Serve nutritious kale to unsuspecting diners by turning it into a flavor packed kale pesto. An easy, year round, alternative to basil pesto that is ready in minutes.
Recipe Highlights:
- Easy homemade pesto recipe made featuring kale and walnuts.
- Sneak extra vegetables into pasta, pizza, and seafood.
- Ready in minutes.
My oldest likes quite a lot of vegetables but over and over he avoids raw leafy greens like lettuce, kale, cabbage, etc. I am fairly sure his issue is the texture of these sometimes tough leaves. One of the reasons I have narrowed his dislike down to texture is by serving these same foods in other ways, most recently kale pesto.
You may be familiar with pesto made from basil but the technique of creating a flavorful paste with olive oil and other elements, works for a variety of herbs as well as leafy greens.
Pesto is extremely flavorful, a little can go a long way. I serve kale pesto the same ways I would any other pesto as pizza sauce, spread on toast with diced tomatoes (Bruschetta), tossed with pasta, or stirred into roasted vegetables.
Kids who would otherwise turn their nose up at a salad of the same ingredients might ask for seconds, even thirds if you put that salad into a blender. It certainly had that effect on my kids. My kids already love salmon. Even with a smear of green paste they dug in and enjoyed the fish.
Now that the flavor of kale has become an enjoyable experience the texture will be easier to overcome.
Kale Pesto with Walnuts
Ingredients
- ½ cup 40 grams walnut halves
- ½ cup Parmesan Cheese shredded
- 3-6 garlic cloves
- 8 oz ½ bunch kale, stems removed & leaves torn into small pieces
- 1 tablespoon lemon juice
- ½ teaspoon salt
- ½ teaspoon black pepper
- ½ cup olive oil
Instructions
- In the bowl of a food processor, pulse the walnuts, cheese, and garlic until they become a coarse mixture. Add the kale - pulse as needed to make room for all the kale. Pour over the lemon juice and add the salt and pepper.
- Cover and begin blending. While the ingredients blend, pour the olive oil in a steady stream into the food processor through the food chute.
- Continue blending until the ingredients become a coarse paste - about 1 minute.
- Serve immediately or cover and store in the refrigerator or freezer.
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