Broccoli Pesto

A couple days ago i stumbled upon a post on the internet suggesting that frozen vegetables were healthier than fresh. I didn’t think much of it at first, but as the hours went by I couldn’t get the thought out of my head. Is frozen better than fresh? My entire life I’d been lead to think the opposite. One of the biggest words in marketing is the word “fresh”. So I began to Google; the answers predictable. The Internet always has a supporting argument to just about any claim you can make, and that being said it always has a supporting counter argument as well. Most of these articles cherry pick information and they are largely used as clickbait. But after coming to a conclusion myself, frozen vegetables may be slightly better for you- but I wouldn’t go out and remove fresh veggies from your diet over that fact. Now, the only reason I came up with that conclusion was that frozen veggies are picked at peak freshness and flash frozen. They are not chemically ripened. They are picked at peak ripeness, blanched and frozen usually within a couple hours of being picked. They also may be sprayed with pesticides less than fresh veggies, and they aren’t coated with wax to make them look pretty. So naturally, this got me thinking more about frozen veggies. 

We use mainly fresh veggies in this house because they taste better. Certain veggies freeze great and certain veggies when frozen become spongey. I checked out freezer to see what kinds of frozen veggies we had stocked up, when I opened up the freezer I immediately saw a large bag of frozen broccoli. Frozen broccoli is just okay, so I wanted a creative way to use it up  in a way that I wouldn’t even be able to tell if it was fresh or frozen when consumed. Now, normally I just bake up frozen broccoli in the oven with some spices and throw that on our plates alone but what else could I do with that? Thats when the lightbulb above my head went off, “broccoli pesto?!”. Anyone that knows me personally knows that I like to make healthy spins on food. Because eating healthy shouldn’t be steamed broccoli, brown rice and a boiled piece of chicken; it should be enjoying all your favourite foods, it should be realistic! So off to the blender I went, I threw in my roasted broccoli, garlic cloves, sunflower seeds, olive oil, nutritional yeast and fresh basil (look at me throwing the word “fresh” in there. Marketing genius!) And wow! This beautiful, healthy recipe with hidden veggies in it was born! It’s funny to think this creation came to mind from just questioning whether fresh of frozen was better for you. What are your thoughts? 

Broccoli Pesto 

ingredients: 

2 cups Broccoli (Fresh or Frozen) 

2 cloves of garlic

1/4 raw sunflower seeds

1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil 

1 tbsp nutritional yeast

1/2 cup fresh basil 

1 tbsp lemon juice

water (see instructions) 

salt and pepper to taste 

instructions: 

Preheat oven to 400 degrees

Lay broccoli out on a baking sheet and bake for 25-30 minutes or until edges of broccoli have browned. 

In a blender add broccoli, garlic, sunflower seeds, olive oil, nutritional yeast, basil, lemon juice, salt and pepper and blend. If you don’t have a high speed blender, your blender may have a hard time blending this up so add small amounts of water (1 tbsp at a time) until it begins to blend. 

Top your broccoli pesto on pastas, pizzas or sandwiches and enjoy!