The Best 5 Minute Spinach Pesto

This vibrant 5 minute spinach pesto is as healthy as it is delicious. Stir into freshly cooked pasta or spread it on a toasted sandwich. So quick and easy to make!

Dress your pasta with the best

I absolutely adore a good pesto! The classic combination of basil, garlic, olive oil, cheese and pine nuts is seriously hard to beat.

But the main attraction to pesto for me is the amazing versatility! You can literally make pesto out of almost any type of green leafy herb or vegetable. You can even make pesto with tomatoes, roasted red peppers or a huge other range of tasty goodies. The possibilities are almost endless.

Pesto is synonymous with Italian cuisine and has surprisingly ancient origins. It’s thought that in some form or another, pesto was being eaten as long ago as Roman times. Which means the world has had 2,000 years to perfect the perfect pesto!

Ingredients

Lets have a little think now about all the important ingredients that go in to making this super quick and easy, five minute spinach pesto.

One super important thing about pesto is that it’s incredibly quick to make. My blog is all about the quick cooking so pesto really does take all the boxes for me. Here, I’ve chosen baby spinach as the main attraction in this fantastic 5 minute spinach pesto recipe. 

Spinach is is a brilliant quick ingredient in so many different types of recipe. It’s delicious, versatile and takes little or no cooking at all which makes it so useful to have in the kitchen. Check out some of my other spinach-based recipes for further quick cooking inspiration, such as my 10 Minute Dairy Free Creamy Salmon & Spinach Pasta and my 15 Minute Miso Salmon with Spinach.

Spinach is not just quick and versatile, it’s also fantastically healthy to boot! It’s rich in a range of nutrients including vitamin C, vitamin K and iron. Vitamin C in particular, is one nutrient that is at its highest levels when eaten raw, because the cooking process partly destroys it.

This means that this spinach pesto recipe is particularly nutritious, because it requires no cooking at all! You can use the freshly made final result right away without any fuss or loss of nutrients.

Olive Oil

Although spinach forms the cornerstone of this best five minute spinach pesto, the final result would be nothing if it weren’t for the olive oil. Everyone should have a decent quality olive oil in the pantry at home because it’s such a healthy and versatile ingredient.

There are essentially two types of olive oil you can buy – extra virgin and blended. The former is made from freshly cold-pressed olives and has the richer flavour of the two. It’s also the most expensive.

For this pesto recipe, I recommend using blended olive oil rather than extra virgin. I just find that otherwise, the extra virgin oil crowds out all of the other flavours. Using the blended type of olive oil also makes this recipe less expensive. Most of us are looking to save some pennies these days, so this is an added advantage.

Pining for Pine Nuts

Another key ingredient in this best 5 minute spinach pesto recipe is the pine nuts. These little buttery, pale golden kernels of deliciousness are really underrated. Like so many nuts, they’re fantastically rich in a range of vitamins and minerals which really help to boost the nutritional value of anything you choose to put them in.

In a traditional pesto, pine nuts add a lovely earthy nutty richness to the final flavour and it’s important to achieve that in this spinach pesto recipe which is why I’ve included them here.

There are other types of nut that would also work ok in pesto – such as cashews or almonds – however after some experimenting, I just don’t think anything tops pine nuts for their flavour and texture. This is why you’ll find them happily included in this spinach pesto recipe!

The Big Cheese

Now, let’s talk about the big cheese! Essential for adding some tangy saltiness, Parmesan cheese is used in traditional basil pesto and you will also find it in this quick and easy spinach version.

Now, parmesan cheese can be rather expensive. To be fair, it is incredibly delicious when added to a huge range of different types of Italian dishes. So expensive and desirable is this tangy, hard cheese that there is actually a huge amount of theft of it globally, to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars yikes!

Parmesan is the ideal cheese to use in this best 5 minute spinach pesto recipe, however if this is not something you can easily get hold of, or if you’re trying to be more economical, you can use pretty much any hard cheese in place of the traditional parmesan. Anything that is similar will still work very well here.

Great Garlic

A brief word now on the garlic. This is a classic ingredient in so many Italian recipes. Well, in fact it is key in so many recipes from all around the world!

Garlic is something I use in so many of my quick recipes. Although chopping up your own fresh garlic is lovely for releasing gorgeous garlicky aromas all around the kitchen, this takes up a great deal of precious time! Seeing as my blog is all about quick recipes, it’s probably no surprise I like to look for ways to use the same raw ingredient, but in a time-saving way.

This means my pantry is never without pre-minced garlic. You can purchase this very easily at most stores these days in squeezy tubes and in jars. Just scoop out the desired amount and you’re done! No spending huge amounts of time chopping, chopping and chopping some more.

Oooh… salty!

A final word now on salt. Normally, I don’t like adding too much extra salt to my quick recipes. In general, I like to find other ways to inject flavour that are less unhealthy.

Now, it’s true that in this 5 minute spinach pesto, the parmesan cheese adds a decent punch of saltiness to the overall flavour. However, its just not quite enough.

This is why I’ve included a generous sprinkling of salt in this pesto recipe. I recommend using 1/3rd of a teaspoon. Any more than this and the other flavours are likely to be drowned out – although I fully appreciate everyone has different tastebuds, so like any recipe, feel free to add a little extra if you feel the final result just isn’t quite salty enough.