Basil Pesto

pesto it's gotta be one of the best things out there but i feel like most people actually don't know what a true perfect pesto should taste like and it actually doesn't require that much extra work really you're just treating each of the five ingredients in pesto with a little bit more care before ultimately tossing them all together in a blender i have made pesto a million times and today i'm gonna make it yet again to show you exactly how i've perfected it but before we get started i want to clear up a little confusion i also have a hamster named pesto people are always messaging me with different ideas on how exactly they want me to cook him which is really messed up you know who you are but i just want to make it abundantly clear we are not cooking pesto the hamster we're gonna make pesto and then we're gonna make homemade fresh pasta let me just bring pesto out here so we don't have any mix-ups now i hope it's obvious that this right here is pesto the hamster i like to think of him as sort of my remy from ratatouille and he honestly does help me out in the kitchen all the time mainly he helps me out with eating check out how quickly he'll eat all these pine nuts and then put him right in the pocket of his mouth we'll bring him back out a little later to do a taste test but for now i'm gonna let him go back to sleep because hamsters sleep in the day see you later pesto we'll start out by making our pesto i actually like to cook and make the pasta as fresh as possible that's basil pine nuts olive oil parmesan and garlic so make sure that all those ingredients are top top quality now with our basil hair you can see i have a lot and this is really nice fresh basil some of these leaves might actually be the biggest basil leaves i've seen but the reason i have this much basil is because the same concept we deal with when we cook spinach don't you absolutely hate when you cook this entire thing and all that ends up in your pan at the end is something like this from all of this it just doesn't make any sense so start with a good amount of basil in this recipe i'm going to make a lot more pesto just because i love it but if you want to make about one cup of pesto start with about two cups of packed basil leaves you can use some of the stems but as you can see here some of them can be quite thick and nasty and you really don't want to use this so make sure you do a decent job separating out all those leaves at the start now that our water's come to a boil i'm going to blanch my basil this actually does a couple things here not only does it cut down on the bitterness a little bit but it also brings out that amazing bright green color of this basil which is really important for nailing a pesto that not only tastes good but also looks good quickly i'll toss in my basil and push it down with a spoon here i'm only really gonna stir this around for about 15-20 seconds after which i'll make a bowl of ice water and then plunge my basil straight into it you can see now that my water is a little bit green which means we've lost a little bit of that color of the basil and that's okay but you actually want to try to retain as much color in the actual basil itself as possible now in order to make sure our basil doesn't get water logged once it's cooled down i'll immediately take it and put it down in some paper towel evenly spread out so that it begins to dry my basil is now this really bright vibrant green color which is exactly what we wanted to get from blanching it now you can see exactly what i was talking about we turned a bowl of this size full of basil into pretty much nothing i'll press my towel over and push this to dry then we'll set our basil aside this is all set now for our next ingredient the pine nuts there's something about pine nuts that makes them 10 times better when you toast them they're amazing albeit pretty expensive but in the rare occasions that you are going to use them please please toast them whether you're making pesto a salad i don't care bring out that flavor i'll pour these into my pan keep that heat on medium high and don't leave your pan again because these are so expensive you don't want to burn them and it happens fast once you start to smell that nuttiness start flipping them around just a little bit because once the pan's hot you almost don't really need too much heat to keep them toasting the pan itself should retain enough heat to continue browning your pine nuts once they have a nice golden brown coating around all of them remove these from the heat now for our garlic obviously garlic's one of those things that a lot of people don't want to have on date night it's got that super sharp flavor that's really gonna mess up your breath but i have one way that helps a little bit and just like the pine nuts it brings out a little bit of that toasted caramelized flavor that really tastes nice in a pesto we gotta roast our garlic a little bit and to keep it simple i'm just gonna do it in a skillet but first we gotta break this bad boy open now you've probably seen a lot of people just say to put your chef's knife on there and press that down really hard but i do something a little bit more fun here goes nothing now that we have our individual garlic cloves we can do one of two things the first one's simple you take your knife or your palm and you just crush the garlic clove till it's really easy to peel and honestly that's a pretty effective method but if you want to be fancy and you have to peel a lot at once toss it into a jar put some sort of lid on top and shake it really hard this should peel your entire clove for you especially if you put a bunch of clothes together in the jar this is cute this garlic has a little baby piggy backing on the top of it so i got two cloves in one now for our garlic we'll turn up the heat again and because we're using olive oil in our pesto i'll put just a little bit of olive oil in the bottom of my pan olive oil does not have a high smoke point so we want to make sure that we don't bring this too high while also trying to toast our garlic just a little bit again if you're following this recipe to make a full cup of pesto which is a decent amount you're going to want between one and two cloves of garlic depending on their size remember i'm making a lot more so i'm going to put a few more than that i'll toss in my garlic and then turn down the heat just to be able to control the temperature really well i'm just gonna stir these around until it's a little bit aromatic once your garlic even begins to get slightly golden brown turn off the heat and just keep stirring them around a little bit until you feel like they're done again normally people make pesto without toasting their garlic at all but i just think this brings out more flavor once this is done reserve the garlic and the olive oil we're gonna use both of these for the final recipe for our pasta i'm gonna follow my standard recipe which i'll toss in the description below first i'll place my flower down in the middle of my cutting board after this i'll take a small bowl and crack in my eggs like i always say i really want you to go and try to master the one-handed egg crack it's one of those badass things that's not that hard to learn but that makes you look really cool in the kitchen into this bowl i'll also put about two tablespoons of olive oil then into the middle of my well i'll move this bowl around in a circle to make a really nice hole in the middle once i have my well i'll flip this bowl right into the center then i'll take my fork crack each of my eggs and begin whisking but make sure not to break the outside of the well if you want you can use a mixer to make your pasta dough but this is the classic quote-unquote italian grandma way of making pasta and this is the way i like to do it once your eggs are fully whisked begin pulling in flour from the outside of this well i keep calling it a well because this is called the well method slowly incorporate all of that flour until your dough begins to take form eventually it'll get thick enough that it's not going to sneak through and run way off your board if you break the edge of the well at which point i feel like it's okay to just let it all mash together now i'll take my bench scraper which you hopefully by now know that this is one of my favorite tools to use alongside a wooden cutting board i'll scrape everything off my fork and then begin to lift up that flour and incorporate everything one last time but we're not in the clear just yet you're gonna have to get your hands dirty once this is started to come together get your hands in the mix and just start kneading knead your dough until it becomes smooth and elastic then once you're happy with the dough i like to hit it with just a little bit of flour and cover it up in plastic wrap this will go in the fridge to rest for about half an hour the gluten is gonna be able to sit back and relax and then you'll be able to take this dough out and work with it really well when you go to roll it out so toss it in the fridge once your dose had time to rest unwrap it and you'll immediately take note that it feels very well rested it's kind of hard to explain but resting it in the fridge is a really important step now place this down on your cutting board toss a little bit of flour on there and cut this in half with your bench scraper i usually like to work with one piece at a time and yet again a great reason to have a bench scraper this is funny it almost looks like a little clam now flour your hands and flatten this out just a little bit more if you want you can use a rolling pin at this step but i've never really found it necessary now bring in your pasta maker flour your pasta machine always make sure this is really well lubricated with flour of course now turn on your machine and at the widest setting on the roller feed your pasta through when it's gone through the first time take both ends and feed it through the machine once again now do the same thing one last time this is to remove any air bubbles in your pasta now tighten the settings on your machine and again add just a little bit more flour onto both the machine and the pasta sheet now place your pasta through yet again as you can see that sheet of pasta is starting to get nice and thin but you'd be surprised how thin you have to make pasta before it's eventually cooked and saturated with water it expands a lot now we're almost there and as you can see pasta sheets getting even longer it's also extremely durable which is great but my general rule of thumb is until you can really clearly see your hand right through the sheet you're not there quite yet now we got our big long sheet of pasta and look at that you can see my hand right through it let's change out the head on our pasta machine to some fettuccine something about it is just a really fun shape as it feeds through grab it and work it into portions as it feeds through hit it with just a little bit of flour so it doesn't stick together cut it with your bench scraper and then twirl it into portions this pasta is ready to cook now it's time for our pesto let's unwrap our basil leaves and drop these into our blender most of the water should be gone by now and it's okay if there's a tiny bit because that water will cook off when you heat this with your pasta once we got all our basil in there i'll cover that with some pine nuts you can always save a few to add in later for different textures next we'll take a nice solid hunk of parmesan cheese i always love getting parmesan cheese that still has that rind attached to it i'm not sure why it just gives me a better sense of exactly where this came from and it shows that connection to the original massive wheel that we got this from grade about a half cup of this parmesan directly into your blender and while i do this i'll tell you one of my biggest rule of thumbs when it comes to cooking in general don't ever ever ever buy pre-grated cheese to me that's one of the worst things that you can do if you want to consider yourself a good cook those extra few seconds it takes to grate cheese is well well worth it and that pre-graded cheese can be sitting there for months or even years with some cheeses so just don't touch it now we'll add in our fourth ingredient which is just a tiny touch of salt keep in mind that parmesan already has salt in it which is why i keep going back and forth between pesto having either five or six ingredients keep in mind you can always add salt after now to finish things off we'll take our roasted garlic and our olive oil and pour that in my general rule of thumb with olive oil is about a two thirds cup for this recipe but i usually just eyeball it and try to almost cover the ingredients that are in my blender now i'll top this off with just a little bit more extra virgin olive oil and i'll toss on my lid now blend it up you can blend pesto as long or as short as you want i'm gonna finish this about part way through leaving me with what looks to be still a somewhat chunky pesto where you can see all the individual ingredients yet still blended enough that it'll easily coat my pasta now let's cook that pasta and finish this thing up to start i'm gonna salt my water and just take a look at how much salt that is that shouldn't scare you this is how you salt your water for pasta go ahead and drop that right in once you've salted your water plunge in that pasta make sure you give it a little stir to ensure none of the pasta sticks to itself for cooking this should only take a few minutes fresh pasta cooks way faster than dry pasta after just a few minutes my pasta is done so i'll scoop this out and place it into a bowl along with it will come a lot of the pasta water and that's exactly what i want we need a little bit of that to finish this dish into this bowl add just a little bit of olive oil and toss my pasta again this will make sure it doesn't stick now let's plate this final dish to finish this dish i'll pour in some of my pesto make sure your heat isn't too high because we don't want any of this sticking to the bottom of the pan we also don't want the oil and the rest of the pesto to separate and if that happens add a little bit of your pasta water and heat it up until the emulsion comes back together once this pesto's got nice and warm i'll add in my pasta now i'll stir this around to coat the pasta really well look at how bright and green and vibrant that pesto is we achieved this color by blanching it now i'm seeing a little bit of oil come out of this pesto so i'll toss in a little scoop of my pasta water then i'll crank up the heat once this pesto has come back together it's time to plate our dish to plate my dish i'll add down a nice serving of my pasta right in the center of my plate perhaps just a little bit more on top for good measure because you can never have enough pesto pasta then i'll grate my parmesan cheese gently over the pasta yet again i've definitely found that you really can't overdo the parmesan in a dish like this and it's actually very important to make sure you have enough salt if you want it's also nice to finish it off with a few of your toasted pine nuts especially because these will add a bit of extra crunch when you go to eat your final dish and that right there is it that's the perfect pesto pasta well we had to bring pesto back and isn't he just the cutest little guy you have ever seen in your life but he's not here to be cute right now he's here to be a judge he's here to try our pesto pasta and see if it passes the test because this is who it all comes down to when we go to eat food in this kitchen what do you say we just eat together right now huh let's just dive in here we go oh oh he's diving right in i think this is a win all across the board but let me just try myself it simply can't be beat pesto at least use your fork and knife dude come on we've talked about this so many times he's even licking the plate so if this doesn't tell you that that was a good pesto i don't know what will i gotta say you heard it here first everybody this pesto pasta was a win pesto said it himself all right i have to say this pesto pasta is ridiculous it is a home run the pasta is smooth and really soft but has that perfect light gummy texture that you want in a pasta the pesto by a long shot is the real star in this dish and there's something about those toasted pine nuts on top that i absolutely love now we did have a guest judge in this video pesto himself and it seemed like he loved it so i don't really feel like i have to speak too much more about this pasta itself if you do make this just try to make sure that it holds the emulsion oftentimes it's actually just a lot easier just combine your pasta and pesto in a bowl together after it can be kind of tricky if you break that emulsion and the oil starts coming out of the pesto but with that said i'm telling you right now that this is one of the easiest and most delicious recipes that you can make at home please please please don't forget to subscribe our channel is growing like crazy thanks to you and i hope to make some pasta again with you super soon i hope you'll excuse me i'm gonna finish this off

Channel: Nick DiGiovanni

Views: 2,436,352

Keywords: pasta recipe, pasta cooking, pasta curry, pasta recipe in hindi, spicy pasta recipes, pesto pasta, pesto pasta recipe, pesto recipe, barilla pesto pasta, pasta, chicken, chicken pasta recipes, pasta recipes with chicken, basil pesto pasta recipe, basil pesto pasta, best pasta recipe, best pasta, basil pesto, basil pesto recipes, pesto chicken, pesto chicken pasta, pesto recipe tasty, pesto, pesto pasta salad, cooking pasta, cooking pasta at home, youtube recipe, food, cooking

Id: oDnILxqf090

Length: 13min 10sec (790 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 17 2021