RICHMOND, Va. — When you think of Virginia’s finest food and drink, you might think of Virginia ham, Virginia oysters, and Virginia wine.
But Marshall Rabil suggests Virginia peanuts should be atop that list.
“There are a lot of different products that Virginia is famous for, that I love,” Rabil said on the September episode of the Eat It, Virginia podcast. “But you can’t argue that there’s a state that produces peanuts better than we do. I think that Virginia started the peanut game in the mid to late 1700s and we are still on top of our game.”
Rabil should know a thing or two about peanuts.
His grandparents, Dot and HJ Hubbard, started Hubbard Peanut Company, which you may now know as Hubs, in Sedley, Virginia, back in 1954.
“My great-grandfather had a little peanut farm,” Rabil shared. “[Dot] was picking peanuts out of her father’s peanut farm and had a unique way of cooking them. She would pick the largest one she could find, and she’d soak them in hot water, and she’d fry them in oil. It’s called blister-fried cooking. That was kind of the way that we would cook around Southampton County. But she would give them to her college friends and folks in Farmville as gifts. And then people were like, man, Dot, these things are fantastic. We need more of these. And so my grandfather kind of had the business idea, and they kind of talked and went out on a limb and took a very small loan, and they started Hubs.”