White Oak Pastures – Radically Traditional Farming in Southern Georgia and a Tasty BBQ Rub
Our business used to take us regularly to the panhandle of Florida. The route was pretty damn boring from Atlanta; 100+ miles of southern highway married up to another 100+ miles of country road south of the gnat line.
White Oak Pastures is about the only redeeming part of US-27, the key non urban passage on this particular route to the panhandle. White Oak is located in the super rural town of Bluffton, Georgia. The place definitely comes with a little “trust me” factor. Its literally in the middle of nowhere. When we saw the billboard for the farm on the side of the road, my road trip companion gave the old: “trust me, we gotta check this place out.”
White Oak’s mantra is that they practice “Radically Traditional Farming.” Their farming technique is definitely a break of the norm. Animal welfare is important while minimizing all waste in their processes and procedures is an additional key focus. They do a bunch of other ground breaking stuff in farming that is beyond my pay grade. But hey – hat’s off to farmers. It’s tough passionate work and if it wasn’t for the good people in the agriculture industry we’d all be starving.
Back to White Oak Pastures — most of the farm is open to the public. Their canteen doubles as a restaurant. What’s really unusual about this place is that it’s basically where the employees eat. It’s clearly not a traditional “cafeteria.” The restaurant is open to the public, so that was our first stop. It was quite an experience just sitting in the big tent eating with all the farm workers on their lunch break. The owner even sat down and visited with us for a couple minutes during our dining experience. He asked if we were food writers…ha, we wish, but thanks for the compliment! He seemed like a good guy. Super down to earth, engaged with his employees. He was wearing a cowboy hat and was just very gentlemanly and welcoming. It was really memorable. If you want to learn more the Bitter Southerner did a great story on him — he’s a big stud and BTW- so is the Bitter Southerner.
Grass fed beef burger with a side of greens and a sweet tea.
A couple miles down the road is the White Oak Pastures general store. Here they sell almost everything that comes out of the farm: every part of the cow, pig, chicken and all the veggies that pop out of Mother Earth in this unique corner of the south. They even sell ice cold beer. We witnessed first hand as farm hands purchase their own version of PBR tall boys after their shift.
Here is the real meat on the bone: they also sell a good number of bespoke rubs and seasoning. It is here that I found one of our very favorite rubs: “Homemade Red Eye Rub.” This is a coffee based rub that takes on a whole different world of flavoring once grilled or cooked into a protein. The ingredients are pretty straight forward: coffee, black pepper, salt, cayenne, cumin. Heck, they basically give you the recipe on their website.
Rub this on your favorite beef, pork or chicken. Go heavy in the stuff and spare no expense. Let the meat marinate in the rub for a couple hours before applying an additional sprinkling prior to cooking. Grill or smoke to your hearts content.
Red Eye Rub
Ingredients
- 1 cup of course ground coffee
- 1/4 cup of kosher or sea salt
- 2 tsp cumin
- 2 tbsp course black pepper
- 1 tsp cayenne pepper
Instructions
- Mix all ingredients well and use on protein of your choice.
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