Preserving Summer’s Bounty: Pesto

Pesto is the quintessential Spring and Summer dish: fresh herbs at the peek of their seasons blended expertly with cheese, fresh garlic, nuts and oil.  Anytime I eat pesto, I can almost taste the warm Summer days in every bite.  So it’s only natural for me to want to freeze it and hold on to the memories of Spring and Summer in the dead of winter.

Preserving pesto is surprisingly easy…so much so you can miss a few steps and it will still come out wonderfully.  The first step is to (naturally) make the pesto.  I decided to make my favorite Arugula Walnut pesto using this recipe.  But I omitted the heavy cream and replaced the 1/2 cup olive oil with 1/4 cup walnut oil (trust me, the walnut oil makes an AMAZING pesto).

Once the pesto is made, spoon it into ice cube trays.  Cover the trays with plastic wrap and put them in the freezer until the pesto is completely frozen (about 3-5 hours).  When the pesto is frozen, remove the pesto cubes from the trays and place them in a heavy duty freezer bag.  Remove as much air as you can from the bag and zip it up.  Now when you want pesto in the Winter, pop out one or two cubes, let them thaw and use!

I’ll be honest, I missed a few steps in this process.  I forgot to spray the ice cube trays with Pam (as someone I know suggested doing in order to get the pesto out easier once frozen).  Turns out, you don’t really need to do this.  I used a butter knife and was able to pop the pesto cubes out easy.  I also forgot to cover the trays with plastic wrap and the cubes didn’t suffer at all.  I would, however, recommend you follow the step of wrapping the trays in plastic wrap.  It’s possible I have a freakish freezer that isn’t prone to freezer burn.  I wouldn’t want your lovely pesto to suffer because my freezer is a freak of appliance nature.

Tagged as: Food, Freezing Foods, Freezing Pesto, Pesto, Preserving Foods