktok bake.”
—Nicole
Should pesto appear on a menu, I must order it. This is basically a rule of life for me. I love a pesto sandwich; I love a pesto pasta; I love a pesto pizza. And I love this shortcut "pantry pesto."
There is a time and a place for fresh pesto and when I have the time and the abundance of fresh basil, I do make it. But when I want pesto fast with minimal work involved, what's a girl with a pesto craving to do? I dusted off the binder of family recipes my mom gave me when I went to college and dug out the recipe for pesto with dried basil that I grew up eating, which is made using dried basil and parsley.
This pantry pesto is a dried pesto seasoning blend. It's not the smooth, partially emulsified oil-based sauce (condiment?) you buy in a jar for pasta.
The dried herbs give this pesto an earthier flavor and texture than you might expect from a fresh, traditional pesto sauce. But when combined with toasted nuts and nutritional yeast (more on that soon!) it's impossible to mistake it for anything but pesto.
By the way, I didn't set out to make this a vegan pesto or even a dairy-free pesto. That was more of a happy accident, joining the ranks of my other "accidentally vegetarian" recipes like samosa pot pie and dal pierogi. I have plenty of friends who are vegan and when I cook for them, I like finding recipes that we can all eat. It's just more inclusive that way!
How I Made Shelf-Stable Pesto
The original dried basil pesto recipe I grew up with called for fresh garlic and fresh parmesan cheese, neither of which can be stored safely at room temperature once grated or opened. So I gave the recipe a small makeover to make it truly shelf-stable for longer storage.
I didn't want to have to store this pesto in the fridge or freezer. And making it shelf-stable means it is also a great addition to bring on camping trips or anywhere else where access to refrigeration can be spotty.
It took me a few tests to find the best substitutes, but in the end I swapped the fresh garlic for garlic powder, and I swapped the Parmesan cheese for nutritional yeast. And believe me when I say I'm as surprised as you are by the success of the latter.
I always think of nutritional yeast as that vegan cheese substitute my dad puts on popcorn and tries to convince me is as good as butter and salt (imo, it's not, but you do you, dad). So I was truly shocked when I tasted the two versions side by side. The nutritional yeast wasn't just an acceptable substitute for the Parmesan cheese — it was better than the version with Parmesan cheese.
That's right, the vegan cheese substitute tastes better than the real cheese! Even more shocking — Jimmy agreed. Nutritional yeast ftw!
Basil and parsley are common enough that you should be able to find them in most grocery stores. If you're looking for places to order spices or herbs online I recommend Spicewalla, Spiceology, and Penzey's.
The best way to make this dried basil pantry pesto is with a mini food processor. Even though the dried basil and parsley flakes are already fairly small, the food processor helps turn everything into a fine powder.
Add the nuts to the bowl of the food processor. Run it in pulses on low speed until they're fairly finely chopped.
Once the nuts have been processed, add the rest of the ingredients and process the pesto again, pulsing on and off, until you have a fine pesto powder.
Again, just be careful not to run the food processor too long with the nuts in there. You really don't want to end up with a nut butter pesto!
📖 Recipe
Pantry Pesto With Dried Basil (Vegan!)
Recipe Notes
- If starting with whole nuts, toast them before processing to get a more intense flavor. To toast, place whole nuts on a sheet tray in the oven at 350F for 5-10 mins, stirring every 2-3 minutes.
- The original version of this recipe called for 1-2 cloves of minced garlic instead of garlic powder. You can also use pine nuts in place of almonds and walnuts. Pine nuts are more traditional to pesto, but also more expensive, which is why I stuck with walnuts and almonds here.
- While you can use this with any pasta shape, I recommend ones with lot of crevices and texture and twists to help the pesto evenly coat the pasta instead of clumping or sliding off. It's great with twisted pasta shapes like fusilli, cavatappi, and gemelli. And also with tube-shaped pastas like penne and your classic macaroni elbows.
Ingredients
- ½ cup dried basil
- ½ cup dried parsley flakes
- ¼ cup whole walnuts (chopped)
- ¼ cup whole almonds (chopped)
- ¾ teaspoon garlic powder (or 1-2 cloves garlic)
- ¼ cup nutritional yeast
- ½ teaspoon diamond crystal kosher salt (use half as much of another brand)
Instructions
- Combine nuts in the bowl of a mini food processor. Process on low speed, pulsing on and off, until finely chopped.
- Add the rest of the ingredients — basil, parsley, nutritional yeast, and salt — and pulse a few more times until you have a fine powder.
- Transfer to an airtight container and store in a cool, dark place for up to 3 months at room temperature, or up to 6 months in the fridge or freezer.
- To make this without a food processor: Chop the nuts very finely with a knife. Or place them in a bag and run a rolling pin over them to crush them and then chop them until they're as small as you can get them. Stir the remaining ingredients in with the chopped nuts.
- Serving option 1: Toss with cooked pasta, chicken/protein/veggies along with a large glug or two of olive oil, enough to get the dried pesto mixture to stick.
- Serving option 2: Cook pasta according to al dente package directions. Reserve ½ cup of pasta water, strain pasta and return to pan over medium heat along with any veggies/chicken/protein. Add a glug of olive oil, a few tablespoons of the pesto blend, and half of the reserved pasta liquid. Add ½ cup grated parmesan cheese and stir until the pesto uniformly coats the pasta in a sauce. Add additional pasta water if needed to thin out the sauce.
Video
This post was originally published on April 16, 2020.
nicole says
this pantry pesto is SUCH a handy staple to have around! really easy to make, even quicker to use, and tastes great. its pretty hard to get fresh basil around us, the stores around only ever have small bunches and theyre usually pretty wilty and blackened. so aside from when we can grow it in season ourselves, making it fresh is kind of a pain. this is obviously a dried mix and not fresh pesto, but it has the flavors you want and the huge bonus of being premade and not needing to be in the fridge. we keep ours in a mason jar on the counter next to the salt and pepper, so its easy to add it to whatever strikes our fancy.
the applications are way beyond a quick pasta meal, ive quite literally put it on everything XD so far weve also used it on: sheet pan sausage and peppers, as a mix in for mashed potatoes, scrambled eggs, mixed in to meatloaf, sprinkled over buttered and garliced bread, seasoned chicken to make chicken salad sandwiches, and baked with a heap of tomatoes and feta in the famous tiktok bake. its really versatile and a big timer saver for when you just. dont have the brain power to want to measure out multiple things but still want tasty food. definitely give this a try, its a favorite in our house!
nicole says
i forgot one of my surprise favorite uses- its awesome on roasted green beans! olive oil, salt and pepper, roast them, and then sprinkle some on after. really no end to how useful this stuff is!
Meg says
I’m so excited to try this with folks in my life who are dairy free. With the nuts, is it possible to do pecans and walnuts or just walnuts? I don’t want to change the recipe too much but wanted to give to a friend who is sensitive to almonds.
Rebecca Eisenberg says
You can absolutely use different nuts! Pine nuts are more traditional to pesto, if your friend likes those I would sub in those instead! But pecans would also work.
Carmen says
This came out good! Thank you for this recipe!
Patrick Lemmon says
Is the nutritional yeast necessary.
What does it do for flavor?
Rebecca Eisenberg says
It provides the umami flavor you usually get from cheese in a pesto sauce. You can absolutely use parm or pecorino romano cheese instead!
Ruth says
Nutritional yeast has a very nice nutty, sort of cheesy flavor. It really adds to a dish.