Vegan Festive Pesto Recipe

A festive pesto recipe is the perfect way to taste a little hint of Christmas in the run up before we reach the point where it’s a roast dinner for every meal, or can be a great addition to any leftover vegetables post-Christmas, or a way to use up some leftover herbs.  

How to serve 

I’ve used mine today in a simple pasta dish with some spicy toasted seeds. It takes a lot for me to get into the festive spirit, and I need all the help I can get this year, so I’m hoping injecting some Christmas flavours into my meals will help get me in the Christmas spirit.  

Alternatively, you could use this pesto as a base for a roast vegetable tart post-Christmas to use up any leftovers, it would be delicious with some herby roast potatoes. Basically, you can do what you want with it and it can be used a million different ways. That’s one of the great things about pesto, it’s really quick to make and incredibly versatile.  

You May Also Like: Christmas Recipe Archives

Ingredient Choices and Substitutions 

To make this dish Christmassy, I’ve used rosemary and thyme with a hint of sage as the main seasonings, with kale as the base. I know kale doesn’t scream Christmas, but it is in season and it’s a great base ingredient to carry the other flavours. This dish also contains walnuts, a very common ingredient in a lot of vegetarian or vegan Christmas mains, and sunflower oil to blend and get the appropriate pesto texture.  

The walnuts can be substituted for pecans, or sunflower/ pumpkin seeds if you need to make this nut free. I opted for walnuts to give this recipe a source of omega 3. To add more omega 3, you could substitute the sunflower oil for walnut oil too.  

For reference, I used the Pimp My Salad vegan parm in this recipe, which also contains nuts.

Nutritional Information  

I find serving sizes for things like pesto incredibly difficult because the amount needed varies dramatically depending on the dish. For the sake of this recipe, I’ve based the nutritional information on 5 servings per batch, which is roughly enough for 5 bowls of pasta.  

Each serving contains 165 calories, 2.5g of protein and 2.1g of fibre. In terms of vitamins and minerals, each serving contains 99% of the RDA of vitamin K, a third of the RDA of vitamin E, a quarter of your daily vitamin C and half of your daily vitamin A.  

The walnuts are also a source of plant based omega 3.  

Festive Pesto Recipe 

Vegan festive pesto recipe with winter vegetables and traditional Christmas herbs. Great for cooking with leftovers! 

This recipe is gluten free, dairy free, soy free and vegan. It does contain nuts.  

Print

Festive Pesto Recipe

Vegan festive pesto recipe with winter vegetables and traditional Christmas herbs. Great for cooking with leftovers!

Course Sauces

Cuisine British, Italian

Keyword Festive Pesto Recipe, Vegan Pesto Recipe

Prep Time 10 minutes

Total Time 10 minutes

Servings 5

Calories 165 kcal

Ingredients

• 100 g kale freshly washed
• 30 g fresh rosemary
• ¼ cup sunflower oil
• ¼ cup walnut halves
• 2 tbsp vegan parmesan
• 1 tsp dried sage
• 1 tbsp dried thyme

Instructions

1. You’ll notice the ingredients list says freshly washed kale. The moisture from the washed greens helps the mix blend, don’t attempt to dry the kale/ shake it after washing.
2. Take 1 tsp of the sunflower oil and gently massage the kale with it to soften it slightly before blending.
3. Add the massaged kale and all remaining ingredients to a blender and blend until smooth.

Serve and enjoy!

How would you opt to serve this festive pesto recipe?  

Until next time, 

Sophie

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