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Hello fellow spacers,
Today I will share my personal recipe for dang good Red Pepper Pesto with you. If you ever bought a jar of red pepper pesto from the store and thought that was alright, my Red Pepper Pesto will blow your mind. I'll try to go as in-depth as I can in explaining the different ingredients, so you can mix & match as you will. Cooking is the most fun when you create your own recipes 😀
Please keep in mind you need a blending device for this!!!
My list of ingredients
Main Ingredients
The following three ingredients make up the majority of the pesto. The mixture of these three will also determine the consistency of the pesto to a great degree - whether it ends up more saucy, chunky, or just creamy perfect.
- 2 red peppers: Duh - this is the heart of the pesto! You might even choose to add 3 red peppers if you like that more than the nuts or cheese. Too much of pepper can make the pesto too liquid-y or saucy though. By the way, we call them "Paprika" in Germany.
- Cheese: I guess the amount of cheese you add depends on your personal dietary choices. I usually just add a handful or two. It gives the pesto some much-needed creaminess. I've experimented with a lot of different types of cheese - they've all worked pretty well.
- Peanuts or sesam seeds: Both of these work really well to compliment the taste of the peppers. Peanuts will usually result in a much more noticeable taste, which can be nice too, but it can also overpower the taste of the peppers. Sesam is the safer choice. Too much of these might make the pesto too solid-y or chunky.
Other Ingredients
Not to say that these ingredients are less important, but I view them as more of things you add to give the dish some spice - these are the taste enhancers, if you will.
- Good amount of parsley: Usually I just add a whole pack of store-bought parsley. It adds some really good balance to the whole dish. Oftentimes, I substitute this with cilantro (coriander), as cilantro always works wonders in combination with chili peppers and spicy dishes. You can probably also substitute this with basil or some other Italian herbs.
- 1-2 garlic cloves: You should be careful with the garlic here! We're not actually cooking the garlic at any point of this recipe, which means that their taste will be quite strong even with just one or two garlic cloves (in almost any other recipe I would recommend more garlic cloves though). If you don't like garlic, I'd recommend adding just a small garlic clove.
- 1-2 chili peppers: I just add these because I'm a fiend for spicy food. You can skip them if you can't handle the heat. You shouldn't add much more than one or two as the red peppers will already carry quite some heat.
- Olive oil: This is just used to fry the red peppers. Unlike other pesto recipes, you don't add any extra oil into the pesto itself. For one, the red peppers will already be soaked in oil, but also oil will probably impact the consistency of the pesto negatively (making it too liquid-y). I suppose some oil can help if the pesto is too chunky.
- Spices: Use any Italian spices available! Basil and oregano are always good. I usually use a good amount of pepper and paprika spice as well.
The Cooking Begins
- Roughly cut the red peppers, chili peppers, garlic cloves into big pieces
- Fry the red peppers and chili peppers with some oil in a pan. Around 5 to 10 minutes on low to medium heat should be good. The red peppers should be quite soft now.
- Roast the sesam seeds or peanuts until they're gold-brown. Your peanuts might already be pre-roasted, in which case you can skip this step.
- Place everything in your blending vessel and blend. I use a hand blender and it (almost) always works out really well.
- Enjoy your pesto with some pasta (or bread or whatever else you enjoy)! Also, this should go without saying, but you put the pasta in the water after the water starts boiling.
Bonus: Wrap the vessel in some plastic wrap to keep it fresh! ☺️
I hope you enjoyed this in-depth recipe!! 👨🍳
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🅥🅡🅔🅝🅘
mmm that looks delicious