Roasted Beet Pesto Recipe – Healthy and Bursting with Flavor!

This vibrant Roasted Beet Pesto is a colorful and healthy twist on the classic pesto sauce. Savory and flavorful, toss this beet pesto with pasta or use as a spread for a sandwich.

Change up your pesto routine with the flavorful roasted beet pesto, with its vibrant red colors and savory flavors!

I came across the idea of making beet pesto in a Bon Appetit article, which suggested it as a good way to use beets that are starting to look a bit tired in the vegetable drawer. Roasted Beet Pesto is now a go to recipe for using beets in our house!

This recipe was originally published for a Wine Pairing Weekend event featuring pairings with Mexican wine. In particular, we featured this beet pesto with a Mexican Merlot that work out very well.

We recently updated this post with another delicious pairing idea – this beet pesto past is great served with a good Chardonnay, too! Let’s cover some basics about the recipe, and then we will circle back to the wine pairings. Disclosure: the wines discussed in this post were provided as complimentary samples.

Jump to:

• Making beet pesto
• Serving ideas
• Beet Pesto FAQs – Everything you need to know!
• White wine pairing for beet pesto
• Mexican Wine Pairings
• About Vinos Guanamé winery
• Recipe card
• Mexican wine articles from #winePW

Making beet pesto

Here’s a visual overview of the steps for making roasted beet pesto. Head on down the recipe card for all the details.

Peel and chop the beets, then spread in a baking dish.

Roast the beets in a 400 degree oven for about 45 minutes, until fork tender.

Set the beets aside to cool. Put the garlic in a food process, pulse to chop.

Add the roasted beets to the food processor.

Pulse the food processor to chop the beets into small bits.

Add the Parmesan cheese along with the olive oil and basil. Puree the ingredients until well combined into a sauce like consistency. Add extra oil if necessary.

Optional nuts or pumpkin seeds: The original recipe was made without nuts or pumpkin seeds. But we often add pumpkin seeds to pesto, as a nut free alternative, and have done so in subsequent makings of this beet pesto recipe. See how to make nut free pesto for more on pesto without nuts. But if you can eat nuts, you could try adding walnuts or pine nuts.

Scoop the beet pesto into a serving bowl. It is ready to use!

If serving with pasta, when the pasta is cooked to your liking, drain the pasta and toss immediately with a couple of tablespoons of the beet pesto plus 1 tablespoon of olive oil. Stir to combine, add a bit more pesto if you like.

Plate the beet pesto pasta, and pass extra pesto and cheese to use for topping the dish.

For another creative pesto recipe, try our Easy Garlic Scape Pesto!

Serving ideas

Of course, tossing the roasted beet pesto with hot pasta is a great way to serve this pesto.

But pesto is versatile! We had a bit of beet pesto leftover after serving it with pasta the other night. We spread it on some artisanal crackers with sea salt, and that was very good. We also put a bit of the beet pesto on some cheese, along with the same crackers. Also a winner!

I also like to spread pesto on a sandwich. I bet the beet pesto would be good on a turkey sandwich. Maybe even try it instead of traditional pesto in this Turkey Pesto Panini?

Beet Pesto FAQs – Everything you need to know!

White wine pairing for beet pesto

For our most recent batch of Roasted Beet Pesto, we opened the 2022 Sonoma-Cutrer Les Pierres Chardonnay ($46, 14.2% ABV) from the Sonoma Coast. Notes of butterscotch, tropical fruit and a touch of lemon. Some minerality and a delcious finish.

This Sonoma-Cutrer Chardonnay is definitely an excellent pairing for the Roasted Beet Pesto! Definitely a pairing I recommend.

We also had some Olive Oil Baked Salmon (NY Times Cooking recipe gift link) on our plate with the beet pesto pasta. The combination of the fish, beet pesto and Chardonnay worked nicely.

Sonoma-Cutrer wines are made with sustainably farmed grapes. For more about the winery, check out my interview with the winemakers.

We have also paired the beet pesto with the L’Ecole Luminesce white blend of Semillon and Sauvignon Blanc. That also worked well, another option for a white wine pairing for beet pesto.

Mexican Wine Pairings

We had a nice lineup of Mexican wines to try from Tozi Imports, which we initially opened for a Mexican wine tasting webinar (link takes you to the recording). This was for a Wine Pairing Weekend event focused on Mexican wines.

My initial plan was to feature the Monte Xanic Cabernet Sauvignon with the roasted ribeye steak we made. That was a good pairing, but I want to make a few more tweaks before I publish the recipe. So I was looking for another pairing option.

I really liked the Guanamé Merlot when we tasted it. Having done a lot of Merlot food pairing experiments with our annual #MerlotMe event, I’ve definitely come to appreciate the pairing versatility of the grape. Having successfully paired a Merlot with our roasted beet dip, I decided I would try it with our beet pesto.

We had the The Guanamé Merlot (appx. $20, 13.8% ABV) to pair with our beet pesto.

This Merlot is dusky on the nose. Blackberry fruit on the palate with some notes of cloves, chocolate and leather. A complex, flavorful wine!

Once again, we found that a good Merlot plays along nicely with the earthy flavor of the roasted beets, and the basil also enhances the pairing. We definitely recommend trying this Merlot with beet pesto! Not to mention it is aesthetically pleasing with all the red on the plate picked up by the color of the wine.

About Vinos Guanamé winery

As described on the Tozi Imports website, Vinos Guanamé is located 6 hours north of Mexico City in the center of the country. Located at over 6,000 feet above sea level, Vinos Guanamé is located in a semi-arid region with excellent terroir for growing wine grapes.

The winery was founded in 2011 by the Torres family, who are cattle farmers with a long history of making wine for themselves.

Fortunately for us, they are now sharing their wine, currently making 3,000 cases per year with plans to scale up to 10,000. Utilizing sustainable farming practices, they focus on red wine grapes, making Muscat, Malbec, Tempranillo and Syrah in addition to the Merlot. Vinos Guanamé also makes a rosé which I have enjoyed previously.

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Recipe card

Mexican wine articles from #winePW

To learn more about Mexican wine and food pairings that work with it, be sure to check out all of these Wine Pairing Weekend articles!

• Wendy from a A Day in the Life on the Farm will share “Mexican Foods and Wines always provide for a Perfect Fiesta”
• Susannah from Avvinare is “Discovering Mexican Wine”
• Jen from Vino Travels is taking “A First Look at Mexican Wines Including Italian Grapes”
• Carlos from Carlos’ Food & Wine is serving up “Mexican wines featuring sparkling wine risotto & grilled hanger steak with mushroom-red wine sauce”
• Camilla from Culinary Adventures with Camilla is sharing “Outside the Pigeon-Hole: Pairing Mexican Wine with Thai Cuisine“
• Gwendolyn from Wine Predator Gwendolyn Alley features Sparkling Wine from Mexico For #TacoTuesday”
• Robin of Crushed Grape Chronicles shares “Mexican Wines – 2 wines from the central Mexican highlands of Querétaro #WinePW“
• Linda from My Full Wine Glass is “Saying ‘hola’ to Mexican Tempranillo and sparkling wine”
• Martin from ENOFLZ Wine Blog will share “Exploring Mexican Wine Beyond Baja”
• Nicole from Somm’s Table is “Sipping Mexican Wines with a Bowl of Birria“
• Liz at What’s in that Bottle posted “Salud a Los Vinos de Mexico!” 
• Terri from Our Good Life pairs “Grassfed Ribeye with Steak Butter and Grilled Oyster Mushrooms Paired with Monte Xanic Cabernet Sauvignon“
• Here on Cooking Chat we paired “Roasted Beet Pesto Pasta with Mexican Merlot”