This homemade pea pesto recipe offers a fantastic low-calorie twist on traditional pesto, ideal for generously coating your favourite pasta, delivering a creamy pesto finish that's simply irresistible.
One thing I adore is basil pesto over pasta, but it often racks up the calories unless you're sparing with it, resulting in just a hint of those incredible basil, garlic, and Parmesan flavors that make pesto so delightful.
With this pea pesto, there's no need to hold back on portion size. Half of this entire recipe is surprisingly low in calories, ensuring you can indulge in all the deliciousness without worry.
The peas give it a lovely creaminess and amazing flavour when combined with basil, garlic and parmesan.
For the peas, I recommend using fresh English peas if you can get some in season, if not frozen peas will work fine also.
I cook the peas in some stock to give them some flavour and then reserve a little of the stock, just enough to allow them to blend in a blender, once cooked.
I use my Nutri Ninja Blender with Auto IQ to puree the peas once cooked. This blender is amazing. The auto iq technology feature, mean it blends to a set pattern depending on what it is your are making. There is also an optional add on for a food processor bowl, which is perfect for chopping and grating vegetables.
To make the pesto, I also use my Cuisinart Mini Food Processor, to blitz the basil, parmesan and garlic till finely ground. Once you have done that, you can then fold in the pea puree. Don't blend it all together, as you don't want the pesto completely smooth, you want it to still have flecks of basil, parmesan and garlic. So it's important to just fold everything together till just combined.
Once combined you can then stir in the extra virgin olive oil for that silky creamy pesto finish.
More Pasta Sauce Recipes
Looking for some more sauce recipes for serving over pasta? Check out this delicious pasta sauce recipes:
- Creamy Garlic Pasta
- Creamy Chicken and Tomatoes
- Marinara Sauce
- Tomato and Basil Sauce
- Homemade Tomato Pasta Sauce
- Roasted Tomato and Garlic Pasta Sauce
- Roasted Tomato and Basil Sauce
- Creamy Tomato Pasta Sauce
or if you would like more recipe ideas - head on over to the FULL RECIPE INDEX where you will find over 900 delicious recipes with calories and you can search by meal type, ingredients, course, diet and more.
All recipes on Slimming Eats have estimated nutritional information for your convenience.
Once all ready this Pea Pesto and pasta is perfect served on a bed of mixed baby greens for some additional greens. A delicious meal for lunch or dinner.
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Recipe Card
Pea Pesto Pasta
This homemade pea pesto recipe offers a fantastic low-calorie twist on traditional pesto, ideal for generously coating your favourite pasta, delivering a creamy pesto finish that's simply irresistible.
Ingredients
- 1 cup of fresh English peas (or use frozen)
- 1 clove of garlic, crushed
- chicken or vegetable stock to cover
- 60g (2oz) of parmesan, grated
- big handful of fresh basil (approx 1 cup)
- 1 tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil
- 150g (5.2oz) of uncooked pasta of choice (can use gluten free)
- Salt to season
Instructions
- Add peas to a saucepan and loosely cover with stock. Bring to a boil and simmer for 3 mins.
- Reserve some of the stock, and then drain.
- Add peas to a blender, and keep adding in a little bit of the reserved stock until it blends to a smooth puree. Set aside.
- Add the pasta to a saucepan of boiling salted water and cook till al dente.
- In the meantime add the basil, parmesan and garlic to a mini food processor and blitz till fine.
- Fold in the pea puree. Season with salt to taste.
- Mix in the extra virgin olive oil.
- Once pasta is cooked, drain, then spoon in the pea pesto and toss to coat.
- Divide between two plates and enjoy with your choice of speed. I like to serve over a bed of mixed baby greens.
Notes
Please see below for full nutritional info and additional details about recipe:
- Calories - scroll down to nutritional info box
- WW Points and other Slimming or Weight Loss programs - due to plans regularly changing and updating, we recommend calculating with the official tools you get as a member to those plans to ensure accuracy of values.
- Gluten Free Friendly: use gluten free pasta
- Vegetarian Friendly: swap the parmesan for a vegetarian friendly Italian hard cheese
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Nutrition Information
Yield 2 Serving Size 1 SERVINGAmount Per Serving Calories 487Total Fat 12.5gSaturated Fat 6.3gCholesterol 23.7mgSodium 658mgCarbohydrates 67.3gFiber 7.2gSugar 5.7gProtein 17.5g
Cleardee says
Easy to make recipe using mostly store cupboard staples ( frozen peas). I found that 60g pack of fresh basil yielded one cup.. Although the amount produced does not look a lot, it goes a long way to coat the cooked pasta, rather than rest on top like a sauce!
Elizabeth says
Just made pea pesto for lunch as my children were on a shop bought sauce. The girls had a taste and it got the thumbs up from them too. Will be making again, quick,easy and tasty.
Sara says
Hi, can this sauce be frozen? Look yum!
Shevy (Slimming Eats) says
I've not tested so I couldn't say for sure. I don't see why it wouldn't freeze okay though.
Gabby says
I made this without the Parmesan because I can vegan and it’s so tasty!!!
Kathryn says
Yum! I made this today and used it as a dip, delicious. I didn’t have fresh basil, so used some dried basil instead (you don’t need as much) and it worked great. Thanks for another lovely recipe!