Chili Roasted Peanuts
Free of Gluten, Dairy, and Eggs.
(Scale up or down as necessary, I never make less than 2 pounds)
- 1 small puck Palm Sugar (~1/3 cup, use granulated palm sugar if you can’t find the pucks)
- ¼ cup Sambal Oelek (or your favorite chili paste)
- Juice and Zest of one Lime
- 2 ½ tablespoons Tapioca or Corn Starch
- 1 ½ teaspoons Salt
- 1 teaspoon Ground Black Pepper
- 1 pound Roasted Unsalted Peanuts
- ¾ cup Shredded, Unsweetened Coconut
Get Busy
- Fill a small bowl with warm water and add the puck of palm sugar, this will help it soften so you can mash it later. If you’re working with granulated palm sugar, skip this step.
- Preheat your oven to 250 degrees.
- In a large bowl whisk together the chili paste, lime juice+zest, corn starch, salt and pepper.
- Add the softened palm sugar and mash it into the chili mixture, make sure to break up any and all large clumps. This will require some arm strength, work it out.
- Stir in the peanuts, making sure to incorporate all of the chili liquid (yes, get the pool at the bottom of the bowl).
- Add the coconut to your bowl and stir once more, giving your peanuts a festive outfit.
- Pour the peanuts into a roasting dish or onto a cookie tray. The important thing here is to make sure they’re in one layer. If you need to use two dishes/trays to give the peanuts enough room, do it. Nothing worse than soggy nuts.
- Roast the nuts for at least an hour, or until they’re golden and toasted. You can stir them every 15 minutes if you’re the fidgety type. I usually give them a shake at 30 minutes to make sure everyone’s tanning evenly. Beware of uneven oven temps- if one corner is hotter than others you’ll definitely want to scrape the tray and stir a few times during the roasting.
- Remove the peanuts from your oven and let them cool before serving. The coconut will crisp up as it cools. Put the nuts in a bowl and crack open a beer.
You do often keep snacks in your purse
These are the best damn things in the world. I do low carb so I substituted the palm sugar for brown sugar splenda, but they turned out great. Thanks for the recipe.
I’m so glad the substitution worked, rock on Mark.
Pretty damn good…and a good basis for improv! Normally, I use egg white to bind my coatings when roasting snack nuts, but the corn starch was quite effective. The ratio of sweet:salt:hot:sour didn’t quite balance out for my tastes, but I was forced…forced!…to use sriracha——my brand new jug o’ sambal oelek having apparently gone into deep hiding, for which I blame the cat——and I think that skewed the salt level upwards a bit.
I’ll definitely make these again…thanks!
Thanks Dave! I use egg white in most of my nut coatings (insert middle-school giggling). It works like magic (http://renegadekitchen.com/thanksgiving-spiced-nuts/), but this time I wanted to make a mixture without eggs, to accommodate those with an allergy.
I know the pain of losing treasured jars in the recesses of a fridge, definitely the cat’s fault.
Rock on,
Dan
These look fantastic!
These were excellent! It really opened up my eyes to roasting peanuts with coconut, I didn’t know you could do that since coconut flakes burn so quickly. But the wet works and lower temp made it all come together. Thanks for the recipe! I took a photo and reblogged the recipe (crediting you, of course). Hope you don’t mind.
Mind? I’m flattered! So glad you enjoyed the nuts. Cheers!
This has become my go-to gift for parties – and they are hands-down the absolute favorite snack every time.
I\’m in the midst of making three batches: shipping half batches to LA and DC tomorrow morning and splitting up the rest for my Thanksgiving party rounds.
In the spirit of the holiday, I wanted to let you know how thankful I am that I ran across this recipe.
Darling, you made my day! Thanks for the kind words, I’m thrilled you’re making this for holiday gifting. Happy Thanksgiving!
Cheers,
Dan
These are fabulous, I made some for a party this past weekend and everyone loved ‘em. I envy you living somewhere where palm sugar exists – I has to sub in organic brown sugar – darn boonies I live in.
Oh but I’m sure the brown sugar caramelized wonderfully with the chili and coconut! I’ll have to try that in my next batch. Glad you enjoyed!