Health Benefits and Uses of Oregano w/ Oregano Pesto Recipe
Hey everybody it's Bill Bradley from Mediterranean Living and today we are speaking with Brittany
Nickerson and we're here at her farm the Thyme Herbal Gardens and Brittany is an amazing herbalist
and she wrote The Herbalist's Kitchen which just came out fairly recently. When did that come out?
About a year ago just over a year ago. Awesome and it's an amazing book you can find the review
on our site at Mediterranean Living but today we are focusing on oregano and we're going to make an
oregano pesto but first can you just tell me a little bit about what some of the health properties
of oregano are? Yeah there's most of these culinary herbs that are featured in recipes
from The Herbalist's Kitchen have a really wide range of use and I think that it's interesting
to think about the historical uses of culinary herbs because they're used in cooking but they're
also used in the home pharmacy and so it's the frequency of use and the availability of them
that makes them so perfect for cooking and I think that it's kind of like what came first
were they cooking herbs or medicinal herbs and maybe it's hard to tell but with oregano we see
that as it's a perfect example of that and we see its use in the home pharmacy for colds and
flus being a real major use there so it's a diaphoretic which means that it brings heat
from the core of the body out to the peripheral and really dilates the blood vessels and just
helps move things and diaphoretic technically speaking means it makes you sweat and so it's
the sweating process that brings out the heat and the moisture and then as the sweat cools it
dries it cools you off so that's really useful in fever it's also useful on hot days
it's also a bronchial dilator and helps to expectorate mucus so it has a long history of
use for long conditions so and oftentimes in the cold flu area a lot of people know oregano also
as a really potent antibacterial and antifungal herb it's become popular for that oregano oil for
colds and flus and whatnot and it does it both has a antimicrobial action on the digestive system
on the system overall and on the lungs so it's great for preventing lung infections also helping
to expectorate as we talked about and overall I mean just has so many uses so folks are buying
oregano oil now it's very popular but you can get the same benefit from a cup of oregano tea
or an oregano infused honey or many other home prepared preparations just in your kitchen
and a lot of those I talk about in recipes from the herbalist kitchen something I always wondered
about because I do use a lot of herbs and spices and cooking and of course in the Mediterranean
diet there's a lot of herbs that are used but how much do you actually need to use for it to
be medicinal it's such a good question it's probably the most common question that I get
and I think that there's two ways we need to think about culinary herbs I think one is what is the
larger health benefit that we're looking for so in the examples that I talked about before
if we're really looking to curb the symptoms of a cold or the flu or work with lung congestion
we need a medicinal dose we need a good strong cup of tea we need like 30 to 60 drops of an
alcohol extract we need a tablespoon of an herbal infused honey for example but one of the other
reasons that herbs culinary herbs are used in cooking is because they support digestion and
all culinary herbs any I mean if you just named 20 right now they would all have the health benefit
of supporting the digestive system some of them are more specific to certain things oregano in
particular has its antimicrobial properties which really help the bacterial balance in the gut
and it also is really great for supporting the digestion of fats and oils but what they do is
they kind of stimulate circulation to the GI tract which improves breakdown and absorption
of nutrients and then they also relax the GI tract which helps to expel gas and also helps
to better extract nutrients so they help with symptoms and with absorption of nutrients and
I always tell my students we are not we are what we eat we are what we digest and the addition of
culinary herbs into the diet helps with the digestion piece so we're actually absorbing
the nutrients from all these good foods and I think that's one of the beauties of the Mediterranean
diet and a lot of traditional diets that use a lot of herbs and so in answer to the question
it's like if we want to support cold or flu we need a large medicinal dose but if we're just
wanting to support our digestion all we need to do is taste the presence of the herb so this recipe
today this pesto is a combination if you ate a couple tablespoons of this pesto you would both
be getting a medicinal dose and that culinary dose that supports digestion awesome get it all yeah
exactly so I love pestos for that reason and folks can make pesto with any herb you know we get stuck
on basil sometimes but you could add parsley in or yeah anything great so well why don't we start
making the recipe and then we'll talk a little bit about what we would use this with okay wonderful
so to start with we just have our fresh oregano leaves and we're late summer here so a lot of
the oregano is flowering already and so we just took the underneath part but kind of more tender
leaves or you can cut your oregano back and get a second flush and then you have a lot of tender
things to work with and one of the things that I really like to share with folks is that I try as
often as possible not to wash my herbs because one of the most powerful health benefits of all
culinary herbs are the presence of aromatic oils and you'll notice that any herb you cook with
smells great right basil thyme sage oregano and when you wash it you actually wash away some of
that potency so I'm always trying to clean pick the cleanest ones after it rains is not the best
time to harvest herbs but we don't always have a choice so sometimes you might need to wash them or
even just brush them with a dish towel or with your hands what about the ones that you get at
the store yeah it's a good question um I have a tendency to still not wash but I but it depends
like a lot of herbs now come in clamshells I don't know what's happening before they got in
the clamshells but I know that everybody who put them on the shelf and almost bought them but didn't
buy them hasn't touched them so I have a tendency to not wash um but parsley cilantro dill open
benches I always wash okay yeah but it's totally up to people's personal preferences if people
feel more comfortable to wash them from their garden or the farmer's market or the clamshell
they should always do what they're most comfortable with yeah um also harvesting on a sunny day the
volatile oils will be more potent and the flavor will be more vibrant but again it's like the beauty
of a kitchen garden is you harvest any time so I harvest in the rain all the time I harvest
dirty herbs all the time so so this is our um oregano leaves we picked them from the tougher
stems but we weren't too um concerned we did include quite a few tender stems and that's a
time saving thing that's definitely worth um following so we have two cups of sort of loosely
medium packed oregano leaves and we're gonna put those in our food processor and we had that
conversation earlier to chop or to food process your pesto it's sort of you know the traditional
authentic way is to chop it or use the mortar and pestle yeah and sometimes when I have the time I
love to do that and I do think it's better as you agree yeah um but we figure most of you all
will probably be using a food processor so yeah time wise it's a lot quicker to do in a food
processor um we're gonna add um the recipe calls for two or three cloves of garlic we're gonna do
two because they're pretty big but it's a really a matter of preference um and then for our seed
our nuts we're going to be using two different seeds we have toasted sunflower and toasted
pumpkin seeds and I toasted them separate um and I think I mentioned to you you can toast them
together but it just um makes it a little bit better to toast them separate because they're
different sizes exactly yeah um and you're toasting really just till golden brown stirring continually
the pumpkin seeds pop and tell you when they're ready um and then I don't put cheese in this
one of the things I talk a lot about in recipes from the herbalist kitchen is this idea that
the addition of herbs into the diet should really serve as a condiment so that we and creating
things like this that we can make ahead and either freeze or keep in the fridge um are really helpful
because we can just put a little bit with our food to add in these complex flavor profiles
do things like support digestion get medicinal doses of the herbs into our diet without having
to each time we cook do that food prep um and so one of the reasons why I don't add cheese to this
recipe is that I want to keep it really simple and really um able to be applied to a lot of
different food based situations right um I feel like cheese makes the flavor more distinctive
um and you could always add cheese to it later after you've frozen it and thawed it and add some
cheese later yeah and folks could add cheese to this recipe too if they want to but the recipe
doesn't actually call for it so we have our toasted seeds oregano garlic and then we're going
to add a little salt and that's just to taste um and some freshly ground pepper also to taste for
folks and then of course the olive oil which is the central um thing both for nutrition as you
know and also for the preservation of it right like it keeps the fresh herbs longer yes um and
so traditionally that's a big piece of it so we have this delicious olive oil thanks to you
and those ingredients who prepared it for us we're going to do a half a cup um of the olive
oil that's a nice amount of olive oil yeah and the flavor like really comes through so
you know folks of course want to use a really delicious olive oil um and that's one of the
beauties again of these recipes and of course using a fresh olive oil the medicinal property
of that is the if you have a little burn in your throat it's a strong anti-inflammatory
that i'm sure adds to the medicinal quality exactly so now we can use our oregano pesto for
a sore throat and a cold solve the whole thing in one just add it yeah another story that comes to
mind about oregano as i'm thinking about your experiences in crete um i was in venezuela
years ago and um with an old grandmother type amazing woman and um she she showed me the remedy
she had this big ear she called it oregano orejón big eared oregano and she would take a leaf and
kind of chew it or grind it up and put it on her forehead and she said for the headache
and so oregano is um claimed with a lot of benefits of mental clarity and opening the
nasal passageways and just opening the mind and it stimulates cerebral circulation so any kind
of tension headache um or even just feeling like your head's full of cobwebs oregano is a great
so would you also smell it yeah yeah and the oregano orejón was so strong you just put on
your forehead and you'd smell it right there um but certainly yeah smell it and put on your head
and it's it's wonderful yeah there we go okay so i'm just going to um blend it until it's smooth
and i might need to stir it we'll see so it's mostly ground up nicely but one thing i'm noticing
is that there's one piece of garlic exactly there's one piece of garlic so i'm just going
to push down the contents this is a good practice anyway when you're making pesto or something so
some folks make their pesto kind of drier than this because i love the taste of good olive oil
this is like a nice yeah i'm sure you would agree i when i make pesto i do the garlic first
separately and that way it doesn't you don't get that that's a great idea sometimes you can
even do that with the herbs and then it's more like yeah i get more like the chopping method i
guess we were talking about before but i should have done that it's one larger piece of garlic
in there it's always good for the guests to have one one surprise moment when you're eating an
entire clover so and that's really all there is to it um and then you know you can um yeah
it smells amazing oh good i'm so glad and that's so again there's the medicine it's coming right
in just the smell of it we're already the it's aromatherapy it's affecting the olfactory senses
and going right into the nervous system and helping us to relax and going back to that we
are what we digest wisdom um we digest better when we're relaxed so any kind of food prep or
sensory experience while we're cooking that helps us to relax and enjoy ourselves
is is medicinal which i never i never thought of the idea of peeling just by smelling and
smelling an herb that's amazing so strong and that's where the wisdom of this of cooking
comes in and then and then when it cooks you smell it and fills the house and we feel not
only does it support our digestion but overall we feel just less stress and more love and
connection in our life right so so you would freeze this and use it anytime throughout the
year obviously we can have some right now yeah of course um what would you use it with or on
yeah when you're cooking so anything from serving it with an appetizer spread of cheese or olives
or crackers or bread to putting it on bread in a sandwich it has enough oil in it that you can
actually use it as a marinade for like a meat-based dish or grilling vegetables or my preference is
often to put it on afterwards so i'll do like grilled vegetables and a steamed grain and i'll
put this on so you won't cook the yeah exactly and put it on to kind of keep the flavor really fresh
and have just like a big dollop on you know with all that and mix it in and we're gonna do my
favorite taste testing yes yeah trying it right at the beginning this is a good moment too to taste
for salt you could always stir more salt in if you want to get a big dollop hopefully not the garlic
so that the flavor of the toasted seeds really comes through too
i would probably add a little more salt yeah it's a it's much uh more mellow than i thought
it was gonna be i thought it was gonna be a little overpowering to have it just be oregano
but i know i think that you i think that that is the thought with oregano that often folks shy away
from using a lot of it and that's one of the reasons why i really wanted to put this recipe
in the book to show that large amounts of oregano can just really be so palatable and delicious so
with uh this pesto what would be a medicinal dose like if you had a lung issue or you had
cold or something like that so anywhere from one to two tablespoons um what when someone has a lot
of congestion nasal congestion or respiratory congestion a hot tea is going to be the most
effective because the heat of the tea really helps to loosen things up and move things
but yeah any even one to two tablespoons of this would be considered a medicinal dose and that's
one of the things you can do is freeze this in ice cube trays so you literally have that dose
ready to go um but you know this i mean i can eat this right now in a sitting but once i get going
and make a bunch of batches and then i have something to freeze through the winter great
well maybe um if you don't mind you could share with us the recipe for the tea on our site as
well in the blog post but we're gonna have this recipe on mediterranean living and uh
the olive oil we use of course is the olive oil that we sell and this is britney's book
the herbalist kitchen which is an amazing book and very well written and full of great stories
and recipes and um thank you so much love it so much and where would you get that um it's
available from any large bookseller um and i also sell it on my website which is time like the herb
time herbal dot com well thank you so much for sharing this and i'm looking forward to eating
more of this so this is bill bradley from mediterranean living and with britney nickerson
and we'll see you next time