Stop throwing away those carrot tops! Take the edible greens from any root vegetable and turn it into this delicious pesto! Great on pasta, pizza, in a sandwich, or with veggies and rice. This recipe is easy-to-make and requires no expensive nuts!
For the longest time, I’ve been saving my greens from my root veggies. I know they’re edible, so it always seems wasteful to throw them away. The problem is, I never really know what to do with them.
I’m not a green smoothie kinda girl, so I save them thinking I’ll use them to make homemade vegetable broth or something. However, I already have a case of vegetable broth in the garage, and that seems like more work than it’s worth (I’m sure I’m only saying this because I’ve never done it, however). Next thing I know, the greens have gone bad in my fridge, and I end up throwing them away anyway. *sigh*
The weekend before last, I was having one of my big Sunday cook days, and for that week’s meals, I had bought some radishes as well as beets. While I was busy cooking, my husband drove down to the Farmer’s Market and came home with a bunch of carrots and some kohlrabi. I now had greens from four different types of root vegetables (and I mean there were a LOT of greens), and I thought, “OK, this time I really need to do something with these.”
A couple night’s later, Michael was out of town, and I wanted to make a simple dinner out of foods I already had on hand. We had some leftover wild rice, and I had odds and ends of several vegetables. I had about half of a head of cauliflower, half a zucchini, some cooked asparagus from another dinner, etc. I also had about three-fourths of a block of tofu which needed to be used before it went bad.
I knew I wanted to have the tofu and veggies over the rice, but I wanted some type of sauce. That’s where the greens came in to play. I’d made pesto out of all sorts of herbs and even greens such as spinach and kale, so why not the tops of root veggies?
I wanted to keep this simple, as well as affordable, so I refrained from using any nuts in this pesto. I’m sure it’d be delicious with some pine nuts tossed in, but it honestly doesn’t need any.
In addition to the greens, I used avocado oil (though olive would work), LOTS of garlic, lemon, nutritional yeast, and of course salt and pepper. Everything gets blended into the food processor until a sauce is formed, it’s that simple!
It was just my son and myself home for dinner that night, so I had some of the pesto left over. The rest of it I used on some mini pizzas for lunch (they were DE-LI-CIOUS!), and then to make some pasta for my son on another night.
Last week I ended up with some more root greens. We’ve been eating a lot of beets lately. Though, I again used a variety. My son requested pasta with pesto for his birthday dinner, so I made this again, only this time I mixed it into with pasta. I used r for the kids and gluten-free edamame spaghetti for me and the hubs.
If you don’t have quite enough of the greens, get creative. You can always add in the standard basil or other herbs. Also good in pesto is spinach or other dark leafy greens.
How do you enjoy your pesto? Let me know what greens you use and what you use the pesto on once it’s done! Leave a comment below or tag me on Instagram, @veggiesattiffanis.
Root Greens Vegan Pesto
Ingredients
- 10 cups (loosely packed) root vegetable greens* use the tops of carrots, beets, kohlrabi, radishes, turnips, etc.
- 4 – 6 cloves garlic If you use all 6, this does get spicy!
- 3/4 cups avocado oil or substitute olive oil, if you prefer
- 1/2 lemon (juice from)
- 1 Tbsp nutritional yeast
- 1/2 tsp pink Himalayan salt, or to taste
- 1/8 tsp ground black pepper
Instructions
- Rinse greens well and pat dry.
- Place rinsed greens in the food processor with an S-blade. If they don’t all fit at once, process smaller amounts on high, continuing to add more a little at a time, until they all fit.
- Add remaining ingredients. Mix on high until ingredients are well combined and resemble pesto.