Sugared Peanuts

It's a very special blog day! I decided to document the process of making sugared peanuts, step by step. They are really really good. I think this would also be good with almonds.


To start, you'll need two cups of raw peanuts and a cup of sugar. You'll also need water and salt. It took me a pound of raw shelled peanuts, a meat mallet, and about 30 minutes to get 2 cups of raw peanuts. You may want to skip this step if you can find already shelled raw peanuts. But, there also something sort of cathartic and fun about the shelling process. Additionally, you should be pre-heating your oven to 300.


Dissolve the sugar and salt in 1/2 cup of water over medium heat. Add the peanuts. You need to cook this, stirring it pretty often, until the peanuts are completely coated and there is no syrup left. It doesn't seem very likely for a while, but it will work. I promise!


See! It totally worked. Sugared peanuts! Yes, that is also my finger. I guess I'm pointing at them? No, I'm not really sure why.


Put the peanuts on a cookie sheet (the recipe says un-greased, but I like to put some non-stick foil on pretty much every pan I put in the oven). Spread them out as much as you can. Bake them for 30 minutes, and stir them every 5 minutes. Don't stir them too vigorously, or peanuts will fly about your oven, and you'll have to fish them out before they start a fire. It's unpleasant, trust me.


And then they're done, and super delicious! Seriously, I wish I had some more right now. We snacked on them here for several days. Apparently I missed a tiny bit of syrup that got onto the pan with the peanuts, but it just turned it to something that tasted a bit like peanut brittle (and came right off the non-stick foil, ha!). Not a bad problem to have.

So there you go! You should really try these, they're one of my favorite things that I've made lately. Like candy, but you can pretend like they aren't bad for you because of the protein involved. Good luck with that.