It all starts with basil, parmesan, pine nuts and olive oil.

January 2007
Updated April 2008

Product Reviews / Main Nibbles / Pastas

Pesto Perfect

The Best Basil Pesto, Cilantro Pesto, Arugula Pesto & A Dozen Other Delicious Pesto Sauces

CAPSULE REPORT:  We tasted more than 100 pestos from around the world to find the best ones: some shelf-stable, some requiring refrigeration. Some of the best sauces were domestic pestos, showing the craft of American artisans.

While we love to whip up our own sauces, keeping a good jar of pre-made pesto around can make any dish extraordinary in only a matter of minutes.  Add a dollop to dinner and suddenly you’re a fancy cook who understands how to dazzle with delicate herbs.  Pesto is vegetarian, low in carbs and packed with fresh ingredients: a bright, healthy addition to your meals.

Pesto sauce, which traditionally* consists of basil, garlic, olive oil, pine nuts, Parmesan and Pecorino cheeses and salt for seasoning, originated in the Italian province of Liguria, 220 miles of crescent-shaped Mediterranean coastline that is sometimes called the Italian Riviera. Liguria (highlighted in red in the map), that capital of which is Genoa, is home to superb produce, most notably the sweetest, mildest basil. Its people enjoy one of the freshest, healthiest cuisines in all of Italy.

*Delicious pestos can be made with walnuts and hazelnuts as well, and regions that have an abundance of those nuts will make the substitution.

Ligurians take such great pride in their sauce, in fact, that they have sought protective name of origin (D.O.P.) status for pesto produced in the area. This labeling distinguishes a product for its authenticity and excellence—as it has done for bufala mozzarella from Campania, which, incidentally, pairs beautifully with pesto.

In his book, Delizia!: The Epic History of the Italians and Their Food, John Dickie notes that pesto was originally used mostly to flavor vegetable soups. It wasn’t until 1910 that it began to be used as a sauce for pasta. Earlier versions of pesto used parsley or marjoram instead of basil, and did  not include the pine nuts.

Today, what we find on supermarket and specialty food store shelves bearing the name pesto could be anything from a traditional basil blend imported from Liguria, to something made of mushrooms or roasted red peppers. Though purists might cringe at how loosely the word is being used, since there are so many quirky-flavored pestos on the market, we thought it only fair to include them in our taste-test. It was a good thing we didn’t snub these non-textbook varieties—among them were some of the most impressive sauces we tried, like Divine Pasta Company’s Chipotle Pesto (it was so good, we finished it, so the photo at the left shows the Chipotle Pesto from Whole In The Wall, a slightly milder chipotle flavor). And, while not classically called pesto, many of the sauces showcase traditional Ligurian ingredients, like sun-dried tomatoes and garlic.

The History of Pesto

The rocky, mineral-rich seaside terrain of Liguria’s fishing villages and mountain towns is well-suited for growing exceptional produce. This wealth of vegetation has greatly influenced the area’s cuisine, making the Ligurian diet one of the healthiest in Italy. Whereas in regions like Emilia-Romana, cheeses, meats and butter figure prominently in local dishes, they are used only sparingly in Liguria.  Instead, meals center on herbs, vegetables, fruits, nuts, fish, olive oils, breads and pasta.  Garlic, which is an uncommon ingredient in Northern Italian cuisine, makes many appearances on the Ligurian table. This healthful diet could explain why Ligurians have some of the longest life expectancies in the world.

Basil is perhaps the most famous of the region’s flora. Ocimum basilicum flourishes throughout Liguria’s terrain, where its small, round, pale green leaves develop a uniquely sweet, mild flavor and alluring fragrance. When visitors to Liguria purchase the seeds to its spectacular basil, they are often disappointed when theirs grows minty and bitter back at home. Genovese basil, it seems, has provenance, or terroir, like Champagne—the place it grows influences how it tastes. Likewise, the area’s olive oil is uniquely delicate. It’s made from Taggiasca olives, which grow largely in San Remo’s Valle Argentina. It is buttery, with a fruity minerality—not peppery or spicy like Tuscan or Spanish oils.

The abundance of exquisite basil and the presence of other quality ingredients has helped Pesto alla Genovese—an amalgam of basil, salt, garlic, pine nuts (or walnuts), Parmigiano-Reggiano and/or Pecorino (Romano or Sardo) and extra virgin olive oil—become a cornerstone of the area’s cuisine. The sauce gets its name from the word pestle, as in mortar and pestle, the traditional device for pesto making. The ingredients are ground in the mortar, ideally a marble bowl with a coarse interior, by pressing and pounding with a pestle, a stick with a rounded base for mashing. A pestle is best made of wood, which generates little heat as it rubs against the stone, so it won’t cook the fragile sauce.

In Recipes From Paradise, the definitive text on the cuisine of the region, Fred Plotkin includes more than a dozen pesto recipes, all of which call for basil, extra virgin olive oil, sea salt and, with the exception of only a few recipes, garlic. Ingredients are always similar, but they’re called for in various proportions, making some sauces stronger or sweeter than others. Some use a combination of Parmesan and Pecorino cheeses; others use only one. Some add butter to the pesto for added creaminess. Ligurian cooks have also been known to occasionally incorporate cooked potato into the sauce. At times they combine pesto with tomatoes, creating what Plotkin calls Pesto Corto, or add a light, fresh cheese, like ricotta or prescineua, a cultured cheese similar to yogurt or crème fraîche.

Traditional preparations with pesto include trenette and triofe alla Genovese. Trenette, flat ribbon pasta almost identical to linguine with a surface the sauce can cling to, or triofe, dumpling-like, rolled, worm-shaped pasta with crevices for pesto to fill, are boiled along with small pieces of potato. They cook in about the same amount of time (using dry pasta), and when they’re almost done, string beans are added to the boiling liquid. The three ingredients are then tossed with pesto, adding some starchy cooking water to help it coat.

A dollop of pesto, made without any nuts, will often be added to minestrone soup (on the neighboring French Riviera, pistou is the name of a pesto-like sauce and the soup it accompanies). Pesto can also be found in lasagna, on gnocchi, and atop cooked meats, fish and vegetables.

The Power Pestos

We sampled more than 100 pre-made sauces from around the world, and surprisingly, many of the ones we enjoyed most came from the U.S. Our favorites follow; prices and product availability are verified at publication but are subject to change:

Sauces ‘n Love

Husband and wife, Paolo Volpati-Kedra and Tessa Edick, turn out a homemade, hand-prepared Pesto composed of the freshest ingredients—organic basil, extra virgin olive oil, Parmigiano-Reggiano, Pecorino Romano, garlic, pine nuts, salt and pepper—based on Italian family recipes. Before packing the product, which has a five-month refrigerated shelf life (unopened), they gently sauté the ingredients to draw out their flavors. The potent, chunky sauce, a mosaic of soft herb flakes and nubs of nuts and cheese, is perfect on pasta and bruschetta, and makes a nice alternative to chimichurri† over a grilled steak. SnL’s sublime Pink Pesto is a mix of fresh tomatoes, a bit of pesto, some onions and a hint of cream. Its closest comparison would probably be vodka sauce, although the tomato chunks make this carnation-colored mixture significantly lighter. We were happy to eat it straight from the jar, off a spoon. For more civilized consumption, warm it up and serve over penne or chicken.

†Chimichurri is a spicy vinegar-parsley sauce that is the leading condiment in Argentina and Uruguay, as salsa is to Mexico, served with grilled meat. It is made of chopped fresh parsley and onion, seasoned with garlic, oregano, salt, cayenne and black pepper and bound with oil and vinegar. See our Salsa Glossary for more Latin American sauce varieties.

• Pesto
  4.5-Ounce Container
  $5.99

• Pink Pesto
  16-Ounce container
  $6.99

Read our full review of Sauces ‘n Love, a NIBBLE Top Pick Of The Week.

Scarpetta

This shelf-stable (nine months) line from Sauces n’ Love is available in the same varieties as the original. The two pesto lines are almost identical, but Scarpetta’s contains a bit more Parmesan than Pecorino (in the SnL version, they’re in the opposite proportion). It is as herbaceous, with just a little less bite. Scarpetta’s Pink Pesto is equally spoon-worthy, and ever so slightly creamier than SnL’s. Notably, Scarpetta is the Italian word for using a piece of bread to wipe up any sauce that remains in a bowl at the end of a meal—something you’ll certainly want to do to these products.

• Pesto
  6-Ounce Container
  $6.99

• Pink Pesto
  20-Ounce Container
  $7.99

Visit SaucesnLove.com for more information.

Divine Pasta Co.

This company uses local, California-grown ingredients wherever possible, working in small batches and pouring and labeling every container by hand. We devoured the Roasted Garlic Pesto, a rich, golden paste flecked with herbs and small walnut chunks—a garlic lover’s dream.  It can really be used anywhere—as a spread, in easy garlic mashed potatoes, on meats and fish, in sauces and dressings—anytime you’re in the mood for some sweet garlicky goodness. The Basil Pesto is a gorgeous shade of pale green, exceptionally creamy, and subtly flavored. It was the cheesiest of our picks, so it literally melts in your mouth.  The Arugula Pesto was similar to the basil in texture, and was also quite delicate—just a bit more peppery. Either makes a perfect accompaniment to pasta, of course, but we love adding a drop to our lemon and olive oil vinaigrette. Another standout (and our editorial director’s personal favorite) was the smoky Chipotle Pesto, a thick, brick red sauce with some serious kick. The folks at Divine suggest combining equal parts Chipotle Pesto and orange juice as a marinade for pork tenderloin. We mixed the pesto with mayonnaise and made a spectacular southwest chicken salad. The Sun-Dried Tomato Pesto was nice and light, unusual for this type of pesto, which tends to be rather pasty. It’s great on pizza, and even better when combined with goat cheese as a dip. Divine also makes Cilantro, Shiitake and Olive pestos.

Basil Pesto, Arugula Pesto, Sun-Dried Tomato Pesto, Roasted Garlic Pesto, Cilantro Pesto, Chipotle Pesto, Shiitake Mushroom Pesto, Olive Pesto

• 8-Ounce Container
  $5.99

Visit www.DivinePasta.com for more information and to purchase online.

Whole In The Wall

This product line comes from an eponymous natural restaurant in Binghamton, New York that closes for business Sundays and Mondays in order to turn its kitchen into pesto production central. They make seven kinds, and there are a few we think no pesto aficionado should be without. The pale, bright green and almost transparent Garlic Spike Pesto, a seasonal variety that consists mainly of scapes, the shoots that grow from the tops of garlic late June, was the lightest and most refreshing of all our finalists. More purée than paste (it wasn’t tacky at all), we use it anywhere chopped garlic would go. It’s not as strong as regular garlic, so feel free to pile it on. We also loved the Spinach Parmesan Pesto, a thick, smooth, garlic-laden blend that tastes like the best creamed spinach we ever had. They also make a leaner, though equally garlicky, Dairy-Free Spinach Pesto. Either would make a perfect filling for a chicken roulade and a heavenly match for your favorite starchy vegetable. All of the pestos contain a bit of butter for creaminess and are, fittingly, studded with whole pine nuts.

Chipotle Pesto, Dairy-Free Spinach Pesto, Garlic Spike Pesto, Original Basil Pesto, Picante Pesto, Spinach Parmesan Pesto, Sun-Dried Tomato Pesto, Sweet Red Pepper Pesto

• 5.5-Ounce Container
  $4.99

Visit WholeInTheWall.com for more information and to purchase online.

Perla

Italian Harvest imports this authentic Pesto alla Genovese from Perla, a manufacturer based in Santa Margherita Ligure. It’s the subtlest of our finalists, a result of the mild, tiny-leaf Genovese basil and buttery Ligurian olive oil that go into it. Tiny grains of pine nuts and walnuts give the sauce an intriguingly fine texture that rolls on the tongue. The aromatic pesto is olive in color and slightly so in flavor, perfect to mix with lemon juice and top some light, flaky fish. Of course, since it comes from Liguria, it would be more than welcome in traditional preparations, like over triofe pasta.

• Pesto Alla Genovese
  4.6-Ounce Jar
  $7.00

Visit ItalianHarvest.com for more information or to purchase online.

Linabella’s

Michelle Morelli Howard and her husband, Jeffrey Howard, produce six varieties of pesto using garlic and basil from their organic-style Oakham, Massachusetts farm. Their Genovese-style pestos are so rich, dense and powerfully flavorful, they’re near ringers for sauce made by mortar and pestle. Linabella’s Traditional Pesto is a chunky, garlicky, dark green paste in which each of the fine ingredients—extra virgin olive oil (first cold press), fresh basil, garlic, imported Romano and Parmesan cheeses and pine nuts—stands out. This lovely sauce is perfect for pasta, pizza and bruschetta, but because it’s so thick, it can be slathered on sandwiches or used as a base for other sauces. The Garlic Lover’s Pesto shares the Traditional Pesto’s dense consistency and serves up a knockout punch of garlic flavor. They’re not kidding—this is meant for people who adore garlic; so if you merely like the stuff, try it as a chopped garlic substitute rather than a sauce.

Perhaps the most exciting members of the product line are the sweet pestos, traditional basil blends with either honey or maple syrup. The Honey Pesto has a thick, chutney-like consistency, with an amber tinge to its deep green hue. It starts out honey-sweet on the tongue, but soon the pine nuts, basil and garlic become more pronounced, giving it a distinctly earthy quality. It begs to be mixed with goat cheese and toasted walnuts, or dabbed on pork sausage. The Kelly-green Maple Pesto at first tastes a bit cloying, but quickly turns a noticeably maple flavor. It’s glorious atop cooked fish (we love it on wild salmon), or mixed into scrambled eggs (served with bacon).

But our favorite preparation comes at the suggestion of Mr. Howard: “For something a little naughty, mix some maple pesto with cream cheese, smear it on a bagel and top it with Canadian bacon and a fried egg.” Now that’s what we call breakfast! Linabella’s also makes a Vegan Pesto and Sole Verde, a pesto of garlic scapes. The young shoots of garlic that sprout from the underground garlic bulb and make their way to the surface are quite a delicacy—if you don’t catch them when they’re green and tasty, they becomes hard and white like the covering of the cloves.

Garlic Lover’s Pesto, Honey Pesto, Maple Pesto, Sole Verde, Traditional Pesto, Vegan Pesto

• 6.3-Ounce Container
  $7.99

Serving Sugggestions   

We’ve made some suggestions above, but here’s a rundown of our favorite ways to use pesto.  A spoonful here or there takes the grunt work out of making scrumptious dishes.  Talk about fast food!

• Mix them into pasta.  Just place a couple spoonfuls in a bowl, add your cooked pasta, a touch of pasta cooking water, and stir.  One of our favorite ways to serve this is with whole, toasted pine nuts, shredded prosciutto, freshly grated Parmesan, and peas.

Add a scoop to liven up your soup. Spread it on toast and make bruschetta, an easy hors d’oeuvre. Use some as a topping or dip for cooked meat, fish, or vegetables. Dab basil or arugula pesto onto a caprese salad of bufala mozzarella and tomatoes. Herb and garlic pestos make fabulous additions to salad dressing. Whisk a spoonful with some lemon juice and extra virgin olive oil, or add it to your favorite recipe for a super-charged vinaigrette.

In an instant, pesto adds glamour to a plain scallop or crab cake.

• Spread them on sandwiches, either as they are or mixed into mayonnaise.  That pesto-mayo will also spruce up your chicken and tuna salads, and make a great aioli dip for French fries.

Homemade Pesto Recipe

Today, when people make pesto, whose popularity has become global, they often use machines—blenders, food processors—rather than wield a pestle. After years belonging to that cult of motor-made sauce, we underestimated the importance and superiority of the mortar and pestle mashing method. To our surprise and delight, the old-fashioned device yielded a thick, bright green paste, the likes of which no machine had ever produced for us. Food writer Corby Kummer had a similar revelation in a 1998 article for the Atlantic Monthly called “Pesto by Hand,” an ode to the perfection of pesto made in a mortar and pestle. The pounding and pressing by hand slowly releases and amalgamates the ingredients in a way the cutting and grinding action of machines cannot achieve. We also liked that it kept us completely in control of our sauce and, even more so, that we didn’t have to worry about scrubbing any sharp blades or prying green stuff out of corners—a simple rinse with water does the trick, and quickly. 

We tried a number of recipes, but this one was our favorite, and the easiest. By pounding the basil first, a few leaves at a time, with coarse salt, the basil easily dissolves against the coarse mortar, as no other ingredients stand between them. In addition to expediting the basil grinding—the most laborious task in any mortar and pestle-pesto recipe—this step releases so much basil essence that only a small number of leaves are required to season the sauce. The original recipe calls for Pecorino Romano, but we adored it, instead, with Pecorino Sardo, a younger, less salty sheep’s milk cheese from Sardinia. Pecorino Romano will be fine too, just pay attention to its saltiness.

Pesto Classico

A classic pesto, adapted from Fred Plotkin’s Recipes From Paradise:

Ingredients

• 1 pinch coarse salt
• 60 small or 30 large fresh basil leaves, wiped, stems and spines removed
• 1 large or 2 small cloves garlic, peeled, any green shoots removed
• 3 tablespoons/22g pignoli
• 2 tablespoons/15g fresh, finely grated Pecorino Sardo
• 2 tablespoons/15g fresh, finely grated Parmigiano-Reggiano
• 3 tablespoons/45 ml Ligurian extra virgin olive oil (or something fruity, or even just mild, like Colavita)

Directions

1. Place the sea salt and a few of the basil leaves in a mortar.  Using a pestle, press and lightly pound the leaves and salt against the coarse bowl of the mortar, in a rotary motion, breaking the leaves apart. Keep adding a few more leaves and grinding them until you’ve used them all. 
   

   Many mortars and pestles are small, for grinding spices. This granite ensemble has a 7" diameter and a 2+ cup capacity—what you need to make pesto. Click here for more information or to purchase.

2. Once all the leaves have been added, and before they’ve been completely pulverized, add the garlic and pound it until it releases its juices. Add the pignoli and pound them into a paste. Move the pestle around the mortar to combine the ingredients. 
3. Stir in the Pecorino and Parmigiano-Reggiano, then gradually add olive oil, stirring it into the paste (a spoon can be used for these steps, if you prefer). You should have a thick, creamy, homogenous, bright green sauce.
4. BLENDER OPTION: If you decide to make this in a blender (preferable to a food processor, which basically just cuts through the ingredients where a blender grinds), heed advice from both Plotkin and Kummer: place all the ingredients in the blender, excluding the cheeses and half the olive oil. Process, adding more oil, if necessary, to get the ingredients moving. You will need to stop the blender regularly to push the mixture down. Once a paste forms, stir in the cheeses, as well as additional olive oil, if desired.

Pesto Tips

• Use the smallest leaves from the top of the basil plant—these will be the mildest. Larger leaves often develop a strong, minty taste, the last thing you want in pesto.
• Peeling away any thick spines from the leaves will also combat astringent flavor.
• Remove any green shoots from the middle of the garlic, as they can make your sauce bitter.
• Experts like Plotkin and Kummer recommend wiping rather than washing the leaves.  This removes dirt from the surface and activates the herb’s fragrant oils without dampening its flavor and texture. However, it’s also fine to wash the leaves and dry them thoroughly in a salad spinner. This is especially advisable if your herbs may have been treated with chemical pesticides or fertilizers.
• If your leaves have some kick, you may need to balance that with by adding more of other ingredients (like nuts) for their mellowing effect.  Be sure to taste as you mash so you can adjust accordingly when necessary, since pesto is all about balance.
• As for toasting the nuts, that’s up to you.  Anna del Conte, British authority on Italian cuisine and author of the splendid Gastronomy of Italy, is a proponent of toasting, whereas Plotkin and Kummer use raw nuts.  We tried both and neither disappoints—if you want more pronounced nuttiness, toast them in a 350° oven for a few minutes; otherwise, raw ones work beautifully.
• If you use walnuts, Kummer suggests using half or two-thirds the amount of pine nuts the recipe calls for, as their taste is more pronounced.

Storing Pesto

When Ligurian fisherman would leave for long journeys at sea, they always packed along jars of pesto. You, too, can preserve your homemade and store-bought sauces. They’ll be ready for a great voyage—or a great meal.

• Pouring a layer of olive oil over the pesto will seal it from oxygen and inhibit browning and spoilage.  It’s a good idea to replenish this layer as you use the pesto. 
• Although homemade pesto sauce is most flavorful and fragrant at room temperature (many Italians store it in a cool dark cabinet), once it’s open, we’re more comfortable storing it in the refrigerator, where it should keep for at least a week. 
• The perishable store-bought pestos that come in plastic containers should always be refrigerated, or, better yet, kept frozen. Just thaw 30-34 minutes on a countertop to soften , scoop out what you need, and re-freeze. This will ensure freshness while extending the life of your sauce.
• Any pesto can be frozen up to six months. Try pouring the sauce into ice cube trays, then storing the frozen cubes in a zip-lock freezer bag.  You can toss one right into sauces or cooked pasta.

Books

The following books are terrific additions to your library and a wealth of information on pesto and recipes:

• Recipes From Paradise: Life and Food on the Italian Riviera, by Fred Plotkin Currently out of print, you can still purchase both new and used copies from resellers on Amazon.com. Click on the link for more information.
• Italy for the Gourmet Traveler, by Fred Plotkin, $16.47. Click on the link for more information or to purchase.
• Gastronomy of Italy, by Anna del Conte, $31.05. Recipes and cooking reference, culinary and cultural history. Heavily illustrated with maps, diagrams, and color photographs. Click on the link for more information or to purchase.

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