Made in the South Awards

2013 Food Category: Overall Winner

From heirloom-quality banjos to alligator-charred furniture to an ingenious twist on the old-fashioned, Southern artisans continue to raise the bar on craftsmanship

Photo: Tara Donne

 

Overall Winner

SOUTHERN CRAFT CREAMERY
Product: Ice Cream
Made in: Marianna, Florida
Est.: 2012

There’s local, and then there’s Southern Craft Creamery, in small-town Marianna, Florida, which takes the food world’s current scratch-made ethos to a whole new level. Not only do ice cream makers Lauren and Zach O’Bryan look to nearby growers for the ingredients that flavor their gelato-style cream, but they also help run the dairy and tend to the hundreds of cattle whose milk anchors their product.

The O’Bryans aren’t just making pints of standard-issue vanilla, either. Serrano chiles, blackberries, bay laurel, satsumas, and sweet corn plucked from the garden (both their own and area farmers’) translate into vibrant flavors that speak to the agricultural bounty of the Panhandle. Lauren knows local produce well. She grew up on the family farm in Marianna, a town of about nine thousand located just southwest of the Georgia-Alabama border. She met Zach in college and followed him to North Carolina after he became a Marine.They had moved on to Athens, Georgia, when Lauren’s parents, Dale and Cindy Eade, came calling.

The Eades had been selling milk from their Jersey cows through a cooperative for most of the thirty-plus years they’d been in business, but they wanted a more personal way to connect with customers. “They were essentially pooling their milk and selling it generically,” Lauren says. “So they were running into folks in Marianna who didn’t even know there was a dairy up the street. We had done a poor job of telling our story.”

So the O’Bryans proposed that the family try making ice cream, a time-tested crowd pleaser. The Eades agreed, and the young couple headed north for crash courses in ice cream­ making at the University of Wisconsin and Penn State. The methods taught there did not always align with their farm-to-table philosophy, but Lauren and Zach began to understand the science behind frozen desserts and brought those lessons home with them. Dairy farmers who make ice cream don’t often have the time to be meticulous about technique, but the O’Bryans did—and they were obsessed with getting it right. “There were several months when we kept telling my parents, ‘No, it’s not good enough,’” Lauren says. “The texture wasn’t right, or the flavor wasn’t right. I know they were thinking, ‘It’s good enough! Why can’t we sell it?’”

Those months in the kitchen paid off. Rather than craft a master ice cream base and build a range of flavors on top of it, as many others do, the O’Bryans developed each flavor on its own. It turns out that controlling every aspect of the process, beginning with the farm’s nutrient-rich grasses, does result in a better product. “There is a phenomenal purity of flavor and a wonderful milkiness that makes it different from other companies that rely on sweeteners and added ingredients to do the work,” says renowned Alabama chef and Made in the South Awards judge Frank Stitt. “And really, what they’re doing reflects something larger, where we’re rediscovering the uniqueness not just of certain products but of products from certain farms, with textures, aromas, and tastes unique to those pieces of land.”

Lauren O’Bryan says they are accomplishing what they set out to do: make dairy personal. “The hours that my parents, my sister, and my brother-in-law put into the milk before it even leaves the farm are unbelievable,” she says. “A lot of people don’t appreciate that because most dairy farmers can’t get off the farm to tell them.” With this ice cream, the O’Bryans are sending their message loud and clear.­

Price: $8-10
southerncraftcreamery.com

 

Food Category Runners-Up

STAMPEDE 66
Product: Hot sauce

Made in: Dallas, TX
Est.: 2013

Stephan Pyles is no newcomer to the Lone Star State’s food scene. He grew up working in the kitchen at his family’s West Texas truck stop and went on to become one of the region’s most prominent chefs, helping to define modern Southwestern cuisine. Today, he oversees five restaurants in Dallas. What’s more, he has released a line of four hot sauces that showcase his favorite flavor combinations. “These sauces are personal to me,” he says.“They’re all flavors that I have worked with for a long time.” The chipotle-tamarind, for example, synthesizes Southwestern smoke with a bite straight from Southeast Asia, while the cherry–Pasilla chile combo delivers a finely honed sweet-and-spicy kick. Take a cue from Pyles and use them to add nuanced heat to everything from oysters to collard greens to fried chicken.

Price: $10
stampede66.com


HAYPENNY CONFECTIONS
Product: S’mores kit
Made in: Charleston, SC
Est.: 2012

However much you love s’mores, chances are you wouldn’t stake your career on them. Last year, though, Danielle and Tanner Loveless did just that. And we’re glad they did. Haypenny’s made-from-scratch marshmallows and make-your-own s’mores kits are the next-level answer to standard grocery store rations. “We had tried all the graham crackers we could buy, and all the chocolates we could buy, and felt like there just weren’t enough good options,” Danielle says. Offering marshmallows in such varieties as bourbon praline, cookies and cream, and mint chocolate chip, as well as a standout vanilla, the two are striking a decisive blow against campfire complacency—complete with homemade graham crackers and locally made chocolate. No fire pit? No problem. A Sterno can works just fine.

Price: $10-12
haypennyconfections.com


DOUX SOUTH
Product: Pickles
Made in: Decatur, GA
Est.: 2013

Sometimes, a pickle is more than just a pickle. For Nick Melvin, the New Orleans–bred chef behind Doux South, preserved vegetables are a way to educate. “When I started selling pickles,” he says, “I didn’t even want to do cucumbers. I wanted to show people how good shadow vegetables can be.” So far, Melvin, who has clocked time in high-profile kitchens such as Atlanta’s Empire State South, has earned raves for his offbeat offerings, including honey-kissed turnips and bread-and-butter-style green tomatoes. He eventually took on cucumbers, but they aren’t your run-of-the-jar pickles. Called Angry Cukes, they’re spiced with a bold Cajun seasoning. “Some people see pickles and pimento cheese and deviled eggs as fads,” Melvin says. “That’s not true. This is history, this is culture, and this is who we are.”

Price: $10
douxsouth.com


Elizabeth Hutchison Hicklin is a Garden & Gun contributing editor and a full-time freelance writer covering hospitality and travel, arts and culture, and design. An obsessive reader and a wannabe baker, she recently left Nashville to return home to Charleston, South Carolina, where she lives with her husband, their twins, and an irrepressible golden retriever.

T. Edward Nickens is a contributing editor for Garden & Gun and cohost of The Wild South podcast. He’s also an editor at large for Field & Stream and a contributing editor for Ducks Unlimited. He splits time between Raleigh and Morehead City, North Carolina, with one wife, two dogs, a part-time cat, eleven fly rods, three canoes, two powerboats, and an indeterminate number of duck and goose decoys. Follow @enickens on Instagram.