Pesto pasta is a delightful meal for lunch or dinner, especially during the summer months. Quick and delicious, it is even easier if you use a jar of pesto from the supermarket.
Usually made with basil, pine nuts, olive oil and garlic, it has become an everyday staple in cupboards across the UK. But if you want to make your standard pasta dish tastier, there are things you can add to the mix. Firstly, to make it creamier and enhance the existing flavour, you can add a good nob of butter to the pan of warm, drained pasta before adding in the pesto.
This gives the sauce more body and the salt from the butter adds more depth to the pesto.
Buttered pasta is a simple, beautiful combination, but you can also add in some parmesan to enhance your dish or sprinkle over the top.
The saltiness from the cheese will intensify the pesto. For a more indulgent meal, you could add in cream to give the most silky and smooth pasta sauce.
And if you have leftover pesto, the Good Food website has a handy list of ways you can use it up by enhancing other meals outside of pasta dishes.
Firstly, they suggest not straying too far from pasta’s Italian roots and adding it to pizza. You could add it to freshly made dough or even a store-bought, premade pizza.
They also suggest adding it to dips and mashed potatoes to give your everyday meal some extra flavour.
Many love adding pesto to their fried and poached eggs, but you could also give pesto omelettes a go.
The Good Food website also had some advice on how to store your pesto to keep it fresh for as long as possible.
They said: “Once opened, a jar of shop-bought pesto should last around two weeks. You can help to lock in the freshness by adding a glug of extra-virgin olive oil.”
They added that making your own pesto can be more expensive than buying a jar from the supermarket, but if you do decide to give it a go, freshly made pesto will last for around four days.
They added: ” It can also be frozen, but for optimum results leave out the Parmesan cheese, which can be easily added once thawed.”