Vegans have much stricter diets that vegetarians because the completely avoid anything that has to do with products made from animals. This includes eggs, cheese, honey, yogurt and milk. Due to these restrictions, vegans might want to find a suitable recipe for Vegan Pesto.

The sauce, which hails from North Italy, is made with basil, pine nuts, garlic, and olive oil. A mortar is used to hold the ingredients while a pestle grinds them into a paste. The name of the recipe comes from the regional dialect’s term for grinding the ingredients. The last ingredients to be added to the sauce are grated hard cheeses such as Parmigiano Reggiano.

Different recipes have been concocted for vegans who are not able to eat cheese. The resulting sauces have not always pleased people as the flavor that the cheese gives is tough to replicate using different substitutes.

One good substitute for cheese, though, would be nutritional yeast. It has the flavor and texture of grated cheese. It is also a rich source of Vitamin B12, a nutrient commonly deficient in poorly thought out vegan diets.

Other recipes try to enhance the taste of these cheese-less basil sauces with pepper and vinegar. Some have tried it with sesame seeds. Others use different nuts such as walnuts, cashew nuts, peanuts, pecans, almonds, and pistachios.

You need not limit the herbs of the sauce to just basil. There can be a combination on herbs such as parsley, thyme, rosemary, oregano, mint, marjoram, cilantro, sage and coriander. People have also experimented with sunflower seeds, dehydrated tomatoes, and even fermented tofu. What is most important, though, is to create a sauce that satisfies your taste buds.

You have to get the right size of mortar to hold the ingredients easily as you grind them with the pestle. Alternatively, you can always rely on a good food processor to get your Vegan Pesto to the right consistency. Add salt and pepper as you like.

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