Nothing beats the flavor of a dry, nutty aged parmesan cheese, that is unless you’re vegan. For vegans, there is one God-send ingredient that will take you for miles if you’re looking to replace the unique, dry and nutty flavor of parmesan and that’s nutritional yeast.

Making a pesto without parmesan is definitely possible, but you’ll need one of two somewhat weird vegan ingredients: Bragg nutritional yeast is packed with protein and B vitamins, as well as a variety of “nutritional compounds known to boost immunity,” according to Bragg’s. We also recently discovered Parma, a product made with nutritional yeast, sunflower seeds, walnuts, Himalayan salt, and hemp seeds — we’re still testing it out in recipe like the below. 

This recipe for vegan pesto comes from a larger dinner plan for Mediterranean cauliflower steaks with a pesto sauce. Use it with that recipe here or try it on it’s own with crudite, on eggs, blended into salad dressing or with just about anything else you want to cook this week…

How To Make Vegan Pesto

Ingredients
2 cups fresh basil, tightly packed
1 garlic clove
2 Tbsp lemon juice
1/4 cup nutritional yeast
1 cup raw pine nuts
1 cup + 1 Tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
Himalayan pink salt + ground black pepper to taste

Directions
Add basil, garlic, lemon juice, nutritional yeast, pine nuts, salt, pepper and 1 Tbsp of olive oil to a food processor and begin to process on low. Leaving food processor on, slowly drizzle remaining olive oil into pesto until all ingredients are fully incorporated. Adjust salt and pepper to taste.