To dry
roast peanuts
spread peanuts in one layer in a shallow
baking pan. heat oven at 300 degrees for 30-45 minutes, depending on brownness
desired. Stir peanuts often as they heat. Check on brownness by removing the
skins from a few peanuts and testing. Serve warm. if you like them
salted, add 1 tspn butter to each cup of peanuts immediately after removing from oven.
Stir until peanuts are evenly coated and sprinkle with salt.
The beginning of Planter
Peanut Company
In 1888 a 12 year old
immigrant, Amedeo Obici, arrived from Venice, Italy. He sold produce and nuts for a
living. After a few years he conceived of the idea of selling salted, roasted
peanuts. In 1906 he abandoned the fruit business and went full time to roasting
peanuts. They took the name "Planters Peanuts" and delivered to the
nearby stores. In a few years they added chocolate coated peanuts to the line and by
1910 they were the "peanut kings" in the United States. It wasn't until
after the World war 2 that peanut brittle became popular.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jeff Manthey" <jeff.manthey@sherwin.com>
To: <nuts@TheNutFactory.com>
Sent: Wednesday, February 16, 2005 4:45 PM
Subject: Peanut Question
To anyone who can help,
My family is having a little dispute about Salted in the Shell Peanuts.
While doing research on the web, I read your site and am hoping you
guys can help.
The questions are:
What is the purpose of salting the outer shell of a peanut? What is
the
correct way to eat them this way?
I tend to eat the whole thing, shell and all. While everyone else I
know cracks the shell open and eats only the nut and either sucks the
shell or throws it away without bothering. Since they are larger than
sunflower seeds, and more difficult to just crack in your mouth while
spitting out the shell, I tend to think it is acceptable to eat the
whole thing, let alone there is less clean-up. I believe that if you
don't want to eat the shell you should just purchase them shelled
already.
What is the answer to this proper eating technique question?
This has been bothering me for YEARS! I need your help!!!
Thanks,
Jeff
A Peanut Fan in CA
Response from Gene Cohen
The Nut Factory
February 17, 2005
The salting of the in-shell Virginia peanut was developed in the world
war two era and roasting in-shell peanuts is an interesting process.
You take a stainless steel drum holding about 300 pounds of peanuts,
rotate it with a motor, put fixed paddles inside the drum to churn the
peanuts, and apply gas heat evenly from the bottom of the drum. The
drum is made of perforated stainless steel to let the heat in and the
tiny debris drops out as the drum rotates. This process is similar to
the modern coffee bean roaster. After about 30 minutes roasting peanuts
at 325 degrees, the tumbling peanuts are approaching doneness. Just
two or three minutes too short or long can make a difference in the
final product. You have to sample every minute to guess the right time
to dump the load. using a shovel, you put the peanuts in a perforated
stainless steel cart to cool to room temperature.
The problem was that you had to crack a peanut open as if neared finish
in the roasting process to see if it was done. Of course it cooked for
a while longer so it was a timing issue. if you pulled the peanuts early,
they were soft and unroasted. if you pulled them late - they were burnt
in color. There was a very tiny envelop of time to get it correct.
Customers always complained that your product was "too dark"
or "too sharp" or "too light" in color.... You took
a lot of product back from customers and credited them. When the peanut
stayed in the store in bushel baskets, it was exposed to air and the
oxygen affected the taste. As it stayed longer, it got staler and tasted
flat. Finally it was "oxidized" too much and the peanuts had
to be thrown out. It was a no win situation. The customer was dissatisfied,
the merchant was dissatisfied, and the manufacturer was dissatisfied.
we kept losing customers and getting our competitors customers as they
grew unhappy with whomever product was the last they used.
Added to this, the weather played an important part. You needed continuous
warm soil above 50 degrees. That made the crop best in southern states
from Virginia to Texas. If the crop was in the ground for 154 days from
planting and if the weather was rainy in the fall, the peanuts were
wet. If they froze in the ground they were wet. And the wetness on the
shell caused they to have spots when roasted and did not look good.
So if you planted on April 15th and if you harvested on September 20th,
you were exposed to the weather. later planting and later harvest were
even more risky.
So why roast the peanut?
If you want to get the full aroma and taste of the peanut, you have
to roast it. Otherwise it will taste spongy like a soft pea. peanuts
are a member of the pea family and grow in the ground. The only way
to roast the peanut while it was in the shell is in a dry roasting process.
To do that, you need a stainless steel rotating drum with gas heat below
and the whole machine needs to heat to 325 degrees and you roast the
tumbling peanuts for about 30 minutes.
Not all people liked the freshly roasted peanut, minus any salt. The
problem was how could you get the product salted. Salt brings out the
peanut flavor and is desirable.
The solution was to soak the peanut - shell and all - in a vat of warm
water. then you took the peanut out and dry it prior to putting it in
the oven. But the peanut molded by drying in air and it was way too
long in a rotating drum and the salt dropped off if you rotated the
peanut in the drum until dry. So you had pass the peanut without much
motion using a stainless steel conveyor belt in some sort of stationery
oven to dry it and then continue to roast the peanut to completion.
Naturally this process was different than the tumbling of peanuts in
a drum. when the peanuts come out of the salting vat, they are wet and
they need a long drying time by some roasting process. The length of
the conveyor belt and the heat under it and the amount of water in the
original peanut and the amount of new water added in the soaking process
to the peanut makes this a trick proposition. But eventually the roasting
formula was worked out by trial and error. The "continuous roaster"
became the standard in the in-shell roasting industry.
But there was a drawback. The salt was more on the shell and less existed
on the peanut inside. So someone determined that if high pressure and
heat would salt the peanut more. The soaking in a closed saltwater tank
holding 1,000 pounds of raw peanuts were placed under pressure, salt
would suck into the peanuts. we raised the pressure inside the tank
to about 30 grams of mercury. The salt solution was as concentrated
and warm as possible. The peanuts sucked up the liquid salt mixture
which entered the shell and coated the peanut. This worked. The process
became standard in about 1970.
We roasted the peanuts using our drums. We could not put the soaked
peanuts in the drum for many reasons. We were able to salt but never
had the equipment to roast the salted product. In the early 1980's we
created the soaking tank process. It was successful, but the cost of
a continuous roaster for the product was over $100,000 at the time.
We determined it was not cost effective to invest in this machinery
because of the market. We dry roasted peanuts from about 1960 to 1987.
In 1987 we discontinued the in shell peanut roasting process and sold
the ovens to a museum in Dresden, Germany since they were of 1905 vintage.
That proved to be a good move. We got out when the market was changing
quickly. Firms were getting out and consolidation was the rule. Many
went broke. Today the market is 85% controlled by one firm who is a
giant peanut company. they market most of the USA with a number of household
brands and private label.
And today you get the same product everywhere and it is a commodity
market and very low priced.
That is how the salted in-shell peanuts got their start. Most people
shell the peanut and pop them into their mouth and discard the shell.
Some crave salt and eat everything and this is acceptable because it
is primarily fiber you are eating. But the majority of people shell
them.
The difference between the shelled peanut roasting process and the in-shell
roasting process is considerable. The shelled variety has been roasted
in a hot oil bath and the in-shell variety is dry roasted. they taste
different. And the calorie count and the nutritional values change.
Also not all peanuts can be roasted in the shell. of the four South
American
varieties, the only acceptable dry roasting peanut is the Virginia peanut.
That is a very small part of the overall peanut crop and the remainder
of the crop is oil roasted. I estimate that is at least 85% of the crop
that gets shelled and oil roasted.
Facts about peanuts
The peanut is really a legume, like a
pea.
The peanut was known in Peru around 1200 to
1500 B.C. well preserved peanut plants have been found in Inca mummy bundles and
burial sites.
Before the civil war, peanuts were known
throughout the South as "groundnuts", "ground peas", Goober
peas", Monkey Nuts", Pindars", and "Goobers".
The name "pindar" and
"goober" were African tribal words.
About 1920 farmers in the southern states
were infested with the boll weevil. They were forced to find another cash crop
to take the place of cotton - they choose peanuts, which turned out to be an excellent
substitute.
The peanut became the favorite food for
farm animals, but in recent years corn is now cheaper to produce and easier to store
than peanuts.
India is by far the largest producer of
peanuts in the world, followed by mainland China. India and China produce over 50%
of the world's peanuts. The United states is in third place.
About 10% of the United States peanut crop
is sold in the shell.
Peanut kernels which count 60 to 80 peanuts
per ounce are considered small ( such as the Spanish peanut). 40 to 60 peanuts per
ounce are medium, and 30 to 40 peanuts per ounce are graded as large.
The major use of peanuts in the United
States is making peanut butter. To prepare peanut butter, the raw peanut is shelled,
roasted, cooled, and blanched (remove the red skin). The kernels are ground to
produce a smooth textured butter - peanut butter. During grinding the peanuts
are heated up to 170 degrees and emulsifiers are added. The mixture is cooled to
120 degrees to stiffen the mixture. To prepare chunky peanut butter, the
manufacturer will add bits of coarsely ground or broken peanuts.
peanuts contain about 26% protein - higher
than dairy products, eggs, fish, and many cuts of meats.
A glass of milk and two peanut butter
sandwiches provide 83% of the growing child's daily need for protein!
Peanut Brittle Recipe
Original Message-----
Subject: peanut brittle, of course!
This is a very simple recipe from my husband's family. what makes it so delicious is how
light and airy it is and not at all sticky. You achieve this by adding
the soda after you take it off the heat.
1 cup light corn syrup
1 cup granulated sugar
1 tablespoon butter
1/4 teaspoon salt
raw peanuts (however many you like)
1 heaping teaspoon baking soda
put all the ingredients, except the peanuts and soda, in a deep sauce pan.
Put on medium heat. stirring constantly until sugar dissolves.
Now add the peanuts. Stirring at all times, take mixture to
290 on a candy thermometer. Remove from heat and stir in one heaping teaspoon
baking soda (make sure baking soda is fresh). now pour out on a greased cookie sheet. do
not tip cookie sheet to thin, this peanut brittle is best when thick which makes it
more airy.
Ginny , Brandon Florida
Thank you for sharing your special recipe with us. I will post it
on the web. Click
here for another traditional peanut brittle recipe which is excellent!
Half a
century of fun
The Nut Factory started in 1952 as a roaster of peanuts.
We are located in Spokane, Washington. Over the years The Nut Factory has grown into a
large snack food manufacturer. We ship over 600 product every day to businesses everywhere
throughout the United States.
Our history
Little known facts
Caramel and Butterscotch are made in
similar ways to toffee, as is fudge. The difference is in the degree of boiling
temperature and the ways in which they are cooled. This whole process uses high-heat to
convert sugar. Crystallization, graininess, and whether it is brittle or smooth are simply
variations of this process.
more
about candy
The peanut is really a legume,
like a pea.
Recipes | Interesting Facts | Trivia | Nutritional
Facts
