Leesburg, GA – Whether you eat them in pies, salads, or just straight out of the can, pecans have been a staple of many diets across the south. However, recently a new market has opened up using this product thanks to innovative businesses like Goodson Pecans in Leesburg.

“There were no pecan butters at the time and so I asked, ‘what would happen if we tried to make pecan butters,’” says David Goodson, owner of Goodson Pecans? “So, we started slow. We moved out of our home as a cottage kitchen and moved to a store front with a commercial facility and just began the slow process of making and sort of trying to perfect our butters and how we did them. We were learning a lot as we were doing them.”

This multi-generational, family owned company uses the freshest pecans straight from their field to create this unique product. As for the taste and texture can be attributed to plenty of testing in their kitchen.

“We have found in just our experimentation with it some varieties that worked really well together in making the butter. You know, that was part of our process to get it tweaked just right so that the pecan is just super creamy and has got just a good overall sweetness to it. It’s great. I love not only having my wife part of this, but seeing my kids, every one of my kids is involved in some level. They will come up and help in different ways at the store and even when we go to shows, I have my oldest son who will go with me,” says Goodson.

Recently, they left one of those shows with some hardware, as they were named the overall winner for the Flavor of Georgia contest.

“The fact that we won the grand prize at the flavor of Georgia was just a huge burst of joy for us because we have been working hard and really for three years just trying to work on some things,” says Goodson. “We entered in our honey cinnamon pecan butter into the flavor of Georgia. That’s what we went up there with as a finalist.”

Even though the ingredients to this award-winning product might sound simple, the process of getting it to their standards was anything but that.

“We experimented with several different varieties of honey to find something that would pair well with not only pecans, but also with cinnamon and also with sea salt, and overall the whole thing would just have a great flavor profile to it. That’s what we feel like what we found in our honey cinnamon pecan butter is that it’s just a great balance of flavor in all those four aspects of the ingredients that are with it,” says Goodson.

It’s not just the taste consumers will come back for, as this pecan butter, as well as others Goodson Pecans sell can be part of a healthy diet.

“It’s got a lot of great nutritional value to it,” says Goodson. “It’s very high in antioxidants from the pecans but it’s also got other properties that you’re going to find from the honey, from the cinnamon, from the sea salt. We offer not just the honey cinnamon, but also our creamy and crunchy. Those are also great for you and if you love pecans, if you love other butters, it is worth trying it.”

They hope this is just the beginning, as the Goodson’s are always looking to update their product list.

“We are not only excited to be pecan farmers, but also developers of pecan products and I think there are just tremendous days ahead,” says Goodson.

By: Damon Jones