Pure mountain ingredients that add WV flavor to your meal
If you’re thankful to live in West Virginia, there’s no feast more fitting than one created with the state’s pure mountain flavor.
Fill your table with top quality local products:
1. Clink glasses with WV spirits
Toast to what you’re thankful for! Stock your bar with local drinks.
If you’re a beer aficionado, try a Miner’s Daughter Oatmeal Stout from Mountain State Brewing Company or a Greenbrier Valley Brewing Company Mothman Black IPA. Wine lovers, enjoy a warm fall wine, like Kirkwood Winery’s Black Satin Blackberry. Not into beer or wine, there are also a number of liquors and even moonshine (legal, of course), like Appalachian Moonshine’s apple pie flavor.
Explore all the state’s best beverages on the Wine & Spirits Trail or Craft Beer Trail.
2. Mix it up the easy way
For decades, Teays Valley brand mixes have been a staple in household pantries. They help you easily create that down home, made-from-scratch taste. Their products are great for tasty biscuits, gravies, mashed potatoes, cornbread, dumplings and fudge— all Thanksgiving staples.
3. Sweeten things up with mountain-made honey
Mountain State Honey Company is family-run beekeeping business, which started with 2 honey lovers in beautiful Tucker County. With the help of their children and a few really great friends, they now run more than 1,000 hives of honeybees!
They offer natural honey in a variety of flavors. Most recently, they featured basswood honey, locust honey and tulip poplar honey.
4. It’s all in the Sauce
For all the gourmet mustard and sauce lovers (We know you’re out there!), catch a taste of West Virginia in a jar. Up the Creek is a small, family-owned and operated business in Montgomery. Try their famous classic pepper mustard, or switch it up with their cranberry, jalapeno, strawberry or pepper dill mustard.
5. Season with hand-harvested salt
No plate is complete without a little salt. Sprinkle in some J.Q. Dickinson Salt-Works to crown the perfect dish. Their artisanal salt is harvested by hand— the hands of a 7th generation salt-making family, to be specific. The salt comes from right underneath the Appalachian Mountains in the Kanawha Valley.
6. Snag an all-natural turkey
Want to make sure the turkey on your table isn’t packed full of preservatives? The owners of Misty Mountain Farm, a rolling farm on more than 100 Calhoun County acres, believe food should be raised naturally. They have a limited amount of turkeys during the Thanksgiving season, so you can eat naturally raised food at your feast.
7. Keep alert with local coffee
Keep grandma and grandpa lively with Black Dog Coffee, a company born out of the search for a perfect cup. This very small team in Shenandoah Junction collects the best lots of specialty grade green coffees from around the world and roasts small batches with extreme care.
8. Fill up on pepperoni rolls from their birthplace
Fill the bread basket with a West Virginia staple: pepperoni rolls! They’re not hard to come by in this state. Grocery stores, gas stations and convenience stores are likely to have these bad boys on hand.
If you’re looking for authenticity, stop into the Country Club Bakery in Fairmont. It was here that an immigrant miner first started to bake these delicious snacks in the 1930s.
9. Spice things up with Blue Smoke Salsa
Enjoy some mountain sweetness and heat from the hills with Blue Smoke Salsa. Stick some sweet onion peach salsa out with some guacamole chips for a little snack. They also have a delicious pepper jelly that goes great with crackers.
10. Taste the mountain with all-natural fruit jams
West Virginia Fruit and Berry makes traditional food products indigenous to the Wild and Wonderful. Their preserves, jams and butters are all-natural with no additives!
Give your rolls some flavor with their Almost Heaven Black Raspberry Seedless Preserve. The apple butter is a pretty solid bet as well.
11. Enjoy maple-flavored everything
This West Virginia syrup comes in adorable little jugs, which you’ve probably seen in shops all across the state. At Richter’s Maple House in Pickens, Mike and Beth Richter boil thousands of gallons of maple sap every season to whip up delicious maple syrup, maple sugar, maple candy, and that very rare delicacy, maple cream.
12. Go local with Gunnoe
Gunnoe Farms Sausage and Salad Company has been a Capital City favorite since it was founded in 1949. Their motto is “Country boy on the label means quality on the table.”
Their speciality is sausage, obviously, but they have plenty of other products to complete your feast. Try their chicken salad, cole slaw or delicious pimento spread.
13. Turn the table into a work of art with Fiesta Ware
With an entire feast of West Virginia finds, it’s only fitting to display them on West Virginia’s finest dinnerware: Fiesta ware! Give your meal some color! Sip out of poppy-colored mugs, eat off of tangerine plates and display the sides in vibrant sunflower dishes.
Which mountain-made products will grace your Thanksgiving table?
This post was last updated on July 23, 2020