How to Make Fresh Basil Pesto | Picking Basil so it Keeps Growing

[Music] hello everybody can you see me hang out this way overgrown basil plant that's in a pot that needs my attention and what I'm going to do today is make pesto out of it I should have been picking this basil plant a little while ago and not let it get so tall but I have been pinching it back at the top and for the most part I've been taking the little flowers away fair they're gonna make seeds and that would make the plant stop producing there are a few flower pods for the most part I've been keeping them picked off but basil pesto is one of my favorite things and it's really quite easy to make if you have lots of basil that you grew yourself and I'm going to also show you how to make it more affordable the first thing I'm going to do is go through here and pick these sprigs off of I've got my trusty little scissors here and I'm gonna cut sprigs off that look like that here's the thing never go in and just pick off leaves from your basil plant that will kill it it'll all just turn into a woody stem and then it will just die I used to raise a lot of basil and take the plants to the market and so I had to teach a lot of people how to pick it properly if you pick it properly a single plant can probably give you all the basil you want if you're an average person but if you don't pick it pump properly there's a good chance that that you will kill it [Music] because this thing has been a little bit neglected for a while I'm going to pick up pick off all of the sprigs that look like this you're gonna be chopped back pretty hard when I'm done basil is a little bit temperamental and you never want to put your cut basil in the refrigerator because it will turn it black you need to have it at cool room temperature and treat it like cut flowers put the stem down in a container of water and just let it stick up over the top as you would have cut flower if you looked at there would actually take root and make a new plant but if you're wanting the basil for making food then leave it there on your counter until you are ready to use it it looks like I scalped the plant and I did trim it back really hard but it actually likes to be trimmed because it will give it new growth all of the lower branches will put out new branches and it'll actually be a prettier plant later on it won't be quite so tall and and skinnier I've got a good amount of basil here but I there are still a couple other places on my property where Basil's growing so I'm gonna go collect from those places too and then I'm going to take you into the kitchen and we're gonna start the pesto process well I'm in the kitchen with the basil and I have a lot of basil my plan is to make enough pesto that I can put it in the freezer and then I can have pesto several times over this winter I prefer not to even wash my basil when I'm going pesto but I have so much here and a lot of it was dirty so I had to give it two rinses actually I've drained it pretty well now we're ready to go to the next step which is to take the leaves off you don't want to put stems in your pesto so what I'm gonna be doing next is taking each leaf off of the stems discarding the stems and collecting the leaves I have my basil all prepared by washing it and taking the leaves off of the stem I can't do all of it at once in my food processor so what I'm gonna do is in four cup batches where I will be using four cups of basil and I'm gonna put it in my four cup measuring cup here and press it down pretty good it's hard to measure stuff like this in the cup because it's fluffiness how hard should you press it down but I'm gonna put it in there pretty hard you have several batches here so I'm gonna have to concentrate on eating pesto for a while and then I need a half a cup of olive oil I'm going to use English walnuts instead of kind nuts pine nuts are expensive and it's not something I ever have in my house so I have English walnuts and I think that they are probably just good maybe a the connoisseur can tell the difference but not me I need 1/3 a cup of walnuts I need 3 2 to 3 these are kind of small so I did 3 cloves of garlic 1/2 a cup of Parmesan cheese I don't have any fresh Parmesan cheese to grate so I'm just going to use the canned stuff from the grocery store and then about 1 teaspoon of salt even in small batches that's going to be a lot [Music] after it's all pulverized there's not nearly as much of it in there now I've made it whenever it wasn't chopped up finely and I've made it whenever it was more pasty I actually prefer it a finer pasty type of consistency I think this might be somewhere in the middle I think I read that if you want it finer you can put it in a blender but I feel like it's not gonna be as easy to deal with in a blender as it is the food processor I have clean half pint jars sitting here for this job so I'm gonna work it down in to a couple of them it looks like it might be the equivalent of about two but we'll see what happens try to work it down to get the air bubbles out so all of that only made about one and it looks like maybe in half of another one I'm surprised how much it work down since my purpose is to freeze this what I should do pour some of my olive oil over the top of it to coat the top and that will help it stay fresh and not turn black in the freezer whenever I'm ready to use this I will just take it out thaw it out and stir it up before I use it and it'll be really good to go this would be a very nice summer Treat in middle of the winter so I have two or three more batches to work my way through I'll get that done get them in the jars put them in the freezer and then we'll get to enjoy some pesto this winter I appreciate you coming around and learning how to make pesto and I'll see you next time well I'm satisfied tickled to learning how to make basil pesto with [Music]

Channel: The Neals' Homestead

Views: 34,533

Keywords: Pesto recipes, pesto sauce, pesto pasta, pesto, Italian pesto sauce, Italian pesto, how to make pesto sauce, basil, basil pesto, basil pesto sauce, Italian food, Italian pesto recipes, cooking, recipes, Harvesting basil, growing basil, gardening, how to pick basil, how to pick basil so that it keeps growing, how to store basil, how to prune basil

Id: LcirJoQjEbU

Length: 9min 16sec (556 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 13 2019