Sorrel Pesto

Sorrel Pesto is a delightful surprise - tangy, nutty, chunky! It's a zesty, lemony green sauce that turns an ordinary bowl of pasta into something sublime. If you've got a sorrel plant in your garden, you've got the base for this remarkable condiment. Make it in minutes, and toss it with pasta or gnocchi, serve it on grilled or roasted meats and seafood, slather it on sandwiches, or top scrambled eggs with it.

Every summer, it seems we have a new favourite sauce that comes to stay - the kind of sauce that I love having a big jar of in the fridge — a sauce we love to slather on everything from pasta to barbecued meats. In the past, it's been the summer of chimichurri sauce, then the summers of romesco sauce, and red chimichurri sauce. We went crazy for ginger scallion sauce. Even blueberry mayonnaise has had its moment of fame in our household. These sauces are all now part of our repertoire, and I love how they simplify summer and fall cooking and meal planning.

This year, our palate has been excited by the addition of an amazing sorrel pesto sauce. This bright, zesty pesto is loaded with tart and piquant flavour, dressing up everything we slather it onto. If you haven't yet planted a simple sorrel plant in your herb bed (or flowerbed or garden), I urge you to add one (even in the fall, if you can find one, so it's ready to enjoy by next spring).

Sorrel is such an easy herb to grow - ours has been going strong for over 10 years, and I never do anything to it besides cutting out the flowering stalks when they grow too tall. This perennial herb (common and garden sorrel; Rumex acetosa) peeks out of the ground early in the spring and provides its bright green leaves all season long, surviving even our long, cold northern winters.

The leaves have a mouth-puckeringly lemony flavour, and I love picking them for cutting into fresh green salads (what fantastic zip they add!). They make a delicious sorrel soup, and now, I harvest masses of the leaves to turn into our new favourite summer sauce - sorrel pesto. This delightfully chunky green paste is a rough and rustic cousin to the more refined basil pesto. The natural acidity of the tender leaves gives the pesto a glorious piquancy that adds brightness to any dish you'd add regular pesto to: pasta, gnocchi, grilled or roasted meats or vegetables, dolloped on baked fish or seafood, spread on sandwiches, added to scrambled eggs, stirred into salad dressings, spooned into soups . . . it's fantastic with anything savoury, really.

What You'll Need

Just a few simple ingredients:

Substitutions

As with any other pestos (like traditional basil pesto, or even the more exotic garlic scape pesto or chive pesto), you can always substitute the seeds for other types of nuts or seeds, add more or less cheese or olive oil, omit the garlic, or change ratios to the amounts you have on hand. But I find that the combination of pumpkin and sunflower seeds really adds a delightful nuttiness that balances the acidity of the sorrel leaves. I've played around with ingredient amounts and have come to love the combination the way it is in my recipe below.

This is also a good place to use a high-quality extra virgin olive oil, as the flavour really shines through.

And freshly grated Parmesan cheese is always a good choice over ready-grated supermarket stuff.

How to Make Sorrel Pesto

Sorrel pesto comes together in just minutes. I don't wash the leaves if they're just picked from my own garden and there's no dirt stuck on from a recent rain (I just examine them for bugs or dry bits). If they are dusty, I rinse the sorrel leaves in cool water, shake them dry, roll them up in a clean tea towel, and store them in a bag in the fridge for a few hours to absorb their excess moisture into the towel.

First, toast the pumpkin seeds and sunflower seeds in a skillet or in the oven. This step only takes a few minutes, but it really deepens the nutty flavour of the sorrel pesto.

Then stuff everything else into a food processor, and whiz it to a chunky paste.

Of course, if you like a smoother paste, you can process the sorrel pesto until it's more finely ground. We love the rustic chunkiness of the pesto when you can still see bits of the leaves and seeds - it has a satisfying toothsomeness and a bit of crunch, and the tangy flavour of the sorrel really comes through.

Can You Store Sorrel Pesto?

Yes, absolutely. A jar of sorrel pesto will keep for up to two weeks in the refrigerator and can be frozen for up to 3 months. I like to freeze the pesto in small (4 oz/125ml) mason jars or in small resealable freezer containers so I can defrost one anytime I need a quick meal with a delightful, tangy pesto hit.

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Guten Appetit!