Boil a Peanut?

November 18, 2017 7:52 PM

Where did the idea of boiled peanuts come from? And why? Turns out, of course, it's more complicated than you knew. And then it got even more complicated when Congress got involved. Part Two
posted by MovableBookLady (52 comments total)

Native Oklahoman, now having lived in Massachusetts for 30 years. I've never seen nor eaten a boiled peanut, and after reading the next-to-last paragraph I don't think I want to.

they're not crunchy, but soft, perhaps even downright mushy. And—if they're made right, at least—they're really salty, and not just on the outside like roasted peanuts, but steeped in salinity all the way through. Roasted peanuts play up the legume's nutty characteristics, but boiled peanuts bring forward their essential pea-ness...

Hmmm. Essential pea-ness is not a quality I ever even contemplated in the peanut.
posted by yhbc at 8:33 PM on November 18, 2017 [4 favorites]

I grew up in Hawaii, and boiled peanuts were a favorite snack. Haven't had any in years and now I really want some.
posted by rtha at 8:44 PM on November 18, 2017 [5 favorites]

Mmmm now I'm hungry. There is nothing better for a road trip than a big bag of boiled peanuts and a cold Coke.

I'm glad that more people are finally acknowledging the fact that pretty much everything good about Southern culture was given to us by African Americans.
posted by Maxwell's demon at 8:45 PM on November 18, 2017 [17 favorites]

Full of country goodness and green pea-ness.

No wait, that's terrible.
posted by tocts at 8:46 PM on November 18, 2017 [14 favorites]

Also, the green kind you get in summer are so much better than boiled peanuts made from dried peanuts.
posted by Maxwell's demon at 8:47 PM on November 18, 2017 [3 favorites]

Hmm, boiled green peanuts. We boil them with salt and "five spices" (not the ground powder form in the article), in particular the star anise (Illicium verum) and cinnamon.
posted by runcifex at 9:02 PM on November 18, 2017 [2 favorites]

Boiled peanuts are not bad hot, but I'm not very fond of them cold, and getting them hot involves being in the right part of the south during peanut harvest.

I'm intrigued by the peanut oyster soup with hot peppers that was mentioned in the first article, though. I found a modernized version, and I'm tempted to make it.
posted by tavella at 9:07 PM on November 18, 2017 [3 favorites]

Native Oklahoman, now having lived in Massachusetts for 30 years. I've never seen nor eaten a boiled peanut, and after reading the next-to-last paragraph I don't think I want to.

Avoiding flying since the TSA got involved, I'm lucky enough to just be able to spend a day cruising on I-95, and get to (a) Disneyworld or (b) My family down by Boca.

I keep seeing them once south of DC, but since I avoid snacking generally, never bothered to try them.
posted by mikelieman at 9:28 PM on November 18, 2017

Bald peanuts!
posted by delicious-luncheon at 9:33 PM on November 18, 2017 [6 favorites]

Stop saying "pea-ness" you sons-of-bitches.
posted by RobotHero at 9:36 PM on November 18, 2017 [17 favorites]

Golgo brand boiled peanuts: At any rate, an amazing pea-ness.
posted by Merus at 9:50 PM on November 18, 2017 [4 favorites]

I think I first saw them when Stephen Colbert served them to a guest, never having heard of them before, then I found them canned at Walmart.
posted by XMLicious at 9:59 PM on November 18, 2017

I first heard of boiled peanuts in the Pacific Northwest, when I was at a Chinese coworker's house in the late '90s. Her mother, who spoke no English, had boiled some peanuts to snack on, and we were sitting around eating them with chopsticks. That I could keep up interested her, and she challenged me--could I pick up two? Turns out I could, and I've never felt prouder, or whiter.

So, seems to me there's more to this thing than the South.
posted by darksasami at 10:21 PM on November 18, 2017 [11 favorites]

I lived in Atlanta for a while and got to experience boiled peanuts bought from the roadside. A very fond memory, but I guess they're not really a thing in Australia. One day saw them in the supermarket here and I thought I'd try them. It was only when I came to eat them late that night I realised it say "keep refrigerated" on the bag. But I figured, it hasn't been that long, and they're very salty, it'll be fine. The. Worst. food poisoning. Probably no one's fault by my own, and in the unlikely event I'm ever back in Georgia I might try them again, but it has rather tainted the memory.
posted by adamt at 10:39 PM on November 18, 2017

Bald peanuts!

Haha. Close. More like "Bo-all'd Peynuts" to horribly mangle an attempted transcription of my Tennessee childhood dialect, anyway. Kinda hard to get the diphthongized vowel in there properly.

God I used to love boiled peanuts. Every year we vacationed down at my grandparent's old farm in Lakeland, and we'd get them constantly on the drive down from Tennessee. I still remember clearly the day I looked down at a bag, realized I'd had just one too many, and now suddenly found everything about them revolting. Haven't had one in thirty years, but I'm kinda tempted to see if that's worn off. They were mighty tasty.
posted by los pantalones del muerte at 10:39 PM on November 18, 2017 [4 favorites]

Boiled peanuts are on my Retro Foods Bucket List, along with some other things like a smoked tongue sandwich. At this point in my life, however, I am starting to expect I shan't encounter any proper examples of either until the afterlife, sadly.
posted by Samizdata at 11:02 PM on November 18, 2017

Even here in the South, the most common place to find boiled peanuts is at gas stations This has always been baffling to me, since boiled peanuts are pretty much the last sort of food you’d want to attempt to eat while driving: a finger food you have to peel, served in a styrofoam container that’s too big for a cup holder and containing near-boiling liquid. It’s like trying to eat a crab boil while driving.

(Uh, that’s not saying I haven’t attempted it myself, many many times.)
posted by Ian A.T. at 11:03 PM on November 18, 2017 [16 favorites]

> I first heard of boiled peanuts in the Pacific Northwest, when I was at a Chinese coworker's house in the late '90s. Her mother, who spoke no English, had boiled some peanuts to snack on, and we were sitting around eating them with chopsticks.

Forgot to mention that my recipe in my earlier comment is a Chinese one. My grandmother used to treat my father with this family comfort food.
posted by runcifex at 11:13 PM on November 18, 2017 [3 favorites]

Another way Chinese people (at least, Chinese people in Southeast Asia) eat boiled peanuts is as a sweet dessert soup. The soup is often used as a base in which glutinous rice balls are added, which are often have a sweet ground peanut filling; the dish is known as Ah Balling.
posted by destrius at 11:47 PM on November 18, 2017 [6 favorites]

Ah Balling balled peaness! Hell to the yes!
posted by mwhybark at 11:54 PM on November 18, 2017 [1 favorite]

My mother grew up on a peanut farm in Georgia, but she never mentioned boiled peanuts and I've never had them.

Her mother used to ship us a big container of raw peanuts in the shell every year though, and we stored them in a metal can in the garage.

Over the years, I ate hundreds and hundreds of those raw peanuts, but as I sit here I can't remember the taste very well; sort of bitter and greenish, I guess, but something kept me coming back for more. I'm not sure my parents ever realized I wasn't giving them all to the squirrels.
posted by jamjam at 12:34 AM on November 19, 2017 [1 favorite]

Never seen/had peanuts like this here in Europe; am I wrong to imagine them - “green”, boiled, salted, to shuck and snack on - as pretty akin to edamame? There is a similar, traditional fair-ground snack here in Italy: boiled salted lupini. (A difference being that their pea-ness, as with edamame, is kept a bit, erm, turgid, not mushy.)
posted by progosk at 1:11 AM on November 19, 2017 [3 favorites]

Essential pea-ness is not a quality I ever even contemplated in the peanut.

That's Mister Peanut.
posted by pracowity at 3:28 AM on November 19, 2017 [2 favorites]

...am I wrong to imagine them - “green”, boiled, salted, to shuck and snack on - as pretty akin to edamame?

There is definitely a similarity there, but they also have a character all their own. One of my failings as a parent has been my inability to convince my daughter that boiled peanuts are in fact delicious. There are still a few green peanuts left in the grocery stores around here but they are mostly in big bags that are more than I need to eat. Fun fact: boiled peanuts can have the same flatus inducing effects as other legumes.

It was interesting to see the discussion of the politics surrounding peanuts in part 2. Surprised they didn’t find a way to work peanut farmer turned nuclear engineer Jimmy Carter into the article. For those who want something even more regional than boiled peanuts, I suggest deep-fried peanuts, typically only found in North Carolina and adjoining areas. Of course now you can just order some off the internet, but they seem to taste better bought from a gas station.
posted by TedW at 4:06 AM on November 19, 2017 [1 favorite]

As is the custom, the history of many subjects begins with European "discovery" rather than indigenous commerce and use value. 15th century Spanish and Portuguese Triangle Trade transferred that knowledge from each point in their value chain to the other to exploit resource economies wherever they landed. In this use case --as with tobacco, rice, and gold or silver-- the "origin" of related plant genus and species cultivated in many world regions before being discovered by Europeans --as glossed in "The Real Origins of the Boiled Peanut"-- was slave labor between South and Central Americas and Africa.

Meet the "Bambara ground nut" to which Eurocentric history is indifferent, wherever monoculture cultivation and production proves more profitable: Peanuts (groundnuts) in Africa

The peanut soon replaced the Bambara groundnut, taking the older plant's place and even its name (peanuts are often called "groundnuts" in Africa), such that the Bambara groundnut is now called an "underutilized and neglected [cash] crop". ... Africans also gave the peanut one of its many names in America: the Kikongo word for peanut ["groundnut"] is nguba, or as they say in the southeastern United States, goober. Eventually the combination of Africans in America and peanut cultivation led to George Washington Carver, the agricultural chemist who developed dozens of uses for the peanut.

Another interesting New World origin story is the commodification of "cotton," Agave fiber in Mexico, discovered by Spanish explorers.
posted by marycatherine at 4:53 AM on November 19, 2017 [5 favorites]

Reminds me of this video, of highly mechanized peanut farming.
posted by Bee'sWing at 4:59 AM on November 19, 2017

Savory peanut soup is a VA thing.

I found deep fried peanuts in a NOLA market this past summer and I've bought boiled ones in cans, which were edible months later.
posted by brujita at 5:00 AM on November 19, 2017

as pretty akin to edamame?

Yeah, that's not a bad comparison... The two are very similar in texture and flavor, depending on preparation.
posted by saulgoodman at 5:15 AM on November 19, 2017

When I was road-tripping to Dragoncon on a yearly basis (these days it's more like every other year, and I fly), we HAD to make a stop somewhere in South Carolina, at one of the farm stands along I-95, to buy peaches, peach cider, and boiled peanuts. We snacked on the peaches all weekend, used the cider as a mixer (good with gin!) and my one friend ate all the peanuts because the rest of us found them a little suspect. She was also the one who discovered the aggressively spicy ginger beer they sold there. It had visible bits of ginger in it.
posted by nonasuch at 5:24 AM on November 19, 2017 [3 favorites]

So am I the only one that eats them whole, shells and all?
posted by a mirror and an encyclopedia at 5:30 AM on November 19, 2017 [1 favorite]

Never had proper boiled peanuts. However, we had peanuts and tea (though never called as such). My grandmother (born early 1890s), who never went further south than Philadelphia, would put shelled peanuts in the bottom of a cup of hot tea. Drink the tea, then munch on hot, softened peanuts. Learned about this from my father. So once in a while, hot orange tea and salty peanuts. Perhaps the low-rent idea of boiled peanuts?

Otherwise, if anybody knows where to get the real deal in the DMV, much obliged.
posted by datawrangler at 5:32 AM on November 19, 2017 [1 favorite]

The peanuts in tea sounds like a variation on peanuts in Coke that is a well known rural southern snack/lunch. The way I always heard it described was a bag of peanuts in an R C Cola followed by a Moon Pie.
posted by TedW at 5:46 AM on November 19, 2017

…aggressively spicy ginger beer…

I wonder if was Blenheim ginger ale?
posted by TedW at 5:53 AM on November 19, 2017 [2 favorites]

> The soup is often used as a base in which glutinous rice balls are added, which are often have a sweet ground peanut filling; the dish is known as Ah Balling.

Would you say that Ah Balling is the best way to bring forward the essential pea-ness?
posted by at by at 6:32 AM on November 19, 2017

Navy apologizes for essential pea-ness.
posted by Bee'sWing at 6:58 AM on November 19, 2017

I had some once in Helen, Georgia, and they were one of those foods I instantly knew I would never willingly eat again
posted by polywomp at 7:37 AM on November 19, 2017 [1 favorite]

This needs chapter three: the Asian boiled peanut, as alluded to in this thread. My Vietnamese mother in law makes boiled peanuts and also cooks peanuts with sticky rice for a filling breakfast.

Great article!
posted by latkes at 7:58 AM on November 19, 2017

So am I the only one that eats them whole, shells and all?

Nope, I do too....the boiled ones as well as the ones you can get at the store. FIBER!
posted by nevercalm at 8:36 AM on November 19, 2017

Another way Chinese people (at least, Chinese people in Southeast Asia) eat boiled peanuts is as a sweet dessert soup. The soup is often used as a base in which glutinous rice balls are added, which are often have a sweet ground peanut filling; the dish is known as Ah Balling.

But, does ah balling really rely on the essential pea-ness?
posted by Samizdata at 10:04 AM on November 19, 2017

"Boiled peanuts", in some accents, sounds a lot like "bull penis".

I know this because the first time I heard of boiled peanuts was a few months after I moved to Atlanta. Ms. madcaptenor and I were driving somewhere and had the radio on, and someone came on advertising that they were selling "bull penis" in, I want to say, the parking lot of a Wal-Mart. I figured I must be mishearing, because surely if bull penis was a thing people ate here, they'd have some euphemism for it.

I don't remember if I eventually put it together or if she had to tell me.
posted by madcaptenor at 11:16 AM on November 19, 2017 [5 favorites]

The Valencia peanut is sweet, three or more to the shell, and is particularly favored as the best boiled peanut, as well as (more so in my experience) sold roasted-and-salted-in-shell, and is often used in the natural, organic peanut butter you find in Trader Joe's and Whole Foods.

Virtually all Valencia peanuts are grown around the small farming town I was raised in. There is a yearly "Peanut Festival" and large bags of roasted-in-the-shell peanuts are ubiquitous (and inexpensive).

Unfortunately, I'm not very fond of peanuts. I like peanut butter in a few things, but not many. Don't care much for eating peanuts otherwise. I always felt like I was being disloyal to my community or something.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 12:51 PM on November 19, 2017 [2 favorites]

I’ve been slowly but steadily converting my friends in the Northwest US to one of my favorite childhood snacks. Driving through the South on road trips, we always stopped for boiled peanuts.
When initiating new people to them, I always call them “Southern edamame,” which keeps folks from expecting something like roasted peanuts, because they are nothing like roasted peanuts.
I make them in the crockpot, especially for summer events.

Super simple version:
- 2 lbs raw peanuts (don’t let on, but you can get them at the animal feed shop)
- 1/4 cup of salt
- Enough water for the peanuts to be submerged (although they will float at first)
- Boil for about 8-12 hours
- Serve very hot!

I usually do a Cajun variation now, but about four out of five people discover they really like them.
I definitely don’t eat the shells, but YMMV.
posted by LEGO Damashii at 3:47 PM on November 19, 2017 [3 favorites]

Please don't give your friends peanuts meant for animal feed. They are likely not fit for human consumption.
posted by elsietheeel at 3:57 PM on November 19, 2017 [1 favorite]

I grew up in eastern North Carolina and boiled peanuts were part of my life (though I always preferred roasted), but these days anytime anyone mentions them this is all I can think:

On the morning you went away
The air was humid and the sky was grey
I had boiled peanuts for breakfast from Cairo, Georgia
posted by rhiannonstone at 7:22 PM on November 19, 2017 [2 favorites]

> Please don't give your friends peanuts meant for animal feed. They are likely not fit for human consumption.

They're usually fine. The primary danger is the fungus aflatoxin, and crops are tested for it by the USDA and are supposed to be destroyed if aflatoxin tests above acceptable threshold. Peanut-based animal feed is usually processing byproduct, not the nut meat: "Peanuts are usually too valuable to be used as animal feed." Sometimes aflatoxin-contaminated peanuts will be used as feed, but inferring from other Feedipedia statements ("peanuts can be contaminated by aflatoxins and should be tested before being fed to livestock") that happens when somebody's sneaking in the stuff that was supposed to be destroyed.

Prolonged boiling will reduce (but not eliminate) any extant aflatoxin. As always, you can minimize risk by knowing your sources.
posted by at by at 8:18 PM on November 19, 2017 [3 favorites]

Why do so many of our foods come from South America?

Is the peanut still the luckiest nut in the world, or has some other nut hit the trade liberalisation jackpot?

Related (?) avocado vigilantes in Mexico protecting farmers from organised crime.
posted by asok at 5:03 AM on November 20, 2017

Walked into this thread openly expecting non-Southerner clods who have never eaten these amazing things but yet feel the need to dismiss them anyway, was not (also was totally) disappointed.

Y'all. Stop doing that please.
posted by Maaik at 2:10 PM on November 20, 2017

I would not say this thread has been particularly dismissive, and the people who have mentioned not liking them generally say that because they in fact tried them. I'm Virginia-born and have eaten boiled peanuts plenty. Fresh from the boiling pot, they are pretty good; the kind you get packaged commercially not so much IMHO, though obviously some people still like them.
posted by tavella at 2:26 PM on November 20, 2017 [3 favorites]

I'm from California, recently tried them for the first time as made by a Vietnamese American mother in law but verified as authentic by my semi Southern wife, and I loved them!

Does Florida with a stint in Atlanta count as Southern? As mentioned, I am from California and truly have no clue.
posted by latkes at 2:36 PM on November 20, 2017

in China they boil and cook peanuts in loads of really tasty ways, often alongside meat, and i wanted to find the recipes as they'd be great vegan meals, but no - nowhere online can i find them, it's like the breakfasts they serve in chinese cafes, i can't find any clue for recipes either (china has a huge number of food shops that sell one or a few things - if you want that thing, made perfectly, dirt cheap, you go there; if you don't want it, you don't - opposite of uk cafes where every order is 'i'll swap a for b and c for d and i don't want 3 and can i have the gluten free version i'm trying out gluten free lunches to see if i feel less bloaty mid-afternoon and oh make it caffeine-free too i'm saving myself for coffee and can you make the curry less hot what do you mean you can't take the chilli out of the beef chilli?' rant over)
posted by maiamaia at 3:40 AM on November 21, 2017 [2 favorites]

The thread _opened_ with exactly that kind of dismissal. Just because it hasn't been universally negative doesn't diminish that.
posted by Maaik at 1:55 PM on November 21, 2017

The person in question said that the quoted description *in the very article we are discussing* didn't sound very appetizing to them. That is a reasonable comment, not 'dismissive'. Discussion is not "everyone has to agree with me and be equally rapturous about the things I like."
posted by tavella at 2:16 PM on November 21, 2017