While traveling around in the south, I tried and fell in love with Cajun boiled peanuts that I bought at roadside stands in Florida and South Carolina. Now I’m back in the frozen northlands, where there’s no such thing. I found plain boiled peanuts canned at the local grocery store, but even better, I found organic raw peanuts at the local co-op, so I figured I’ll make my own.
So…do any of you make your own Cajun boiled peanuts? What is your favorite recipe?
(I already googled and found some recipes online, but I want to know how you Dopers of excellent taste make them. Also if boiled peanuts are commonly eaten in Australia and Asia, as Wiki tells me, and if you have secret ingredients for them there.)
First of all, green peanuts make better boiled peanuts than ‘raw peanuts’, but you have to get those in season. Second, are your peanuts the really large roasting peanuts? Those typically come from Virginia and will make a passable boiled peanut, but not a great one.
My recipe isn’t a recipe at all. I just put them in water in a crockpot on high with a lot of salt. Like 1/4-1/2 cup. And then salt to taste. It takes all day to cook them.
I’ve never boiled my own (too easy to pull up to a roadside stand), but the recipes that I’ve seen usually call for green peanuts, water to cover, 1/2 cup salt to the gallon and simmer on a low fire all day.
One word of advice: don’t share these with your dog unless you make him ride in the back of the truck!
I do them in the crock pot, too, on high for several hours. I just keep taste testing until I get the softness I want. You have to add a lot of salt to the boiling water. I have made them with spices but remember you have to add a lot of spices for it to even slightly flavor the peanuts. Be careful about adding any spice mix that also has salt in them or you might end up with too much saltiness.
The peanuts will float until the shells get waterlogged so be careful not to overfill your cooker.
Just experiment with the spice amounts, if one batch isn’t cajun enough for you, then you’ll just have to make another batch.
BTW, yes, green peanuts are best but hard to find unless you driving through Georgia at the right time.
Great, now I am going to be craving boiled peanuts.
Hehe, my best friend’s dad was once the president of the National Peanut Growers, so I have a couple gallon bags of boiled peanuts in the freezer as we speak.
