A Crunchy and Delicious Pumpkin Seed Pesto Recipe

Here is a healthy and crunchy pumpkin seed pesto recipe that is full of antioxidants, vitamins, minerals, essential fatty acids and other nutrition. Use it wherever you’d use normal pesto for a strong and rich taste that is really good for you.

This recipe adds extra flavor and crunch to salads and steamed veggies and it goes really well with brown rice, sardines, organic chicken, pumpkin and tomato dishes.

You’ll need a good food processor like this to make it, but you’re really missing out on a lot of great food if you don’t have one of these anyway.

Ingredients

• One full cup of raw pumpkin seeds.

• Quarter of a cup of semi-dried tomatoes (preferably in olive oil).

• 2 to 4 cloves of peeled garlic (depending on how much you like it).

• One cup of packed fresh basil leaves.

• One cup of packed fresh parsley sprigs.

• 3 tablespoons of freshly squeezed lemon juice.

• 2 tablespoons of organic pumpkin seed oil (or extra virgin olive oil).

• Cracked pepper and Himalayan pink crystal salt to taste.

How to Make Pumpkin Seed Pesto

Place the pumpkin seeds, sun-dried tomatoes, and garlic into your food processor and pulse, just briefly until they are roughly chopped.

Add the parsley, basil, pumpkin seed oil, lemon juice, and salt and pepper. Push them down to the bottom of the processor, mixing them with the chopped pumpkin seeds and process until they are all chopped up.

Depending on your food processor, you may need to push the basil and parsley down into the blades a few times to get them blended up with the rest of the mixture. A rubber spatula makes this job much easier.

I prefer this pumpkin seed pesto crunchy rather blended up too smooth. Some food processors may not be able to chop all the ingredients up completely, but a bit of texture makes for a more interesting pumpkin seed pesto.

Actually, getting as much as possible of this great tasting pesto out of the food processor can be about the hardest part of this recipe. Once again, a rubber spatula comes in really handy for this job (and many others in the kitchen).

Transfer the mixture into a large glass jar and store it in the fridge. If you think you’ll  be keeping it for a while before using it, it would be best to flatten it down as much as possible and put a layer of extra virgin olive oil on top to prevent oxidation.

That said, I doubt this pumpkin seed pesto will last. It tastes too good.