Blend This Cheese Into Your Next Pesto For Even More Savory Goodness

Pesto is the perfect summer sauce, with its light texture and fresh taste, you simply can't beat it. The beauty of pesto is that it can be made many ways, with a number of culinary twists that elevate it while personalizing it to your tastes. The substitution everyone should be trying this summer is swapping out the traditional parmesan for tangy feta.

Traditional pesto is a lovely blend of basil, pine nuts, garlic and other aromatics, olive oil, and parmesan cheese. Since pesto is already made with cheese, it is easy to incorporate feta into your recipe. Not to mention this strong-scented cheese will add a salty, savory bite to your sauce. But what exactly is feta cheese? Feta comes in many varieties, including the traditional Greek made with sheep's milk, as well as others from around the world that use cow's milk. If you can find feta made in Greece, you'll be eating the real deal, and while the price may be higher, the richer flavor and creamy texture is worth it. If you can't get your hands on authentic Greek feta, any other type of feta would still be an excellent addition to your homemade pesto.

Feta cheese is soft and crumbly with a salted, tangy flavor that comes from being cured in brine. Feta's texture is quite different from pesto's usual parmesan cheese, which is firm and gritty. While parmesan packs a complex umami punch, feta's soft nature and assertive flavor makes it a great replacement.

To incorporate feta into your pesto, follow the usual recipe and blend your feta in with the other ingredients as directed. Feta's softer build makes it easy to blend, and you can add more or less depending on your desired level of saltiness. Typically, feta is added to the mix as one of the last steps and blended until smooth. For presentation purposes, you can add some crumbles on top. You can also continue to elevate this Greek-inspired spin on the Italian classic by adding a healthy amount of spinach along with the basil – creating a flavor profile similar to the Greek classic, spanakopita.

A summery whole-wheat pesto pasta salad is the perfect dish for using your feta pesto. You keep the glorious taste of a pesto pasta and add a tang of feta all while creating a cool dish for the hot weather. You can also use feta pesto as a sauce on pizza, or on baked salmon. It makes the perfect spread for a roast chicken sandwich, or use it as an upgrade for your deviled eggs filling. 

Another beautiful thing about pesto is that it stores easily, either in an airtight container for up to a week in the fridge, or frozen for up to six months. One hack for freezing pesto in single-use batches is by spooning it into an ice cube tray and letting it freeze in small portions. Once frozen you can remove the pesto cubes from the tray and store them in a ziploc bag.