Sweetening the Nut

Pictured: Not my peanuts.

Lest one of my rapidly-dwindling readers decide to make a wise remark, I'll just preface this by stating that I am fully aware that peanuts are not nuts; however, "Sweetening the Legume" certainly doesn't have the same ring to it. That said, brace yourselves for yet another of my infamous culinary disasters, which unfortunately seem to happen with frightening frequency. My initial goal of creating my own delicious honey-roasted peanuts (thereby sticking it to Mr. Peanut, the greedy bastard that charges so heavily for these things) remains a distant sight that will hopefully be reached with some minor tweaks to the current recipe.

My more avid readers will find it entirely unsurprising that I stole this recipe from The Kitchn add to the lack of surprise, despite their claims to the contrary, I can safely assure you, the readers that I hold so dear, that the Kitchnfolks who oringially posted the recipe almost certainly didn't even bother attempting it before giving it shining accolades. If they had, I'd like to think that they would have been willing to level with the Internet at large by pointing out that the recipe is very poorly balanced and doesn't work at all (I'll elaborate in greater detail towards the end of this post). However, I do think that the recipe shows promise for tinkering, so it may as well be documented for posterity.

Honey-Roasted Peanuts

(Stolen from The Kitchn)

Ingredients

16oz. Roasted unsalted peanuts*

1/3c Honey

1/2c Sugar

*I don't know that I've ever been able to find roasted unsalted peanuts anywhere. Even if they did exist, they'd be too expensive for this recipe to be cost-effective for anyone other than the aforementioned Mr. Peanut himself. Thus, I settled on using salted peanuts and eliminating the kosher salt from the original recipe. I know that would result in a small sacrifice in texture, but I made up for it with sugar instead.

Preheat oven to 350F

Melt the honey in the microwave until it is liquified and runs smoothly (probably about 1 minute). Make sure not to let it go too long, lest it burn and become unpleasant. Also, don't touch it. Hot honey burns are painful. Pour the peanuts into a large mixing bowl and prepare to make a mess.

Sure, they look innocent now...

Drizzle the melted honey over the peanuts and mix thoroughly. This will require some effort, as honey tends to be somewhat sticky, and honey-coated peanuts like to stick to anything that makes contact with them.

At this point, one hopes that coating the peanuts in salt will help with the stickage. Yeah, let's see how that works out.

Sprinkle the sugar over the peanuts and stir to coat (as best you can). Spread them out onto a well-greased baking sheet and bake for around 20 minutes, stirring frequently to ensure that the peanuts don't burn. You want them to brown, but that's about it. Let them cool before attempting to handle (naturally).

You can't really tell, but the spatula is stuck there. I couldn't remove it. I ended up shooting the entire thing, bowl and all, into the center of the sun. Now I need a new spatula.

Lessons Learned

You will note that I unfortunately did not retain a photo of my actual finished product (I know, you're shocked that the picture up top is not a real result, right?). Suffice it to say that this recipe produced what I would charitably describe as "a gooey mess". See, honey is sticky and messy at room temperature, which is the temperature at which most peanuts tend to be stored. Therefore, coating the peanuts in said goo and then setting them out simply results in peanuts that pack up into clumps and leave a honey-sugar residue on the fingers. This result, while tasty, does not meet my definition of honey-roasted peanuts.

To fix this result, I think it might help to add some of the sugar to the honey during the microwave process in order to create a solution that has been hypersaturated with sugar. One might note that sugar itself is solid at room temperature; therefore, more sugar makes more solid. Baking the peanuts at a lower temperature for longer might also help, as the baking process eliminates water from the coating, which would (hopefully) result in a more solid glaze. Of course, this is just speculation until my next attempt, which should be coming soon!