I have noticed a number of people of a certain age (late middle), mostly men, all from South Texas, who have a decidedly odd culinary habit. They’ll walk into a convenience store and buy a soda, usually citrus-flavored, and a packet of peanuts, usually hot and spicy. They will then proceed to take a few swigs from the soda, open the peanuts, and then dump them into the soda. Consumption involves allowing a few peanuts in with each swig of soda. Now, my initial reaction was the same as yours probably is: bleargh! (Yes, exactly that noise: bleargh!) However, being relatively open-minded in the realm of salty snack foods and cold drinks, I decided this had to be investigated. Two bottles of Squirt grapefruit soda and three packets of heavily spiced peanuts later, the combo of salty-sweet-hot-acidic was growing on me. In the immortal words of my older brother, “That’s some good s**t there, Maynard.” (My name’s not Maynard, in case you’re wondering.) I haven’t yet tried it with beer, though the possibilities are intriguing.
So, finally, the inevitable poll. Is this strictly limited to a certain era of South Texas? Was it ever a widespread phenomenon? Think I could interest a snack food conglomerate in bundling citrus soda and spicy peanuts?
I used to do it as a kid (I’m from Texas btw) only except it was with regular soda (coke) and plain salted peanuts.
My grandfather got me started on it.
Wow I haven’t thought of that in ages. Now I’m going to have to go buy me some soda and peanuts.
I live in the Dallas area, and I’ve known a few people who put regular salted peanuts in their Dr. Pepper (never heard of it with another soft drink, though). Not very common, though. I have known LOTS of people who drink Dr. Pepper warm or even hot, though.
Heck yeah it is wide spread. The soda of choice here in NC is Coca Cola. Don’t know if you ever listened to John Prine but he makes reference to a “bag of peanuts in a coca cola” in the song “Jesus; The Missing Years”.
In the '60’s as a boy of six years old, just-arrived in Tennessee from California, I was intrigued to see guys put small bags of Tom’s salted peanuts in a bottle of Coke or Dr. Pepper. Tried it and LOVED it!
It’s a Southern Thang…y’all wouldn’t understand. Yankees wouldn’t, anyway.
The way we did it was with one of those little bags of regular salted peanuts that you find in vending machines. (Spicy peanuts would by icky, I’m sure.) You can use a can of Coke, but the 20 oz. bottles work better; with the cans you’re left with a bunch of "water"logged nuts you can’t get to once the Coke is gone but it’s a lot easiler to control the flow with the bottles. I’ve only ever tried Coke and Pepsi; Coke is intifitely better as the flavor with the extra salt of the peanuts makes it almost lemony. Pepsi by itself is considerably saltier than Coke and the peanuts push it over the edge.
worked with an old timer who dumped plain peanuts into his pepsi bottle (clear glass). the peanuts all kinda clumped up and the salt made them fizzle or something. anyway, it looked EXACTLY like PUKE!!
really nasty! (probably tastes okay, ever drink a coke while eating a payday? yummy!)
That Russell “The Professor” Johnson was in some police/detective program in the 1970s (as a bad guy), and a big clue to his character’s guilt was that he had the “unusual” habit of putting his peanuts in his Coke bottle.
I live in rural southern Indiana and we always go to the convenience store and buy a 20 0z. Sprite and a bag of plain Planters peanuts. We dump 'em in and enjoy. It’s a good thing.
I’ve never heard of it but I have peanuts and diet root beer. My 1st though was ‘blaugh’ But I thought I would try it out. Took a sip and though ‘blaugh’ then took another just to make sure and it wasn’t as bad as the 1st - then it was kinda good.
