When your sauce game is strong, everything shines a little brighter. And this wholesome, vegan twist on a classic Italian pesto is bringing all the flavors. Satisfying, comforting, and brimming with healthy deliciousness, this Vegan Oil Free Avocado Pesto can be made in a flash and pairs perfectly with pasta, veggie bowls, roasted veggies, and so much more. This week’s Whip It Up Wednesday recipe is perfect for weeknights when you need something fast to feed a hungry family.
Whole Food Plant Based recipe, vegan, plant based, oil free, refined sugar free, gluten free, no highly processed ingredients.
Hi there, Ameera here!
I just hate fast, easy, and flavorful dishes . . . said no one ever! Wait until you try this Whole Food Plant Based pesto, oh my goodness, it is super flavorful and totally delicious!
We want to put it on EV-ERY-THING from pasta to veggie bowls to roasted veggies. This tasty sauce is sure to put a smile on your face too.
Whip it up Wednesday
As you already know, every Wednesday, we feature a quick and easy recipe that can be “whipped up” in 20 minutes or less.
This Vegan Oil Free Avocado Pesto is super creamy from the avocado and feels indulgent from the cashews, but totally guilt free. It is soooo completely and utterly yummylicious. We totally loved it.
The best part is that you do not need to cook it. You can eat it with hot or cold pasta. The heat from the freshly cooked pasta heats the sauce to perfection. We made it two ways just to give you a few ideas on servings.
Veggie Bowl
How we made this tasty veggie bowl:
- We diced some onions and zucchini, sautéed them for about 7 minutes, then threw in a can of chickpeas and corn, then gave a sprinkle of sea salt, black pepper, onion powder, garlic powder, paprika, and a hint of Italian seasonings, cooked it up all nice like.
- Then loaded that into a bowl, along with some brined artichoke hearts, tomatoes, and cooked quinoa.
- Dolloped a generous amount of our avocado pesto, and we were in veggie bowl heaven.
It’s super easy to switch up whichever ingredients you have on hand. Roasted veggies are a dream with this sauce… think of all the tasty possibilities.
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Pasta Paradise
In another kitchen test, we made our avocado pesto and just mixed it with some freshly made hot pasta and enjoyed this deliciousness that way, sooooo gosh darned delish! The hot pasta cooks the pesto perfectly, no need to heat the pesto! Now how cool is that?
Nuts, nuts, and more nuts
You might be thinking, wow, there are a lot of different nuts in the recipe, and you would be correct.
The reason we went this route is because most traditional pesto recipes include Parmesan cheese along with pine nuts. Well, we absolutely LOVE our Vegan Parmesan Cheese, which is made from raw cashews and blanched almond slivers.
So instead of creating our Vegan Parmesan Cheese recipe first, then adding it to the pesto as an ingredient; we decided to incorporate our Vegan Parmesan Cheese recipe inside of the pesto recipe.
This way it eliminates the extra step of making the vegan parm first. However, by doing it this way, you will see we’ve got a lot of different nut varieties to this recipe lol.
We hope you enjoy our new Whip It Up Wednesday quick and easy ideas!
We hope you give this recipe a try! If you try these comforting sauce, we would love to know if you enjoy it as much as we do! Please leave us a review! Post a picture on Facebook or Instagram and tag us! We would love to hear from you.
Products Used:
- High speed blender
Vegan Oil Free Avocado Pesto
- Prep Time: 5 Minutes
- Total Time: 5 minutes
- Yield: 1 3/4 cups 1x
- Category: Sauces
- Cuisine: Italian
Description
When your sauce game is strong, everything shines a little brighter. And this wholesome, vegan twist on a classic Italian pesto is bringing all the flavors. Satisfying, comforting, and brimming with healthy deliciousness, this Vegan Oil Free Avocado Pesto can be made in a flash and pairs perfectly with pasta, veggie bowls, roasted veggies, and so much more. This week’s Whip It Up Wednesday recipe is perfect for weeknights when you need something fast to feed a hungry family.
Whole Food Plant Based recipe, vegan, plant based, oil free, refined sugar free, gluten free, no highly processed ingredients.
Ingredients
- 2 avocados, peeled, chunked
- ¾ cup to 1 cup fresh basil, loosely packed
- 2 Tablespoons blanched almond slivers
- 2 Tablespoons raw cashews (about 10–12 nuts)
- 1 Tablespoon pine nuts
- 3 to 7 Tablespoons water *
- 1 ½ to 2 Tablespoons fresh lemon juice
- 1 Tablespoon + 1 teaspoon nutritional yeast
- ½ teaspoon garlic powder
- ¼ teaspoon onion powder
- ¼ teaspoon sea salt (+/-) *
Instructions
- Place the all the ingredients into a high-speed blender, blend on high until smooth, creamy, and emulsified. Note: Initially, you may need to use the tamper tool to keep the pesto moving in the blender.
- Taste test for flavor, adjust as needed.
Notes
*Water: The amount of water used can vary largely dependent on the size of the avocado and the personal preference on the thickness of the pesto. We averaged about 5 Tablespoons of water on our kitchen tests. You may need to use the tamper tool keep the pesto moving around in the high-speed blender.
*Sea Salt: Please adjust the sea salt based upon your family’s sea salt preferences and/or based upon dietary needs.
*Servings: Makes 1 ¾ cups
*Storage: Use within 3 days
This post contains affiliate links, and we may receive a very small commission if you purchase through those links at no additional cost to you. Thank you for supporting Monkey and Me Kitchen Adventures! For more information, see our disclosures here.