Nutmeg Free Spinach & Avocado Pesto
Bright, creamy, and packed with fresh green flavor, this blended pesto is the kind of sauce that makes you want to put it on everything — pasta, grain bowls, toast, grilled chicken, you name it. The avocado does the heavy lifting here, giving the pesto a lush, buttery body without any dairy, while baby spinach and fresh basil layer in that classic herbaceous punch. Lemon juice keeps things vibrant and helps slow the browning that avocado-based sauces are prone to, and the tip about pressing plastic wrap directly onto the surface before sealing is a genuinely useful trick worth remembering. Garlic and an optional hit of fresh ginger round out the flavor with just enough warmth and bite. So many store-bought pestos and spice blends sneak in warming spices you might not expect, but every single ingredient here is straightforward and easy to verify at a glance. The food processor does all the work in under a minute, and the result is a silky, spoonable sauce that tastes far more impressive than the effort involved.
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Learn more →Ingredients
6 servings
- 2 cups packed baby spinach
- 1 ripe avocado, pitted and scooped
- 1 cup fresh basil leaves, loosely packed
- 2 cloves garlic, peeled
- 3 tbsp fresh lemon juice (about 1 lemon)
- ¼ cup extra-virgin olive oil
- ¼ tsp fine sea salt, plus more to taste
- 2–4 tbsp water, as needed to thin
- 1 tsp fresh ginger, finely grated (optional)
Instructions
- 1
Add the baby spinach, avocado, basil, garlic, lemon juice, salt, and ginger (if using) to the bowl of a food processor or blender.
- 2
Pulse 8–10 times until the mixture is roughly broken down and no large pieces remain.
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