Kale Pesto - Easy 5 Minute Recipe | WhitneyBond.com (2024)

FAQs

How do you get the bitterness out of kale pesto? ›

Try a spoonful of the sauce and add more salt, pepper, lemon juice, and/or nutritional yeast, as desired. If the kale pesto tastes bitter, add 1/4 teaspoon maple syrup or honey to balance it.

Make this Kale Pesto with lemon, almonds, garlic, Parmesan, and fresh leafy kale. Perfect winter pesto and great with pasta! Elise founded Simply Recipes in 2003 and led the site until 2019.

This is a chain reaction that happens in the presence of oxygen and is what causes the deterioration of food, making it a dull colour and sometimes resulting in off-smells or off-flavours too. This oxidation is largely unavoidable and isn't dangerous per se.

“Extra-virgin olive oil contains bitter tasting polyphenols coated by fatty acids, which prevent them from dispersing. If the oil is emulsified in a food processor, these polyphenols get squeezed out and the liquid mix turns bitter.

Adding salt and squeezing lemon make a big difference by removing bitterness. Adding some spicy or sweet flavors may help tame the strong flavor of bitter kale.

As you would expect, pesto's wider variety of ingredients means it does slightly better in the vitamin and mineral stakes. Pesto outsmarts tomato sauce in many of these, but the pasta sauce still provides a sizeable chunk of your recommended daily targets.

Its scarcity, plus the fact that the plants are picked roots, soil, and all to ensure that only juvenile leaves make it into pesto, makes it extraordinarily expensive and something that only premium, artisan pesto makers can justify using.

FAQ: How Long Does Homemade Pesto Last? You can store this basil pesto in a jar or sealable container, then tightly seal and refrigerate for up to 1 week or freeze for up to 2–3 months. Let it thaw at room temperature or in the refrigerator.

add lemon juice to your pesto to keep it from browning

For a full batch of basil pesto made in my Cuisinart food processor I add the juice of 1 lemon. That's about 2 tablespoons. Not only does it keep the pesto fresh and green, it gives it a nice boost of flavor.

Upgrade with a drizzle of olive oil

Olive oil can give store-bought pesto a much-needed boost — especially if you have a nice extra-virgin or infused variety (such as basil or garlic) on hand. Furthermore, you don't have to add much to make a difference.

Is kale pesto bitter? ›

Raw kale is naturally bitter tasting, but the lemon juice helps to balance it out. If the pesto tastes too bitter, try adding additional lemon juice.

Blanch Them

Blanching your greens is key to getting that bitterness level down. Because glucosinolates are water-soluble compounds, a lot of them are leached out into the water, allowing for a less bitter green.

Much like in onions and garlic, kale's bitterness is only formed when the vegetable is sliced, chopped, massaged, or chewed. When cells in a leaf of kale are intact, an enzyme called myrosinase and sulfur-containing compound glucosinolate are separated from one another.