This Simple Trick Will Keep Your Pesto From Turning Brown

There's nothing quite like most anything dredged in pesto. The herbaceous balance of basil and garlic ground into a paste or pasta sauce is simply delicious. Not to mention, it's one of the easiest things to make at home. All you need is basil, garlic, pine nuts, salt and pepper, Pecorino cheese, and olive oil (via Food Network). Once you have gathered all of your ingredients, you just need to combine them in a food processor and scrape it into a jar or plastic container to store afterward.

But if you've ever made pesto at home, then you might have encountered a phenomenon if you didn't use the pesto quickly enough. The bright green sauce might have faded into a dull brown color. Though it's easy to see why the sauce could be perceived as having gone bad, it's actually still good. Basil is just a really fragile herb, and it turns brown when it's been exposed to air for too long (via All Recipes).

Basil may also turn brown if it gets too hot. Fortunately, there are a couple of helpful tips you can use to help keep the pesto looking pristine over time. The first option is as simple as adding one more ingredient into the mixture. Just toss a little bit of fresh spinach into the pesto as you combine all of the ingredients. The spinach will help keep the pesto bright green, according to All Recipes.

If you're really averse to adding spinach to your pesto, there's another option though. You can keep the air at bay by covering the top of the pesto with a thin layer of olive oil. Alternatively, you can press a layer of plastic wrap over the top too so that it's in contact with the pesto. Either of these methods will prevent the pesto from oxidizing by preventing it from coming into contact with the air. So, the next time you make fresh pesto, give either — or both — of these solutions a try. You might be pleasantly surprised by what you find after storing it for a while.