Cookaholics Bulletin Board

A friend in Alabama sent me a 5 pound bag of raw shelled peanuts friday. I roasted them and added sea salt this afternoon. They went from nasty to delicious in 20 minutes..lol. The peanuts grow behind her home on land leased to a peanut farmer. Her husband is a retired government peanut inspector. She also sent me some cottom still on the stems. Pretty cool!

I love fun foodie surprises like that.

Laurie

Home roasted peanuts - that sounds like fun. Maybe you will be on the forefront of a new food trend! I am reading in lots of magazines about people roasting their own coffee from the green beans.

Have you ever had any boiled peanuts? This is something I used to only get when I went down south as a kid, and we'd pass by these big pots of them boiling out in the middle of nowhere down in GA, and we'd buy some to snack on, plus my Grandmother would always boil up a pot of them while we were there. Wasn't 'til about 10 years ago raw peanuts became available around here - not in the shell, like they boiled them down there, but shelled, and the flavor was almost the same.

The Chinese also have some versions of boiled peanuts, with spices in them, which are delicious.

I've always been amazed at how long raw peanuts could cook without turning to mush, compared to dried beans.

Dave

For that matter, raw peanuts are what you want for Asian dishes, like kung pao. There you want to stir-fry the raw peanuts in the wok.

Dave, I have had boiled peanuts. When we went to AL last winter on vacation a friend was so excited to give us some. I was not a fan. It wasn't the flavor as much as the texture.

I now wish I would have saved a few out for brittle or other recipe's where they are cooked. Oh well, she did say there were lots more where those came from, if I wanted them. My kind of friend!

Laurie

In Southeast Asian Flavors, the author, Robert Danhi, gives a method for using peanuts in many of the dishes from that region that traditionally dry-roast of fry the peanuts, which, as he puts it, give them a sort of monotone flavor. He suggests pan-roasting the peanuts raw, which results in darker, almost charred areas, and lighter areas, with totally different flavors on the same peanut. I have been doing this ever since I learned this technique, which I much prefer to dry roasted peanuts.

Dave

Dave,

You have that book? I borrowed it from the library ... was very impressed.

Hey folks - saw my book was mentioned here - happy to see people are reading and using it. Here is an article I did with the famed food writer Michael Ruhlman http://ruhlman.com/2010/10/roasted-pean ... ent-page-1 It gives you much of whats in the book. The nuances is what makes great food great...here are some other techniques you might want to check out! http://www.southeastasianflavors.com/te ... vors.shtml
Regards....

Thanks for sharing your links, looks like loads of good information. Now I need to find me some raw peanuts! I could use some Asian food to break this diet of cookies and alcohol that I have been on.

Mary

Yes, that is one of the many Asian CBs I have accumulated, and it is very good, IMO. In fact, I now recommend it to somebody starting out in SE Asian foods, as it has info on most ingredients used in all of those cuisines, as well as many good recipes and the good techniques, like the one noted above.


Nice to see you one this site, Chef Danhi! Thanks for the links. I have given this book many good recommendations on other cooking, as well as gardening forums (I grow a lot of this stuff!). Keep up the good work!

Dave