Carrot Top Pesto
Pesto is such a versatile sauce! You can make pasta with pesto, put it on a slice of toasted bread (yum!) and have you tried roasted potatoes covered in pesto? This pesto is slightly different though - no basil, just carrot tops! I urge you to try it, it is so delicious.
Doesn’t it feel amazing when you can use all the things you have in your fridge? Basically no waste cooking, yay! To be honest, I never thought of using carrot tops. It was always something I disposed of after using carrots. Until I came across few recipes with it and decided to try it too - and it is amazing! It is of course slightly different flavour to basil pesto but it doesn’t mean it’s worse - it is just different.
As I already said, pesto is so versatile - here are some suggestions:
pasta with pesto (that one is obvious but I had to mention it because it’s just delicious)
pesto on toast - or on avocado toast, definitely try that!
Instead of vinaigrette in salads - and not just green salads, add pesto into a more filling salad with some grains and beans (especially butter beans are good with pesto)
on top of pizza
on roasted vegetables (potatoes, sweet potatoes, squash,..)
into sandwiches
into a soup
and so much more!
What ingredients do you need to make vegan carrot top pesto?
CARROT TOPS - this pesto is such a great way how to use everything you bought! Just remove tougher stems and use green leaves.
OLIVE OIL - use a good quality oil, it does make a difference.
SUNFLOWER SEEDS - I like to think of this pesto as a cheaper version of basil pesto. You can easily buy carrots with green tops, especially now when carrots are in season, eat carrots and make pesto, yay. That’s why I chose sunflower seeds - they are quite cheap (definitely cheaper than pine nuts) but if you fancy, you can substitute them with pine nuts, almonds, walnuts, hemp seeds,…
NUTRITIONAL YEAST - so here’s the thing - I really enjoy pesto without anything like parmesan. Therefore I don’t use it. But you can of course use either nutritional yeast, store bought vegan parmesan or homemade vegan parmesan.
Ingredients
3 tbsp sunflower seeds
carrot tops from one bunch of carrots (around 30 g)
2 garlic cloves
4 tbsp olive oil
1/4 tsp salt
optional: nutritional yeast
Method
Roast sunflower seeds on a dry pan on medium heat for about 5 mins.
Add all the ingredients into a food processor and blend until smooth. Alternatively you can use mortar and pestle, in that case I always start with just some leaves, salt and garlic and then slowly add the rest.