Hard to believe I have yet to post a basic FODMAP friendly pesto recipe. I’ve done a hemp seed variety, a vegan version and a dairy free almond number, but never a garden variety, FODMAP friendly pesto. Today I’m here to fix that.

This pesto recipe originally appeared in my first cookbook. I use it for everything – lasagne, roast potatoes, pasta, you name it. It’s versatile, easy and damn delicious.

FODMAP Friendly Pesto

I use a very large bunch of basil for this recipe. I normally try to purchase basil from farmers markets because it tastes so much better. An added bonus of this is that they’re generally much bigger bunches, too. If your bunch of basil is small, consider getting two.

That said, rocket (arugula) makes a great stand in for a budget pesto. It makes for a different, slightly more bitter pesto which I love.

Another budget pesto tip is to use walnuts instead of pine nuts. They’re a lot cheaper and still make a delicious pesto.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – vegetarian Parmesan exists, whether regulations allow it to or not. Often you’ll find that cheaper brands use plant derived enzymes as opposed to animal ones. Here is my guide to finding vegetarian cheese in Australia.

If you like, you can use garlic infused oil for your pesto. I personally find a homemade version much more potent than store bought. Asafoetida powder also tastes remarkably like onion and garlic, so that’s an option if you fancy trying it. Use a TINY bit at a time.

When my food processor broke, I started using my Nutribullet for everything. While I love it and rely heavily on it, I find it’s too powerful for pesto. At the moment I don’t have another option, but I’d recommend using a less powerful machine (or a mortar and pestle!) for pesto.

FODMAP notes

This FODMAP pesto uses (optional) garlic infused oil to replace the garlic traditionally found in pesto. It also tastes good with regular oil, if you don’t want to use infused oil.

Parmesan is a low FODMAP cheese because of it’s low lactose content. If you are vegetarian, vegetarian Parmesan (or Gran Kinara) is equally low FODMAP.

The one FODMAP issue in this pesto is the nuts. I generally use walnuts, because they have a low FODMAP threshold. 1 cup of walnuts is generally around 110g and a FODMAP friendly serve of walnuts is 30g. This means that this pesto only needs to serve 4, which is a very generous serving.

Note that walnuts had their FODMAP threshold dramatically decreased as of May 2024. They are low FODMAP in 30g serves but moderate for GOS in 31g.

1 cup of pine nuts is around 140-150g in Australia, and a low FODMAP serve of pine nuts is 14g. This means that a pesto using pine nuts would need to make 10-11 serves. Not impossible, but a lot less generous than a walnut version.

Keep in mind that Monash is an Australian institution and their cup measures are likely to be Australian. Use gram weights for accuracy.

Garlic infused oil

This recipe has the option to use garlic infused oil to inject some delicious garlic flavour back into the pesto. There are store bought varieties available, but homemade really is the best flavour wise.

It’s probably worth including a quick refresher here for people who may be aghast to see garlic on this website. The fructan content of both garlic and onion is water soluble but not oil soluble. This means that if you were to use garlic cloves in a soup, the fructans would leech out. Hello, that nasty dry mouth feeling in 5 seconds flat. However, if you were to use them in oil (like, say, garlic oil?) the fructans cannot escape. The result is all of the flavour and none of the FODMAPs.

Places to use your FODMAP friendly pesto

• On these gluten free pizza bases without xanthan gum
• Or on these gluten free sourdough pizza bases
• In this gluten free single serve microwave savoury scroll
• In this gluten free, vegetarian and FODMAP friendly lasagne
• Smothered on some gluten free sourdough (with some lactose free ricotta, maybe?)