Ingredient

Basil Recipes

24 recipes with basil for weeknights, meal prep, and quick ingredient searches. Choose by time, cuisine, and what is in your kitchen.

24 recipes

Penne alla Vodka with penne, pancetta and vodka — Italy recipe

🇮🇹ItalyMedium

Cereal and Pasta Dishes

Penne alla Vodka

Penne in a creamy tomato sauce with pancetta, vodka, and a hit of chilli. The sauce is the color of a sunset — somewhere between deep red and pale pink — and the texture is what happens when heavy cream meets a reduced tomato base: thick, glossy, and rich enough that the pasta takes on its own weight. Penne alla vodka became a cult dish in Italy in the 1980s and hit American restaurant menus shortly after. Its origins are genuinely disputed between Rome, Bologna, and New York. What nobody disputes is that it works: the vodka doesn't add alcohol flavor (it mostly cooks off) but it unlocks aroma compounds in the tomato that neither water nor oil can dissolve, making the sauce smell and taste more intensely of tomato than a standard tomato cream sauce.

30 min620 kcal4 serves

⚡Quick🌶️Spicy

Baked Feta Pasta with pasta, cherry or grape tomatoes and feta cheese — Finland recipe

🇫🇮FinlandMedium

Cereal and Pasta Dishes

Baked Feta Pasta

A whole block of feta baked in the center of a dish of cherry tomatoes and olive oil until golden and soft, then smashed together with roasted garlic and fresh basil into a creamy, tangy sauce that gets tossed with pasta. This dish went viral in Finland in 2019 under the name uunifetapasta (oven-baked feta pasta), created by food blogger Jenni Häyrinen. It hit TikTok in 2021, and shops in several countries reported selling out of feta. The reason it works is simple: baking concentrates the tomatoes into something sweeter and more intense than fresh, and the feta bakes from a crumbly block into a soft, creamy, salt-forward mass that forms a sauce without any effort. The whole dish requires almost no technique — just one baking dish, one pot for pasta, and about 40 minutes of oven time.

45 min610 kcal4 serves

🌿Vegetarian🌶️Spicy

Lasagna Soup with ground beef, lasagna noodles and canned crushed tomatoes — Italy recipe

🇮🇹ItalyAdvanced

Soups

Lasagna Soup

All the flavors of a layered lasagna — rich meat ragù, herb-tomato broth, and three cheeses — cooked together in a single pot with lasagna noodles broken into pieces and simmered directly in the sauce. The noodles release starch into the broth as they cook, naturally thickening it into something between a soup and a sauce. The finishing move: a generous cold dollop of ricotta-mozzarella-Parmesan blended together, plopped into the center of each hot bowl. It melts and streaks through the red broth as you eat. No layering, no béchamel, no baking dish.

45 min540 kcal6 serves

🌶️Spicy

Grilled Corn with Herb Compound Butter with fresh sweetcorn, butter and garlic — USA recipe

🇺🇸USAMedium

Vegetable and Mushroom Dishes

Grilled Corn with Herb Compound Butter

Grilled corn on the cob is the defining side dish of the American summer barbecue — requiring almost no preparation, producing spectacular results, and improving everything eaten alongside it with a hit of smoke and sweetness. When corn is grilled directly on hot grates without the husk, the natural sugars caramelize against the hot metal, producing the characteristic charred, lightly sweet flavor that boiling or steaming cannot replicate. A herb compound butter — softened butter blended with fresh herbs, garlic, and lemon zest — is made ahead, rolled into a log, and sliced into rounds that melt over the hot corn the moment it comes off the grill. This recipe also includes a Mexican elote variation: the classic Mexico City street corn treatment of mayonnaise, cotija cheese, chili powder, and lime that transforms the same grilled cob into something entirely different.

35 min280 kcal4 serves

🌿Vegetarian🌾Gluten-free🌶️Spicy

Grilled Vegetable Platter with eggplant, zucchini and bell peppers — USA recipe

🇺🇸USAAdvanced

Vegetable and Mushroom Dishes

Grilled Vegetable Platter

A grilled vegetable platter is the most underrated item at any barbecue — and the most versatile. Where meat requires precise temperature control and resting times, vegetables are forgiving: they tell you when they are done by releasing from the grates, and they improve with a few minutes of rest, during which the heat equalises and the marinade or dressing soaks in. The technique is the same across all vegetables: oil them generously (oil on the vegetable, not just the grate), grill on medium-high direct heat for the time each vegetable needs, and dress them hot — a vinaigrette applied to hot vegetables is absorbed rather than sitting on the surface. The key to a beautiful platter is timing: eggplant and peppers need the most time; zucchini and asparagus need the least. The trick is to work in sequence, pulling each vegetable as it finishes, and to arrange everything on one platter together so the final dish is warm and accessible.

40 min185 kcal6 serves

🌿Vegetarian🌾Gluten-free

Pesto al Limone (Lemon Basil Pesto) with basil, pine nuts and parmesan — Italy recipe

🇮🇹ItalyEasy

Sauces and Dips

Pesto al Limone (Lemon Basil Pesto)

Pesto al limone is basil pesto with lemon zest and juice worked in — a citrus twist on the Genovese original that shows up along the Amalfi coast and in Campania. The lemon brightens the basil, and the freshly made sauce is a vivid green. Everything is pulsed cold and briefly, never blended smooth — heat from a running motor is what makes pesto taste bitter and dull. Fifteen minutes of work yields about 250 ml, enough for 500 g of pasta.

15 min210 kcal6 serves

🌿Vegetarian🌾Gluten-free⚡Quick

Soupe au Pistou (Provencal Summer Vegetable Soup with Basil Pistou) with basil, cannellini beans and zucchini — France recipe

🇫🇷FranceMedium

Soups

Soupe au Pistou (Provencal Summer Vegetable Soup with Basil Pistou)

Soupe au pistou is a Provencal summer vegetable soup with beans, crowned with a spoonful of pistou — the Provencal paste of basil, garlic, olive oil, and cheese. The dish comes from Provence in southeastern France, especially around Nice and the Cote d'Azur, and it is the essence of summer Mediterranean cooking: made at the peak of the season from the best vegetables at the market. Pistou is the Provencal cousin of Italian pesto; its name comes from the word for 'to pound,' just like pesto. The key difference: classic Provencal pistou traditionally contains no pine nuts — that is what sets it apart from Ligurian pesto. The soup is a close relative of Italian minestrone, since Provence borders Liguria, but the French version is finished with a big dollop of fragrant pistou that each guest swirls into their own bowl. That fresh pistou, added at the end, is what separates this from an ordinary vegetable broth. Technical keys: use only summer vegetables; mash half the beans for body without flour; never cook the pistou (heat kills the basil aroma and turns it bitter); keep the garlic in the pistou raw; and use fragrant, room-temperature basil. The classic version (per David Lebovitz) uses only water, so the vegetables shine, though vegetable broth is common. Serves 8 in about an hour, the pistou stirred in at the table, with crusty bread and a glass of Provencal rose.

60 min280 kcal8 serves

🌿Vegetarian

Panzanella (Tuscan Bread and Tomato Salad) with stale bread, tomatoes and red onion — Italy recipe

🇮🇹ItalyMedium

Salads

Panzanella (Tuscan Bread and Tomato Salad)

Panzanella is a classic Tuscan salad of stale bread and ripe summer tomatoes, dressed with olive oil and red wine vinegar, with red onion and basil. It is a summer dish of central Italy (Tuscany and around), and a clear example of cucina povera — a way to use up stale bread, like its relatives Pappa al pomodoro and Ribollita. The name comes from pane (bread) and zanella (a deep bowl), reflecting its humble roots, and the dish goes back to the Middle Ages and the Tuscan countryside. A curious fact: the first panzanella had no tomatoes at all — it was made with bread, onion, and purslane, and the tomato only became the central ingredient in the 20th century. Unlike ordinary salads, panzanella is built on bread as its base: pieces of stale bread soak up the tomato juice, olive oil, and vinegar, turning soft but springy — never soggy when made correctly. The technical keys: stale bread, not fresh; soak and wring it out rather than toasting it (the authentic Tuscan way); ripe seasonal tomatoes whose juice becomes part of the dressing; red wine vinegar, not balsamic; and a 15-30 minute rest so the flavors come together. Served at room temperature as an antipasto or a light summer meal, it is summer on a plate — and best eaten the same day it is made.

30 min280 kcal4 serves

🌱Vegan⚡Quick

Cioppino with Dungeness crab, clams and mussels — USA recipe

🇺🇸USAAdvanced

Soups

Cioppino

A San Francisco seafood stew of Italian-American origin: Dungeness crab, clams, mussels, shrimp, and white fish simmered in a tomato-and-white-wine broth scented with fennel and garlic. Born as a fishermen's communal pot, it is served with sourdough for soaking up the broth.

50 min360 kcal6 serves

💪High protein🌾Gluten-free🌶️Spicy

Narsharab with pomegranate juice, cinnamon and ground coriander — Azerbaijan recipe

🌍AzerbaijanMedium

Sauces and Dips

Narsharab

An Azerbaijani sauce of 100 percent pomegranate juice slowly reduced to a thick ruby syrup and seasoned with warm spices like cinnamon, coriander, and basil. Its name means pomegranate wine; traditionally unsweetened and tart, it is served with grilled meat and fish.

55 min35 kcal16 serves

🌱Vegan🌾Gluten-free

Satsebeli with tomatoes, walnuts and fresh cilantro — Georgia recipe

🇬🇪GeorgiaMedium

Sauces and Dips

Satsebeli

A Georgian tomato-and-walnut sauce whose name means for dunking. Ripe tomatoes are reduced and blended with walnuts, garlic, cilantro, basil, and Georgian spices like blue fenugreek into a tangy, pourable sauce served with grilled meat, potatoes, and bread.

30 min55 kcal12 serves

🌱Vegan🌾Gluten-free⚡Quick

Chicken Parmesan with chicken breasts, crushed tomatoes and panko breadcrumbs — USA recipe

🇺🇸USAMedium

Meat Dishes

Chicken Parmesan

Chicken Parmesan is an Italian-American plate of crisp chicken cutlets, bright tomato sauce, mozzarella, and Parmesan. The best version keeps the crumb audible under the cheese instead of burying it in sauce. Serve it with spaghetti for a full restaurant-style dinner, or with a sharp green salad when you want the cutlet to stay the main event.

60 min685 kcal4 serves

💪High protein

Ingredients

Goes well with

Other ingredients that appear most often alongside basil across the archive. Pick one to drill deeper.

tomato garlic parmesan mozzarella onion zucchini eggplant ground beef ricotta lemon red onion ground coriander