Spicy Boiled Peanuts

I started eating boiled peanuts as a child. Maybe it's a southern thing. Maybe it's because peanuts are grown locally, they're cheap and easy to find. I buy raw nuts from the farmer's market and only make boiled peanuts with them. I'm sure there are other things, but why mess with perfection. 


I don't care. 


I love them. 


I only started making them on my own since we moved to Atlanta a few years ago. Boiled peanuts are super easy to make but not fast. I like easy. Resist the urge to undercook these. I like to be able to split them with a pinch of the fingers, have minimal fibrous shell and the nuts to have a bean like softness without being mushy. That takes patience. 

Serve them hot or cold. They all have a bit of spicy salt water inside so keep a napkin ready.

Spicy Boiled Peanuts

1-2 lbs of green (That mean raw, green, not roasted) peanuts, well rinsed. 
Pot of water. I use a 6qt soup pot filled 1/2 full.
2 tbsp salt
2-3 tbsp red pepper flakes or to taste


Clean your peanuts by soaking them in cool water and rubbing them together with your hands to remove all bits of sand and dirt. You may need to swap out the water if you get particularly gritty nuts.

• Fill 5 quart soup pot half-full of water
• Add salt and red pepper flakes and bring to boil
• Add in peanuts, close lid, reduce to simmer and walk away
• Really, walk away. Turn on the vent over your stove too. Note: That much pepper steam will make you cough if you hang out too close to the stove. It's a good trick to make this when no one needs to be hanging out in the kitchen. *hack*
• Keep an eye on the water level, add more as needed
• After 2 hours, try a big one. Add more salt and pepper as need and continue cooking until the peanut is easy to break with a good squeeze and the nut has a cooked bean softness, but not mushy

The boiled peanuts in the photo took about 3-3.5 hours. After they're done, remove pot from heat. Let the nuts cool down in the cooking water. Use a slotted spoon to move a serving to a bowl and let them cool down until they're safe to eat. I let the rest hang in the water until I want more. After they're cool I use the slotted spoon to put them in baggies and stick them in the fridge. They're just as good cold out of the fridge as they are still warm from cooking.

These cold boiled peanuts...going with me to the pool on a hot Georgia day.

Serve with napkins (or just eat them over the sink) and a bowl to collect the shells.

Some day I'd like to own a big 5 gallon pot to make bigger batches. I have such fancy housewife dreams. 

Pumpkin Butter Recipe

Even though it's still in the 90's in Atlanta, I'm so excited about fall. This summer has been brutal and it's the first year I've really tried to limit my sun exposure. I'm looking forward to cooler weather where I can cover up and the skinny chicks near me will have to cover up too.

I found some Peach Butter and Pumpkin Butter at my local farmer's market. While I was in there I Googled some recipes and grabbed the ingredients to make my own pumpkin butter. There are several markets around that sell local produce but there is one that's probably the size of a Super Wal-Mart with nothing but food. It's a great place to buy produce, cheeses, and there's an enormous meat counter if you're into that kind of thing. I found canned organic there as well as some of the bulk spices I'd need for the recipe. I'll just hang onto the jar of pumpkin butter I picked up for when I run out of the homemade goodness.

If you have a farmer's market or any market that sells bulk, you should take a few extra minutes to peruse the spice aisle. I've found spices for a fraction of the cost of the grocery stores. You can see some of the prices in my picture below. Granted, I don't know what I'll do with a half pound of ground cloves. For $2, I can think of something.

Yesterday I attempted my first batch of homemade pumpkin butter. I can tell this is something I'll make again this fall. By last night I had already gifted two jars of it. I used my big Williams-Sonoma Spoonula for this job and it worked perfectly. By using the spoonula and the slow cooker, it was a fairly small kitchen production. I love one pot masterpieces! I also recipes for stove top that takes about 30-45 minutes. I may try that next time. I'm also going to try making a similar version with orange zest. I'll let you know.

Pumpkin Butter

• 3 Cans of Pumpkin Puree...not Pumpkin Pie filling. The filling already has spices and other stuff added. I used organic.
• 1 cup of brown sugar, firmly packed. (Option: Use 1/2 cup of maple syrup and a 1/2 cup of brown sugar.)
• 2 teaspoons of ground cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon of freshly grated nutmeg. 
• 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla extract
• A big pinch of salt
• A big pinch or 1/8 teaspoon of ground ginger
• A big pinch or 1/8 teaspoon of allspice

Stir all of the ingredients into a slow cooker set on low heat. Because you are cooking it down you'll abandon the rule of leaving the lid alone. Stir at least once every 30 minutes to an hour the first 4 hours. The last 2 hours, leave the lid 1/4 to 1/2 off and stir every 20 minutes or so. It's important to keep the sides scraped down to prevent burning. By stirring so often you'll keep it reducing instead of allowing the top to dry and it to stay too wet underneath. Total cook time in slow cooker: 6 hours. 

I found these cute Ball jars in Target. It filled all 4 and I had enough left over to fill a small Rubbermaid container. I like the jars for sharing. I may transfer one to another Rubbermaid for freezing. I'll hang onto the jars for when I try to learn to can.

Soup Nazi Time

There are a few things I cook really well. Considering a few years ago I used my oven to store gift wrap and bows, saying that is a huge accomplishment. Soup has become one of my specialty items and I have so much fun creating new ones. This summer I was on a bit of a squash kick. I made about five different kinds of squash soups and even tried a gazpacho. Now that summer is winding down I'm making some vegetable soup with some finds from the farmer's market. Today I used some silver queen corn, tomatoes, green beans and some shelled beans the market was offering. I tossed in a few things from the fridge and voila...SOUP!

   
It's still in the upper 80's during the day, but the evenings are cooling off nicely. The cooler it gets the more soup I make.

What do I do with it all?

My husband is an anti-vegetable kind of guy. He'll eat potatoes...maybe a green bean or two every few months and he'll have a standard side salad. My friends seem to benefit the most from my soup making. I love sharing it.

I would love to learn how to can and preserve the soup for the pantry so I can save more of it from myself. I'd love to try my hand and making pickles and pickling various vegetables that are suddenly more popular when pickled (okra and asparagus come to mind). It would be great to eat those summer farmer's market vegetables year round. It would also make it easier to justify buying a bigger haul from the local stands.

Sadly, I'm discovering that canning is a dying art form. When society started eating crap and stopped growing food, no one bothered to learn how to can. I remember my neighbors and some of my older aunts canning a few times a year. These canned goods practically turned into currency later on. I remember my father doing favors for the elderly neighbor to score some of her canned cherry peppers.

There is a ton of information on canning online. It just isn't the same. I wish I lived closer to my aunts and some of my older cousins who still can from time to time. I want to be able to learn a skill from an older person and then teach it to someone else.

There's so much more to canning than what can be pulled from YouTube or local farmer co-op websites. There's a lot of skill involved. Canning isn't just something you can try doing. It really takes an investment of time and money in addition to the fact you can actually kill people (or make them VERY sick) if you don't do it right. The goods aren't very expensive but there are some specialty items that are essential that probably can't be used for much else. The technique is the tricky part. You have to follow very specific instructions based on the acid content of what your preserving. Some things require being boiled in a water bath and other items require a pressure cooker. I know what you're thinking! Who the heck uses a pressure cooker in midtown Atlanta? I've been around few pressure cookers in my life. My mother would chase me out of the kitchen when she was using it in case it exploded. So now I am pondering buying one (who the heck knows where to find one around here) and jumping into this canning project. I'll keep you posted.