Budget-Friendly Vegan Pesto Pasta Salad Recipe

Hey everyone, welcome back to the kitchen. Today we're making a delicious pasta salad that is full to the brim with goodness, earthy goodness I should say, and it's fairly budget-friendly. With a base of nutrient-dense veggies we've also got a rocket pesto, subbing out the expensive pine nuts for pumpkin seeds and switching basil for a delicious mix of rocket and spinach. Finally we're frying butter beans until they blister and seasoning them generously to finish off this incredible salad so let's get cooking. To start bring a large pan of water to a boil with a generous pinch of salt then add your pasta and give it a stir to ensure nothing is sticking to the bottom. Next we'll get the rocket and pumpkin seed pesto going. Into a hot pan add your pumpkin seeds and toast them until lightly golden. When they start popping that's a good sign that they're nearly done. Let them cool and add half to a food processor, the other half will go into the salad hole. Then add one clove of garlic, the rocket and the spinach, nutritional yeast for a cheesy nutty flavour, the juice of half a lemon and then some olive oil or another oil that isn't too strongly flavoured. To make this pesto a little bit cheaper I'm going to be using some water as well as the oil, if you're going oil free then you can add some extra lemon juice and water instead of the oil. Then just season with a little salt and blend until not quite smooth, I like to keep a bit of texture to my pesto or if you like it really smooth then you can use a blender. Since I'm making a fairly large quantity of pesto here I probably wouldn't use a pestle and mortar unless you have a really massive one. The pasta's now got a few minutes left to cook so I'm going to be adding some broccoli which I've just cut into small florets so they cook nice and quickly, probably a couple minutes at most. Then right at the end I'm adding in some frozen sweet corn, just for 20 seconds, doesn't need any time at all to defrost. Drain and optionally add a little oil to stop it from sticking or if your pesto is ready you can add that in now. The next component to the salad is the toasted butter beans, start by patting them dry on a tea towel, this is going to prevent any oil from spitting when we fry them and also it's going to help them get nice and crisp on the outside. Into a frying pan we're going to heat up a little bit of oil and we're going to add in some fresh rosemary, dried will work as well, let that sizzle for a few seconds and we're going to add in the butter beans and give them a quick toss to coat. Spread them out evenly over the pan so they all get nice and golden on the outside, they'll almost start to blister as they cook. Season them with salt and pepper and then for some extra flavour I'm going to add some granulated garlic, some sumac which has a lovely citrusy and vibrant flavour and then a little bit of smoked paprika and there you have your Incredibly Morris toasted spicy and herby butter beans ready for the salad. Feel free to use other herbs and spices that you have on hand whether that's basil, oregano, thyme, cumin, ground coriander, most herbs and spices will work really well. Lastly for some extra freshness I'm going to add a handful of cherry tomatoes, you could also use large tomatoes just cut them into bite-sized pieces. Now to assemble the pasta salad, add everything to a bowl and toss it all in the nutty fresh pesto. I love making pasta salads as they generally use low-cost ingredients, they're full of fresh nutritious produce and they're also really versatile, you can switch out different veggies for whatever ones you have available and you can eat it warm or cold and it will be delicious either way. I like to hold back some pesto, some pumpkin seeds and the toasted butter beans to add on top for presentation as we do eat with our eyes first after all. Next level pasta salad! The toasted pumpkin seeds add a lovely crunch and then that rocket pesto just brings everything together, you really want to focus on making that pesto really nice because that's going to be coating everything in this salad. Those butter beans are so delicious they're nice and creamy and then they've got a crunchy seasoned layer on the outside, really delicious. If you did want to change up the proportions of the ingredients then you could do that, you could increase the cherry tomatoes, the broccoli, that sort of thing and reduce the pasta but it's going to make it a little bit more expensive. Also if you wanted to boost the protein in this dish then you could serve it with some crispy tofu or tempeh or some sort of alternative plant-based meat but it does have a decent bit of protein from the wholemeal pasta, the pumpkin seeds and those butter beans. Thank you for watching and if you want some more salad inspiration then check out this video!