We share this signature recipe every season because it’s our number one method of using up our immense basil harvest. It’s not that we don’t like pesto, it’s just that we find this one is so much more flexible than pesto!
Every season, we make up a large batch of basil oil. You’ll find the full recipe in the comments, but making up basil oil helps us disappear several basil plants with ease. We then freeze the basil oil into ice cube trays, which allows us to get that taste of summer throughout the winter. We can usually just add one basil ice cube and it has enough flavor to season an entire dish with ease.
With this recipe, we usually measure out our total amount of basil as the first step, which allows us to figure out how many times we need to multiply the recipe. This year, we went pretty heavy on the basil as we had quite the harvest! There is a bit of flexibility in the ratios, but the base recipe is perfect. You’re also welcome to bump up the pepper addition if you like. Our favorite dried pepper flakes are made from Chile Pequin, which we buy whole and fully dried, to make our own chili pepper flakes. Chile Pequin is about 4 times as spicy as “typical” dried pepper flakes and the flavor is out of this world good.
The reason we often go hard into basil oil is because of how flexible it is. You can add it to tomato soup, stews, pasta dishes, as a base for chicken dishes, in marinades and practically anywhere where an oil and massive flavor is going to be at home. We can barely get our basil oil cubes to last until the following spring since we reach for these flavor cubes so often! We still regularly discover new ways to use basil oil in our cooking, since we make this up every season!
This basil oil is quite flexible across various kinds of basil, too. While we tend to focus on more traditional Genovese style basils for our basil oil, you could technically use any of the many kinds of basil out there with this recipe. The basil is the “star of the show” in this sauce, so hopefully you love the kind of basil that you put in it.
We often tend to focus on things like sauces and other ways to preserve our harvest. The more we can front load effort into our preservation, the more we’ve found ourselves inclined to use these things in our cooking. Like many, we enjoy “fresh cooking” (even in the winter) and so our preservation styles tend to gravitate around “ready made” things like this basil oil. Especially if it’s something like this that money simply cannot buy!
So, if you’re looking to burn up a sizeable basil supply, this is how we roll. We’ve been making this for quite a few years now and always make it a point to share it, since it’s a highlight of our winter cooking!
