How to make pesto from carrot tops may be what you’re looking for as the alternative to the common pesto. Pesto is usually made of basil leaves, crushed garlic, grated cheese, salt, olive oil, and pine nuts. However, you can make your own pesto with carrot tops that you grow yourself.

How to Make Pesto from Carrot Tops Grown in Your Garden

  1. Prepare the Carrot Tops
    It must be nice to grow carrot tops in your garden and later it can be used to make pesto. Carrots themselves are still in the same family as parsley, coriander, parsnips, and fennel. That’s why you can swap out some other greens with carrot tops when it comes to green pesto.
    When you’re going to harvest your own carrot tops, make sure the shoulders are ¾ to 1 inch diameter. Take a look at the root and harvest them right away when the coloration is deep and nice enough. But, don’t harvest them yet if you see the underdeveloped shoulders of the carrot tops.

  2. Prepare the Ingredients
    After picking the right carrot tops, prepare a cup of carrot tops or around 40 grams with stems already removed. Aside from the carrot tops, you still need other veggies and ingredients. Don’t forget to have the other ingredients below to make your pesto successfully.

  • A cup (or around 40 grams) of baby spinach
  • A large clove garlic that you should chop first
  • ½ teaspoon of sea salt
  • ½ cup of roasted unsalted cashews
  • ½ cup extra virgin olive oil
  • ¼ teaspoon of black pepper

  1. Use the Food Processor
    How to make pesto from carrot tops at home is by making sure you rinse the carrot tops properly If there’s dry leaves with a yellowish color, discard them, including the hard stems. When the carrot tops are dirt-free, you can prepare the food processor in order to blend all the ingredients.
    Put the carrot tops greens, chopped garlic, roasted cashews, baby spinach, black pepper, and sea salt into the food processor. You can pulse and blend all these ingredients several times until the texture is smooth. When the food processor is still pulsing the ingredients, pour the olive oil into it little by little.

  2. The Pesto Is Ready
    After you make sure that all ingredients are pulsed well and smooth, you can use the pesto. Pesto is ready to make anything, like pizza, salad, pasta, macaroni and cheese, risotto, teokbokki, to puff pastry tart. The simple pesto from carrot top greens can be made within around 10 minutes.

  3. Pesto from Carrot Tops and Basil
    How to make pesto from carrot tops and basil is basically similar to how you make pesto from carrot tops. If you grow carrot tops by yourself, you need to harvest the ones with the best quality first. After harvesting around 5-7 carrots, it’s time to get ready with the other ingredients below.

  • 2 large cloves of garlic you can roughly chop
  • 10 fresh basil leaves
  • Juice from ½ fresh lemon
  • ½ teaspoon of salt
  • ½ teaspoon of black pepper
  • ⅓ cup of raw walnuts
  • ⅓ cup of extra virgin olive oil
  • ¼ cup of chives you can roughly chop

Pulse the ingredients in the food processor, especially the raw walnuts and chopped garlic first. Add the carrot tops, chives, basil leaves, black pepper, and salt into the pulsed previous ingredients. Continue by pouring the lemon juice and olive oil when the food processor is still running.

How to make pesto from carrot tops is basically simple, right? No matter what greens you use aside from carrot tops, once the pesto is ready, store it in a jar. If you only have an airtight container, then it’s alright, but then you need to put it in the fridge.