Cashew Basil Pesto

Name: Cashew Basil Pesto
Prep time: 3 min
Total time: 3 min
Yield: 4 servings
Ingredients: 1/4 cup raw cashews; 2 cups packed fresh basil; 2 Tbsp nutritional yeast; 3 cloves garlic, roughly chopped; 2 tsp lemon juice; 1/8 tsp sea salt; 2-4 Tbsp unsweetened, unflavored plant milk, such as almond, soy, cashew, or rice

Soaked cashews, fresh basil, nutritional yeast, garlic, and lemon blended into a creamy pesto. No oil, no Parmesan, no pine nuts needed.

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Prep: 3 min Cook: 0 min Servings: 4

Ingredients

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¼ cup raw cashews
2 cups packed fresh basil
2 Tbsp nutritional yeast
3 cloves garlic , roughly chopped
2 tsp lemon juice
⅛ tsp sea salt
2-4 Tbsp unsweetened, unflavored plant milk, such as almond, soy, cashew, or rice

Method

Place cashews in a bowl. Cover with boiling water. Soak 30 minutes. Drain.
Combine soaked cashews, basil, nutritional yeast, garlic, lemon juice, salt, and 2 tablespoons plant milk in a food processor.
Process until nearly smooth, adding more plant milk as needed.
Toss 2 tablespoons of pesto with 1 cup of hot pasta.
Store extras with plastic wrap touching the surface. Refrigerate up to 2 days.

Nutrition per serving (estimated)

111 cal
4.3g protein
7.8g fat
7.5g carbs
1.3g fiber
0.9g sugar
8mg sodium

About the ingredients

raw cashews Anacardium occidentale: Cashew is botanically a drupe seed (accessory fruit pseudocarp), commonly called nut. Roasting is required to destroy urushiol in shell — no edible raw cashew tradition. Name-literal: no additives.
packed fresh basil Ocimum basilicum: An aromatic culinary herb in the mint family, used fresh or dried for its leaves. Native to tropical Asia and Africa, central to Italian, Thai, and South Asian cooking. A whole-plant leaf, minimally processed. Fully canonical for WFPB.
nutritional yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae: Nutritional yeast is deactivated Saccharomyces cerevisiae grown on a sugar medium, harvested, washed, and dried into flakes. The whole yeast cells stay intact (not an isolate). Rich in B-vitamins and complete protein; often fortified with B12. As a whole deactivated fungus, it is WFPB-canonical.
garlic Allium sativum: Garlic itself is canonical, but extract denotes a concentrated/isolated derivative outside the whole-food canon. Marketed as natural/healthy supplement, hence mistaken-as-WFPB flag.
lemon juice Citrus limon: Lemon is the acidic tree fruit (hesperidium) of Citrus limon, a Rutaceae shrub of likely Northeast Indian origin. Eaten as fresh fruit, juice, and zest. Rich in vitamin C, citric acid, flavonoids. Whole fruit and its fresh juice are canonical WFPB foods.
sea salt NaCl: Crystalline sodium chloride, harvested by evaporating seawater or mining rock-salt deposits. Used as seasoning and preservative since antiquity—central to trade and food economies for millennia. A mineral, not a plant food, and a sodium isolate; noncanonical to WFPB.