Pesto Potato Salad Recipe (With Video)

This transcription will have some mistakes because it is partially automated.

Hello and welcome to Freshly Served the healthy vegan cooking show. I’m Heather and tonight we’re going to make a lemon pesto potato salad which is gonna be a nice change from usual potato salad which is often done with mayonnaise.

And I find that, first of all has eggs in it so I’m vegan. Second of all it always tastes really heavy and that’s not the nicest thing for a summer afternoon.

So I’m gonna take these potatoes and I’m gonna do them with a lemon pesto instead which we can use a whole bunch of fresh basil which is one of the best parts of summer.

The thing I’m gonna start with is the potatoes, they need to cook first and I’m using some red potatoes because they have a beautiful skin. When I cook potatoes, I don’t like to peel them because the peel is where a lot of their nutrients are.

So what I’m gonna do is cut these into quarters, put them with some water, a little pinch of salt, bring them to a boil and they’re gonna cook in about 15 - 20 minutes.

While those potatoes are cooking we can start on the pesto and I got some pine nuts that I’ve toasted and when you’re toasting them be very careful, they toast very quickly and many of time I’ve burned them.

So less is better than more but roasting them a little bit brings out their flavour which is fantastic and since they are pretty expensive you wanna make sure you get as much out of them as you can.

I often do pesto with different ingredients but today I’m just gonna show you your standard straight up pesto with basil and pine nuts and garlic. Let those pine nuts cool down a little bit before we have a go with them.

What I’m gonna do next is chop up my basil which is so lovely in the summer really nice and fresh has a beautiful flavour that’s really gonna bring out nice, it adds flavour to our potatoes.

Use the food processor if you like but what I’m gonna do is just chop up my basil really nice and fine and put it in to this mortar and pestle here. Once the pine nuts have cooled down a little bit I’m just gonna grind them in my coffee grinder and add them in here.

But first what I’m gonna do is add a bit of olive oil and normally pesto are made with just olive oil as the liquid but in order to cut down on the fat a little bit and bring in some flavour I’m gonna use some lemon juice and whenever I use the juice of a lemon I just can’t resist zesting it so that’s what I’m doing here.

So it’s just taking the very outer skin of the lemon off and that’s where all the flavour is, there’s also some interesting nutrients in there. You can do this with a grater if you wish but just be careful, zester is pretty cheap so go out and buy one if you can see one. They’re only a few bucks.

Then what I’m gonna do is juice the lemon in here so I’ve got a little strainer. I’m just gonna take my lemon and poke it with a zester and squeeze like so. That’s gonna squeeze the juice right down to the pesto.

Once you get the liquid in there, if you’re using a mortar and petle you wanna crush the basil so that it releases its flavour into the liquid. If you’re using a food processor its gonna do the same thing when you’re chopping it up. It’s just not as fun you know?

Once the pine nuts have a little bit of time to cool off you can put them to your coffee grinder or your blender, if you put a maser jar and a screw on the top you can blend them that way as well. You wanna pause it so that you don’t get a paste, you want this to grind and if there’s a few chunks that’s ok.

So pour that right in with the basil, so these potatoes are done if you poke them with a fork they should be pretty soft. We don’t want them falling apart though because it is a potato salad so we want them to stay somewhat intact.

Now I’ve added some parsley to my pesto because I’ve run out of basil and I’ve quite a bit of pine nuts so I added some parsley. If you’re buying basil it’s a lot cheaper way to make a pesto you just use some basil and some parsley.

Put these potatoes in this big bowl in order to cool off and let their steam come off and I’ll finish up the parsley with some fresh garlic and some salt.

To lighten up this salad a little bit more and of course greens are always important part of your diet. I’m gonna put some greens in here. I’m using mustard greens, now I hate mustard greens but when I get to mix it with the potatoes when I get the pesto on, I like it! It adds a nice, sharp flavour to this salad.

And it’s always good to get things in your diet that you wouldn’t normally eat because they bring different nutrients. So get some pesto on here, toss it around. I’m not gonna put all of the pesto on here, I’m gonna save some because it’s really nice to have on pastas is the standard but you can also put it on sandwiches or you know wrap or with your French fries, whatever you want it do it.

There you go! Healthy vegan lemon pesto potato salad, this will be great as a light lunch or dinner or take it on a picnic for a nice summer afternoon. You can find the recipe at HealthyVeganRecipes.net. I’m Heather and this is Freshly Served.