Perfect Pesto Pairings

written by

posted on

August 12, 2025

Isn't summer wonderful? The long sunlight hours, the green grass, the flowers, and, of course, all the fresh fruits and veggies!

My garden is full right now, and it's been a great summer for basil.

I grow basil every year because we love to add it to our water for a bright infusion when we're especially hot. We like it on our weekly made-from-scratch pizza. I like it because it helps repel bugs like mosquitoes, so it's nice to have around the house. I also love it to make PESTO.

I know I'm not the only person who absolutely LOVES pesto. It's just so summery and adds so much flavor to any dish.

This year, I've been adding pesto to any dish I can - just to try it, and because I know basil has many health benefits. When paired with high-quality olive oil, fresh garlic, and pine nuts, it's really an amazing food.

Basil contains powerful antioxidants like flavonoids and polyphenols that help protect your cells from oxidative stress. It also contains Vitamin K, potassium, and magnesium. The oil found in basil leaves is naturally antimicrobial and antiviral and may help provide natural protection from those bacteria (hello playgrounds, parks, and picnic tables!).

Basil is also considered a cooling herb that may help reduce heat-related stress or inflammation caused by hot weather. The adaptogenic properties of basil mean it may help your body adapt to stress, balance cortisol levels, and improve mental clarity. I don't know about you, but I need all the mental clarity I can get these days!

The other main ingredients, garlic and olive oil, also contain antioxidants that can help reduce inflammation and support overall health.

Garlic contains compounds like allicin that have anti-inflammatory and antimicrobial effects. Garlic is also known for its immune-boosting properties due to its antimicrobial and antiviral compounds.

Olive oil contains oleocanthal, a compound with anti-inflammatory properties similar to ibuprofen. It also provides Vitamin E and healthy fats. These healthy fats provide even more Omega-3s than just eating grass-fed meats alone. These Omega-3s are essential for brain health.

Who knew there were so many health benefits in something so yummy? (I mean, besides you and me; because we already eat grass-fed meat. 😉)

Ok. Ready for your Quick and Easy Pesto recipe? Here you go:

4 cups fresh basil leaves

2-3 cloves of garlic (I tend to add more!)

1/4 cup Parmesan cheese (may be omitted for a dairy-free version)

1/2 cup high-quality olive oil

1/4 cup pine nuts

salt and pepper to suit your taste (I ONLY use Redmond Real Salt)

a dash of lemon juice (about 1/2 teaspoon)

So, we all know we can add pesto to pasta dishes and it's an instant culinary elevation. But how else can we incorporate it into our weekly diet?

Here are my top 3 Perfect Pesto Pairings for this summer.

Polyface Brisket with Pesto Aoli
Pesto Smothered Polyface Pork Chops
Spatchcock Grilled Polyface Chicken with Pesto
(Bonus!) Summer veggie salad with Pesto

These are recipes from my own kitchen creations and have proved hits with family of all ages.

Brisket with Pesto Aoli: Cook your brisket LOW AND SLOW. I recommend thawing your brisket, seasoning with salt and pepper, and cooking it tightly covered at 200 degrees for 10-14 hours. Next, mix two parts pesto with 1 part mayonnaise (I make my own with avocado oil) and a little extra garlic to make your aoli. This aoli can be served as a drizzle or a dip. We paired ours with homemade oven-baked fries for our side dish.
Pesto Smothered Polyface Pork Chops: Thaw your pork chops and coat with pesto in a zip-top bag or bowl with lid. Return to the refrigerator and allow to marinate 2-8 hours. When ready to cook, grill over medium heat about 20 minutes or until a meat thermometer reads 145 degrees. Let stand 5 minutes before cutting or serving. OPTIONAL: Cover and cook in a crockpot on low for 7-8 hours or on high for 4-5 hours.
Spatchcock grilled Polyface Chicken with Pesto: Follow this recipe to spatchcock your Polyface chicken. When done, serve with pesto drizzled on top and your favorite summer veggies on the side.
BONUS idea - Summer veggies salad with pesto: slice cucumbers, purple onion, and bell pepper. Dice fresh tomatoes. Toss together with salt. Add pesto and just a drizzle of balsamic vinegar for a bright, refreshing side dish.

Not only is pesto delicious, it's seasonally smart and nutritionally beneficial, too! If you try any of these ideas, or have your own favorite uses for pesto, I'd love for you to let me know!

Blessings,

Hannah

beef

Pork

Chicken

Recipe

Food Shortages

I'm in Oregon today speaking at the Azure Harvest Festival and a question from the audience during a Q&A stimulated a lot of discussion: "What do you think about the possibility and preparation surrounding food shortages?" David Stelzer, founder of Azure Standard, answered that the issue is not food volume, it's food nutrition. That was an interesting answer that has a lot of merit. As a nation, we are overfed and undernourished. This is the crux of the MAHA movement and the epidemic diseases we see in our country. At Polyface, we know the pastured meat and poultry we produce is far superior in essential phytochemicals and other nutrients due to the carotenes, exercise, and stress-free habitat we offer. You can taste the difference, feel the difference in texture, and measure it empirically. Perhaps my most poignant affirmation was our cat test. We purchased meat from the supermarket and offered our own for the four cats. They wouldn't touch the conventional meat (ground beef). Even though two plates and four cats would be much easier to accommodate if they spread out, all four crowded around the plate with our meat, eating it all and licking it up, before later sniffing and gingerly eating the supermarket counterpart. Since cats don't understand TV ads or USDA propaganda, they know what's good and what's not. We encourage anyone dismissive of food differences to ask their pets: you can trust them far more than doctors and experts. Yes, I get the nutrient deficiency angle on the shortage question. But I'd like to explore it a bit further. Right now, the world throws away more human-edible food, as a percentage of production, than at any time in human history. The planet is awash in food. Some 40 percent gets thrown away because it has a slight blemish, exceeds the sell-by date, or is tainted in some way. We have a fundamentally segregated food supply rather than an integrated one, and that creates a lot of unusable waste. The vulnerabilities of our food system, I think, are much more subtle. When I was in Uruguay two years ago, speaking at a conference, one of the other presenters was from Germany and showed a soil map of the globe. Not a single commercial agricultural region had a stable or positive soil trajectory. Every single area on the planet is losing soil; some faster than others, but globally our soil depletion continues without any sign of abatement. This is not a good trajectory. As much as the technocrats promise food without soil, that's not the way to bet. Soil is the skin of the earth. When it goes, famine results. The main difference now compared to centuries ago is that we have the capacity to move food around. Nobody starves due to a lack of food on the planet; they starve due to socio-political unrest and dysfunction. But what happens when massive areas can't grow anything anymore? Even being able to move food around doesn't help when there isn't enough. The soil trajectory does not look good. But at Polyface, we're building soil. Areas covered with shale (layered rocks) half a century ago now have a foot of soil on them. That's not the 3-5 feet that 150 years of inappropriate tillage eroded, but it's a build-back start. In addition to soil loss, as a planet we're seeing hydrologic decreases. The Oglala aquifer, which undergirds the irrigated agriculture in five states, has dropped more than 100 feet in the last half-century. At its current rate, it will be unpumpable in about 50 more years. Imagine if all those circular irrigation pivots in Nebraska and Kansas shut down. What then? At Polyface, we keep building ponds to inventory surface runoff. By definition, surface runoff occurs when rains come too fast at once or too much at one time for the soil to absorb it. Holding that and using it strategically in a drought is a way to reduce flooding during rain events and grow grass when it gets dry. This is one of the most landscape resilient techniques we can implement. Finally, major animal and plant diseases threaten the world's food systems like never before. African swine fever, hoof and mouth disease in cattle, and bird flu in poultry appear to be getting worse and covering larger areas. Why? We believe it's because chemicals and factory farming compromise the immunological systems in both plants and animals. Monocrops and chemical fertilizers wreak havoc on immune systems, opening the planet's food systems to new levels of fragility. In contrast, at Polyface, we believe happy animals and biodiversity offer the best antidote to immunological deficiency. Stress from unsanitary conditions, mono-species density, or dietary deficiency (rations or fertilizer) invites disease. Nature uses disease to cull the weak. Predators pick off the stragglers. This is the way biology works. But at Polyface, we keep these vulnerabilities at bay with compost fertilization, pasture rotations, and lots of species diversity, including pollinators and wildlife. Here's the point: the basic long-term vulnerabilities in the planet's food systems could all be reversed with practices Polyface uses every day. Looked at another way, the entire food shortage question could be answered if eaters and farmers implemented these ecological and immunological protocols, working together to rather than completely separated. We don't need to fall into an abyss of starvation. If we all simply began eating food from farms that build soil, increase water, and stimulate immunity, we could deliver a hospitable, abundant planet to our children. Reversing these trajectories wouldn't take much time or money. It takes intentionally-minded folks who connect the chain of sustenance from their plate to the planet. Polyface patrons do that. Thank you. Let's heal the land together. Joel

Perfect Pesto Pairings

Ok. Ready for your Quick and Easy Pesto recipe? Here you go:

Here are my top 3 Perfect Pesto Pairings for this summer.

More from the blog

The Art of Celebration

Tour Bus Chef

Food Shortages

About

Education

Polyface Farms

Healing the land one bite at a time!