Try This: Kkaennip (Perilla) Pesto

Have you ever made pesto with herbs other than basil? We just whipped up a batch with kkaennip, or Korean perilla leaves, and the result was spectacular.

Kkaennip are the Korean variety of perilla leaves, similar to Japanese shiso and Vietnamese tiá tô but larger and more pungent. Often referred to as "sesame leaves," they are actually a member of the mint family and have a deeply herbaceous flavor reminiscent of mint and anise. With a bunch of kkaennip that needed to be used up quickly, we thought of making pesto, searched to see if anyone else had tried this, and came across a recipe from Koreanfornian Cooking.

Other than the use of perilla leaves instead of basil, the recipe was pretty classic – pine nuts, garlic, extra virgin olive oil, whizzed in a food processor (or blender or mortar and pestle). We decided to continue with the Asian theme and tossed the deep green pesto with buckwheat soba noodles instead of Italian-style pasta. Richly earthy and satisfying, it was a resounding hit.

• Get the recipe: Kkaenip Pesto, from Koreanfornian Cooking

(Image: Emily Ho)

Comments (15)

Interesting-I've never come across this herb before. I've definitely made pesto with mint and parsley-but I'm not that creative to have tried it with an other herbs.

I've made pesto several times with Cilantro. A couple of times with kale or collards after reading an article about it somewhere.

Both were pretty tasty!

Thanks! We grow perilla in our yard, and there usually comes a time of year when we are drowning in it--this should come in handy!

I've seen two recipes in the last couple weeks for arugula pesto, though I haven't tried it.

I've made pesto with garlic scapes after getting a bunch of them in our CSA box. Pretty tasty.

I made pesto last year with sage and walnuts and it was super delicious!

Watercress pesto is really good, as is arugula or plain old parsley. I like to do them with walnuts or cashews instead of pine nuts, for flavour and because they're waaay cheaper.

I made a lovely pesto recently with parsley--it was vibrant and satisfying. I tossed it over fingerling potatoes and snap peas for a fresh summer treat.
The recipe is here:
http://strawberrypepper.com/2010/07/01/peas-and-potatoes-in%C2%A0parsley%C2%A0pesto/

Pesto made with arugula and pistachios is one of my favorite quick and impressive looking dinners for guests-- of course, it's delicious too!

Shiso is the real deal. The little zigzag plastic leaves that are grocery store sushi are supposed to represent this herb. I admire the commenter that spoke of growing it successfully, my luck growing this has not been so good... Perhaps I will try again.

Kkaennip! I love it! My parents grow a huge bunch usually. I never thought of kkaennip pesto. If I grow my own, I will have to try this. :)

Sounds good! I made a surprisingly tasty mint/Italian parsley pesto last week, having large leftover bunches of each, and it occurred to me that you can make pesto out of nearly any pungent green herb with a bit of trial and error.

Wild garlic is great for pesto and we have it growing everywhere around here in the springtime so it's free too :-)

I second arugula pesto as well as scape pesto. We freeze it in ice cube trays.

phoxx, we grow ours in a pretty shady spot, and don't do anything special for it. Once you get a few plants to make it through the season successfully, they will set seed and self-sow and come up like gangbusters the next year. Ours is now naturalized in our yard, coming up like weeds in the shade of the house, in our ivy, a nearby flower bed, and our lawn--we mow it and pluck it to keep it under control.

We usually use it to make what some sites call kkaennip kimchi. Ours is similar to this, without the fish sauce: http://www.hannaone.com/Recipe/kkaenipkimchi.html . It's good, but I can only eat so much of it, and it doesn't use up all the perilla we have. I like the idea of the pesto, especially since it can be frozen. I'm glad to see anning has had success freezing it with just salt, too--we might try that this year also.