Sauces & dressings · Pasta sauces

Basil pesto

Name: Basil pesto
Prep time: 10 min
Total time: 10 min
Yield: 8 servings
Ingredients: 2 cups packed fresh basil, leaves only; 1/3 cup pine nuts, lightly toasted; 2/3 cup grated parmesan; 2 cloves garlic; scant 1/2 cup olive oil; a squeeze lemon; 1/4 tsp salt

The five-ingredient sauce that never needed improving: basil, pine nuts, parmesan, garlic and olive oil. A spoonful moves a plate of pasta further than most whole recipes.

Time: 10 min (10 prep + 0 cook)
Servings: 8
Per serving: 174 kcal
Protein: 3 g

Ingredients

2 cups packed fresh basil, leaves only60 g
1/3 cup pine nuts, lightly toasted45 g
2/3 cup grated parmesan60 g
2 cloves garlic8 g
scant 1/2 cup olive oil90 g
a squeeze lemon10 g
1/4 tsp salt2 g

Every ingredient links to its food page — same data, same score, same formula.

Steps

Toast the pine nuts in a dry pan until fragrant — 3 minutes, shaking; they burn the moment you stop watching.
Pulse the basil, nuts, garlic and salt in a food processor to a coarse rubble.
Stream in the oil with the motor running, then pulse in the parmesan and lemon last.
Stop while it still has texture. Pesto is a rough sauce; a smooth paste is baby food with prestige.

Why not toss it with hot pasta on the stove?

When tossing with pasta, thin the pesto with a ladle of pasta water off the heat — cooked pesto loses the fresh basil that is its whole argument. It freezes perfectly in ice-cube trays.

Why this score

engineered against fullness

Dense calories with little protein, volume or fiber to fill you up.

Three routes to fullness — one is enough

7% of kcal

32% water

2 g/Mcal

What pulls it down

14%

How scores work

Computed on the finished dish, not an average of the parts: 1394 kcal goes into the pot, 275 g of ingredients comes out as ~275 g of food → 507 kcal per 100 g. Cooking moves water, and energy density is the score's biggest lever — so we show the math. Full formula here.

Per

Calories: 507
Protein: (7%); 10 g
Fat: (88%); 50 g
Carbohydrates: (5%); 7 g
of which sugar: 1 g
Fiber: 1 g
Sodium: 666 mg

Percentages are the share of calories from each macronutrient.

Computed from the ingredients' USDA data — nothing typed by hand. Every number is traceable, every score recomputable.

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Photo: AI-generated. Nutrition and score are computed from the ingredients with the published formula — this recipe hasn't been kitchen-tested by us yet.