Dandy Nettle Pesto
To boost your intake of vitamins and minerals
Green pesto spread thickly on toasted bread with a pea salad
This is one of my favorite Spring and Summertime tonic recipes to share with the community, because it is so nutritious yet so easy! Stinging nettle and dandelion are among the most nutrient-dense food herbs Mother Nature has to offer us, and both outshine mainstream salad greens like kale, spinach, and arugula when it comes to vitamins and minerals.
This recipe is also quite versatile in that you can swap in whatever bitter greens you have access to this season. If you’ve taken one of our culinary herbalism workshops or classes, you’ve probably seen some version of the herbal staple demonstrated with your own eyes. Enjoy!
Ingredients & Prep
1c Stinging nettle
1c dandelion greens
1c spinach
Juice of 1/2 lemon
Zest of 1 lemon
1tbsp apple cider vinegar
1/4c pumpkin seeds
4-5 cloves garlic, crushed 10m prior
2 tbsp nutritional yeast
~2/3c olive oil
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper
Can also add chickweed, cleavers, common violet, sorrel purslane, salad burnet or other medicinal greens!
Steps
Peel and crush garlic, and allow to sit for 10 minutes to allow medicinal compounds to form.
Wash and roughly chop fresh greens.
Combine about 1/4c olive oil with the rest of the ingredients into a blender. Pulse a few times while using the tamper to compress leaves into the blade. Then blend at low speed, streaming in olive oil while slowly increasing speed, until desired consistency is reached. Stop as needed to scrape down the sides to insure even blending.
Store in non-reactive air tight container in the fridge for up to a few weeks. Freeze excess amounts.
If you are seeing some of these medicinal herbs for the first time and don’t know where to get them, here are some of my favorite trusted sources!
Your local farms!
