I've been freezing pesto lately and haven't noticed a difference if I include the cheese. What I also do is put it in an ice cube tray as 1 or 2 cubes (prolly ~3-4 tbs) is then enough for a serving of pasta.

We have been freezing pestos in ice cube trays for many years. The frozen chunks are then wrapped in plastic film and transferred to zipper bags for keeping. These pestos do not have cheese. Adding freshly grated cheese just before serving gives a lot better flavor than having the cheese soaking up flavors during freezing and thawing. There may also be some flavor transfer to/from the cheese while frozen. Another consideration is that the salt from cheese lowers the freezing point. You are effectively storing at a higher temperature with the usual reduction in storage time until there are quality issues. Ideally, we would have some pesto left until soon before we have fresh basil from the garden.

Pine nuts or other nuts are normally included in the original pesto and don't seem much the worse for wear.

Pesto made with lemon basil makes a great sauce for poached fish.

I freeze mine as a pistou - garlic, EVOO, sea salt, and basil (and flat-leaf parsley if I have some around) only. No nuts, no cheese; I find that adding fresh nuts and cheese at the last minute works best., not to mention that you can vary the variety of nut to suit your whim. Also, freezing small portions in the smallest size of Ball glass jam jars protects the flavor of the basil, not to mention that they are easier to store.

So I bought two big bundles of my beloved Kinnickinnick genovese basil at Green City today, along with two bundles of some that Nichols had that smelled good too (but not as good as the genovese). By this time the Kinnickinnick guy recognized me as a genovese basil fiend and so I told him my plan to freeze pesto, or Pesto Helper, or whatever you want to call the unfinished pesto in the making. That brought over the woman who works there, who said "This is farm wife's advice, so take it as you please, but I wouldn't freeze the garlic either. You want the freshest flavor, you should add all that stuff when you're about to make it."

Well, who am I to reject the wisdom of farm wives? And frankly, since I was already planning to leave out the pine nuts and the cheese and the salt, it seemed little enough more work later on to leave out the garlic for now, and just freeze basil in oil.

Then she suggested an excellent idea for storage-- freeze it in small freezer ziploc bags, pressed fairly flat. That way, you can snap off as much as you need, to thaw. (Pesto brittle.) The one downside is it probably exposes more of it to air, and thus to discoloration, but it's certainly convenient.

So I just finished mixing 14 cups of basil leaves with enough oil to make a pesto sludge. The house smells like I've been mowing a field of basil in the kitchen. But that's how it is for us farm wives, putting away summer's bounty for the long winter ahead.

Well, they're right, but then, I would say freeze nothing. It's easy to make, especially if one bears in mind that (at least from an Italian standpoint) a little goes a long way. The cheese doesn't freeze well, the nuts don't really freeze too well, the garlic gets too strong, so...

Decent basil can be had these days out of season and a freshly made pesto -- mortar and pestle only, no whirring blades, please -- even with less than optimal basil, is better than something stored in pseudo-Antarctic conditions. If no good basil is available, one eats something else.

The best time to make pesto is early in the summer, when the basil is especially delicate, though multiple plantings in the garden gives one the possibility of having young, tender, small round leaves throughout the season (they're still better around here in June, though). For genuinely new potatoes and properly small and tender green beans, earlier in the summer is better than now as well, though a decent version can still be made.

Freezing is not good. Make a small amount, maybe enough for two or three meals, and store what must be be stored in a cool dark place. Finish it within a week.

Seasonality is good and pesto is a seasonal dish.

Antonius

Well, hence the experiment with freezing. (I grant the quantities are more than a mere experiment's worth, but when they're selling two bundles at such a reasonable price, well, it's not hard for me to end up with too much.) To see if what one gets from the process is worthy of the name.

Decent basil may well be available out of season, but this stuff is so much better than the decent basil (Jacob's Conglomofarm, at Whole Foods) I rely on during the year-- so aromatic, so perfumey, so goshdarn basilriffic-- that it could leave the freezer having lost half its present pungency and still be tastier than the decent stuff.

Or so the theory goes, anyway. We shall see!

(And as far as beginning versus end of season goes, I will note that, vagaries of the market, the stuff I bought-- I think from Nichols-- early in the season was a big disappointment, pungency-wise; I don't know precisely when this genovese stuff started being sold at Green City but it was revelatorily, speaking-in-tongues better than the early summer stuff. And it has tended to be smaller leaves, not big elephant ears of basil, mostly.)

I also put some blueberries away this way, for pies later on. I'm more inclined to take the seasonality hard line with fruit, avoiding styropeaches and Boeing cherries in January, and that's something where there's just no comparison in how much better the July-August local blueberries are than the Costco megapacks we rely on for our antioxidants the rest of the year. In a pie, I'm sure the superior flavor will more than make up for the fact of not being fresh.

What I watched tonight to get ready for winter.

HI,

I have frozen pesto for years in ice cube trays. I've done every step except for the cheese. I like the basil slurry idea even better because you may not always want pesto, though you want the basil flavor.

The oxidation of the exterior issue is cosmetic. You may find the ice cube style more to your liking because the brilliant green color is still there under the surface. Flattened out like you're suggesting may expose more surface area, then something dense like a cube. I'm just thinking out loud because you really want the taste more than anything else, which you have accomplished.

While pesto can be made anytime of year, it is also at quite a financial sacrifice. Right now basil is cheap and abundant, so why not freeze away!

I have a friend who belonged to the Evanston Herb Society. She also advocated chopping fresh herbs, getting them into water and freeze in ice cube trays. Sage and rosemary were high on her list to freeze because the essential oils fade very fast when dried. I have to admit dried Rosemary reminds me of pine needles while fresh is a very different experience.

Regards,

Obviously, lots of people do freeze pesto in one way or another and I won't lobby the aldermen of our fair burg to outlaw the practice but since I started this thread as pesto alla genovese comme il faut, I'll continue to insist that if one cares to make superior pesto, one ideally will not use anything but fresh products and make the small amount of the substance needed for a meal just before using.

Concerning the quality of the basil, there may be at issue here different senses of what 'pungent' is but in the present context, 'pungent' is a word I would use to describe the basil from older plants and generally later in the season. Italians don't throw out all the basil once it starts to get that more pungent, intense character but we generally feel that the optimal stuff for dishes that really feature basil are small, round leaves of delicate and complex flavour. In order to keep the supply going, we've taken to doing three plantings in our garden over the course of the season.

Basil is the most prominent flavour in pesto alla genovese but it should not be out of balance and cover up the flavours of the other ingredients, most especially those of the olive oil. It is a sauce based on olive oil and the quality of the oil is of central importance. In this regard, I would not take excellent extra virgin olive oil, mix it with things (including water), freeze it, and expect it to maintain all its complexity of delicate flavours.

One further note: if I'm not happy with the basil on hand or if I'm in the mood for it, I sometimes make pesto in the general Genoese way but without the basil. Quite delicious...



And I do make it once in a blue moon out of season, with good store bought basil...



... a nice change of pace, maybe once a year out of season...

Antonius

Actually if you'll look back I never said it was "pungent" per se (which I agree would potentially be unpleasant) but used pungency only as a relative measure of fresh vs. frozen, or in saying that the basil bought earlier in the season was so wan and flavorless, no improvement on store-bought stuff. No doubt there was good basil out there somewhere or other then, but the basil I have bought within the last month or so has been-- like Michigan blueberries, like Illinois peaches-- delicate, complex, more intense but also more harmonious, hitting notes scarcely hinted at before, and, as the slogan for Guinness used to put it, reaching places the others didn't even know existed. It's great stuff.

As far as the oil goes (this is a point I should have made earlier for anyone else who wants to try this), of course since you don't have the cheese, the pine nuts, and the garlic in there, you're using a small part of the final oil in the process of preserving the basil, less than half anyway, so there will be the opportunity (indeed, the necessity) to add a good quantity of fresh oil later on.

Maybe someone has already made the observation, but the source and freshness of the pine nuts can make a difference when used in pestos. I've found the big bags from Costco of Chinese pine nuts are less flavorful and not as sweet as fresh domestic ones. The Costco ones also lose their flavor and turn rancid quicker. You can really taste and smell the difference when you toast them.

Bill/SFNM

Bill/SFNM wrote:Maybe someone has already made the observation, but the source and freshness of the pine nuts can make a difference when used in pestos. I've found the big bags from Costco of Chinese pine nuts are less flavorful and not as sweet as fresh domestic ones. The Costco ones also lose their flavor and turn rancid quicker. You can really taste and smell the difference when you toast them.

Bill/SFNM

Bill,

Yes, absolutely... To me, this is a sublime dish when made freshly with the best ingredients and the proper method... there are few things that are better. Cutting corners or making minor adjustments adds up and the average pesto encountered in the States is pretty uninteresting or worse; certainly, the quality of the nuts used is an important element in the overall quality of the finished sauce.

Concerning pine nuts, the Chinese ones are to my mind not appropriate here. European pine nuts are quite expensive but taste much better (at least in their traditional applications). The pine nuts we got when we were in New Mexico were excellent but I didn't make any pesto with them (heck, it was January and, as I said above, I rarely make classic pesto alla genovese out of season). But rancid pine nuts of any sort will kill the dish.

Antonius

Well, that's good to know... except for having bought a bag of ones from Whole Foods the other day which turn out to be them there Chinese nuts... where do you get the European ones? Caputo's and that ilk?

Hi,

I freeze my pine nuts as well as other nuts I use infrequently which retards rancidity enough to make it worthwhile to buy in volume.

Regards,

Antonius wrote:Obviously, lots of people do freeze pesto in one way or another

Antonius,

One of those being m'th'su who gave me one of the pesto containers he had frozen in anticipation of the coming winter. I had mentioned over lunch I planned on making your Chef Antonius School of Italian Cookery pasta al pesto con patate e fagiolini.

I thought the taste quite good, Mike makes a mean pesto, it was only a couple of weeks old, and, from a simplicity standpoint, dinner went together in minutes*.

As an aside, pasta al pesto con patate e fagiolini, makes for a fine breakfast.

Antonius, thanks again for posting the recipe and Mike for the pesto.

Enjoy,
Gary

*I took a few pictures of the finished dish, but as I used small white potatoes, as opposed to red, there's not much visual appeal.

I'm with C2--if you freeze nuts in a good freezer bag, and squeeze out all the headspace air each time you use the nuts, the flavors stay pretty stable, not to mention it's awfully convenient.

One variant I've used for pesto is toasted sunflower seeds--they make a nice, nutty flavor. Not classic, but good.

Geo

Geo wrote:I'm with C2--if you freeze nuts in a good freezer bag, and squeeze out all the headspace air each time you use the nuts, the flavors stay pretty stable, not to mention it's awfully convenient.

I'll give that a third nod -- pine nuts will go rancid awfully quickly at room temp. Just make sure you toast 'em after taking them out of the deep freeze. That goes double for pecans, an even-more-quickly-spoiling nut. We get good results keeping pecan meal and even whole wheat flour in the freezer, although for MrsF's baking, she's taken to using whole wheat less frequently, and instead adding wheat germ (from the fridge) to the dough. Bran may have some health benefits, but just kills gluten formation.

Well, I got around to making what my kids call "train tracks" again tonight, using for the first time my frozen basil Pesto Helper.

Actually I made my own pasta and everything (which means it no longer looks like train tracks, but never mind). My sister had given me one of those cranking pasta machines some years ago but I'd never gotten around to using it, on the theory that it would be an elaborate, endless and hopeless process. Actually it's quite easy, twirling the egg around in the well in the middle of the semolina, and then rolling it thinner and thinner until you make the actual noodles. The hard part was keeping it from all sticking together, I wound up dusting it with quite a bit of flour (after an earlier attempt to make spaghetti resulted in lumps in the boiling water), but it all came out quite well.

Anyway, on to the pesto. Broke off some chunks of the frozen stuff, it still had a lot of its floral bouquet as I opened the package. Thawed it, added it to the ground pignoli and garlic, drizzled in some more olive oil until it got to the consistency I remembered, then added the parmigiano reggiano. Result: about 75% of the flavor of the original, not as heady and as fresh to be sure, doesn't burst out of its bag with perfume like the fresh did, but far richer than the bland store-bought stuff I usually find, with more notes in its flavor-- spicy, floral, green. My fingers still smell strongly of it. Wonderful stuff, a welcome reminder of summer.