Perfect Pesto Pairings

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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

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Duplication

"How does this scale?" Whenever someone asks me that question, the underlying assumption is that production volume requires consolidation, concentration, and centralization. In other words, the only way to feed the world is to make bigger chicken houses in one place, bigger canneries in one place, bigger machines and bigger warehouses. I remember well being vilified by a Smithsonian historian at a food conference where he and I were both on a panel. When I dared to suggest bigger is not always better, he interrupted me and ranted for 10 minutes on why bigger is always better. "A bigger fort was always bigger than a smaller one. A bigger gun was always better than a smaller one." He went on and on about how historical accuracy and authenticity demands addiction to bigger. But biology is not forts and guns. It's not mechanical. Critters have an optimal size. As animal behaviorist guru Temple Grandin says, living things demand energy for three things: reproduction, growth, and immunological function. All three must be in balance. When anyone selects for only one of those traits, the other two suffer. That's why American dairy cows only have two lactations on average. When they milk as heavily as our one-trait genetic selection asks, they don't breed and have all sorts of sickness problems. Nature does not scale through concentration; it scales with duplication. If nature wants more oak, it doesn't make one big tree; it makes acorns. If nature wants more milk, it doesn't make a great big cow; it makes calves. If nature wants more tomatoes, it doesn't make a monster tomato plant; it makes a bunch of seeds that make more tomato plants. Nature scales with duplication. At Polyface, rather than having a chicken house big enough for 15,000 chickens, we have 170 little 120 square foot portable shelters holding 75 birds apiece and giving us cumulative capacity for 15,000. But they're spread out in modules, duplicated, to give us the production volume. We run pigs in groupings of 35-50. A Smithfield confinement facility might house 5,000 hogs in a bigger-than-football-field-sized facility. The stench is unbearable. By spreading these pigs out across the landscape in small groups we get the same scale without any of the ecological, immunological, or animal welfare dysfunction. This could even be said of farming in general. People see the massive corn, soybean, and alfalfa farms in the mid-west and wonder how we would possibly survive without those massive, single-species outfits. The fact is they aren't even producing food. Half the soybeans are exported to other countries; those markets are drying up rapidly with competition from other countries like Uruguay, Paraguay, Argentina, and Brazil. Nearly half the corn goes to taxpayer-subsidized ethanol. The alfalfa goes to Japan and Saudi Arabia to feed racehorses. By and large, all that production isn't even food. The fact is we don't need to produce all those commodities and even if we needed it all for food, we could do it in a more spread out, diversified platform. America has 35 million acres in lawns. We have 36 million acres housing and feeding recreational horses. All of this could be turned into duplicative production, like acorns for oak trees. My point is this: scale as commonly understood in modern American lexicon is completely anti-ecological. The real mechanism for scale is duplication. A more democratized production creating volume through multiplicative nodes is the way nature works. This is why farms like Polyface, with spread out infrastructure in repeated modules offers multiple advantages. Polyface can't feed the world by itself, and we have no desire to build an empire trying to. But thousands of Polyfaces can feed the world. Indeed, they're the only way to do it for the next 500 years. This is one reason why we invest heavily in germinating new young farmers. Our stewardship and apprenticeship programs are all about this kind of duplication. In fact, Aug. 21-22 we're hosting the Stockman Grass Farmer's Launching Young Farmers conference where we'll feature 8 of our graduates who were 20 years old, no money, no land, and at 40 are full-time farming without government subsidies. If you ever dreamed of bootstrapping a farming career, you should come. We still have room. It will be the most profound agricultural conference in America this year. Information is on our website on the education tab. For most of you, the fact that you keep us in business to duplicate production and the farmers who will carry these principles forward, indicates your heart investing in an authentic food and farming model. Thank you for making it all possible.

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.

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Duplication

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