If you love pesto, you know it can kind of be a pain to make, because of how much fresh basil you need, as well as needing a food processor to make it according to most recipes. And oftentimes you don’t actually need that much pesto for a dish, or used as a topping such as spread on cooked chicken.
How to freeze pesto
I prefer to freeze pesto in ice cube tray servings. Because you usually need so little pesto, I find freezing in ice cube portions is the perfect way to do it, when I often just need a single cube amount of pesto. After the cubes of pesto are frozen, you can put them in a sealed Ziploc bag in your freezer. If some time might go by before you use your pesto, you can also vacuum seal it to remove the oxygen.
Because pesto is heavy in oil, you will need to give your ice cube trays a good clean with hot water afterwards. However, if you find you use a lot of pesto, especially if you have your own basil plants, you might want to pick up an inexpensive ice cube tray from the dollar store specifically for making and freezing pesto.
Preventing pesto color change when freezing
Pesto can change colour due to oxygen, so after you freeze your pesto, it might not be the bright green you expect when thawed. If you’re concerned about this, you can freeze pesto in a larger serving container and then pour a thin layer of olive oil on top of your pesto to seal it. Obviously, this isn’t ideal if you are going the ice cube route since you will be putting those cubes into a bag after. But for a larger portion but you want to freeze, this works great.
Vacuum sealing your freezer pesto
You can also vacuum seal your pesto to prevent the colour change, which will allow you to freeze your pesto and cubes, but the problem with this is you would need to re vacuum seal it every time you opened the package for a cube of pesto.
Favorite freezer pesto recipes
If you don’t already have a favourite pesto recipe, we also have a pesto recipe specifically for the freezer. And you also might be interested in our pesto freezer hamburgers as well.
