My niece spotted the huge round metal pot first. We were scoping out the buys at an indoor/outdoor flea market just south of Macon, GA, where I was visiting my family for the holidays.
It was the day after Christmas and I had dragged her with me to see what “Southern” auction finds I could discover, and to determine if those finds would be different from what I usually find in Philadelphia. I didn’t stumble upon any treasures.
But my niece came upon one of her favorites: hot boiled peanuts. We stopped at the first vendor stand we came to (which is probably not a good idea because you don’t get a chance to compare prices). There were three other women waiting. How much, my niece asked. $4, the man said. OK, she answered.
Using a large spoon, the man scooped out hot and steamy peanuts from the pot into a tall Styrofoam cup, packing them in until the cup was overflowing. He handed the cup to one of the women. Then he filled a cup for my niece.
She loves hot boiled peanuts. I like them but they’re not the kind of food I seek out when I visit my family. She dived right into the peanuts. I nonchalantly took a handful as we walked away, splitting open the soggy shell and popping the three peanuts – hull and all – into my mouth. The aroma was comforting. And the peanuts were delicious – warm, juicy, soft and salty. No crunch, whatsoever.
I took another handful, and then another. Too salty, I finally announced and stopped scooping them. My niece didn’t. And a few minutes later, I couldn’t resist. I reached into the cup for another handful, salt and all.
Hot boiled peanuts are so salty because that’s what the recipe calls for. No one’s really sure when peanuts were first made this way, but one website believes it was during the Civil War.
Ingredients:
Fresh raw peanuts (also called green peanuts)
Salt (you can decide how much)Put peanuts and salt in a large pot and boil for a couple hours (some recipes call for boiling them up to seven hours). After a couple hours, split open a peanut to see if they’re done.
This recipe is simplistic and basic. There are plenty of precise recipes on the web for cooking them, from adding Cajun seasoning to Old Bay to ham to season the water. Or just buying them in a can. Ugh.
Here are some things I learned about hot boiled peanuts from Wikipedia:
They’re the official snack food of South Carolina.
They are high in protein, and have more antioxidants than raw or roasted peanuts.
They don’t have a long shelf life (they become slimy and start to smell), but they can be frozen. I suspect that most people, like my niece, don’t allow them to just hang around long enough to “go bad.”
In India, Ghana, Nigeria and Thailand, they’re considered street food.
At the flea market, my niece and I had walked only a few steps from the first vendor when we came across another one. I was taking photos of my niece’s cup of nuts when the woman at the stand offered her large pot for a photo. How much did you pay for those, she asked. Hers, she said, were cheaper: $2, $3, and $4. A few feet away from her was another seller of hot boiled peanuts.
As for the flea market itself, no finds there. Most of the stuff was new (my sister had warned me of this), and there were lots of used clothing. I did find one table with vintage items, the most interesting of which was a combination ladies cigarette case and lighter by a company called Evans. I’d come across old lighters before – Evans, Zippo and Ronson – but this was the first one that was particularly feminine. It was white with chrome accents, but some of the paint was missing. It had been well-used.
Even though I didn’t find any auction-worthy items, the hot boiled peanuts on such a chilly day were a nice diversion.
Read about my other Southern treats Nu-Way hotdogs and MoonPies. For ways to make Southern food a bit more healthier, check out blogger Fatimah Ali’s Healthy Southern Comforts.
