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PORTSIDE CULTURE

THE GLOBAL LOVE OF BOILED PEANUTS  
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Julia Skinner
June 13, 2023
The Bitter Southerner
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_ The story of boiled peanuts is as complex, fraught, and global as
the South itself. To acknowledge the complexity, and challenges, of
their history is to acknowledge the ingenuity of the people who worked
to preserve their culinary heritage. _

The true enjoyment of boiled peanuts — no matter where they’re
eaten — comes from sharing them with loved ones., Julia Skinner

 

The Global Love of Boiled Peanuts

It’s a hot, muggy summer day in Atlanta; a day for porches, patios,
and pools, with the siren song of long days and community pulling me
out into the summer heat. I’m perched on an outdoor stool at The
Local, a longtime beloved Atlanta institution and the first bar I ever
visited in town. I’ve ordered boiled peanuts (some of my favorites
in town), and a woman, sad after a disappointing date, sits down next
to me and we share the peanuts while she talks. One of the bartenders
comes out, and we hand peanuts to him, too, and then my friend who
came to meet me shows up.

The paper basket of peanuts, and the second basket for their discarded
shells, begin making the rounds between myself and people who were
strangers just a few minutes before. We talk about the many different
ways people eat boiled peanuts, noting regional differences and
personal preferences in each of our approaches, though ultimately, as
the bartender says, “there’s no wrong way to eat a boiled
peanut.”

For many Southerners, boiled peanuts are a quintessential regional
food, bringing to mind roadside stands.

But like apples and all-American apple pie (which was originally from
England), boiled peanuts are not, in fact, unique to or even from this
region. Boiled peanuts span continents, a food that emerged from its
troubled, tumultuous past to gain a foothold in Senegal, China, India,
Hawaii, and the American South. Today, the story of the boiled peanut
is a global love story.

Beginning as a crop in the Andes, where archaeologists have found
peanuts buried in tombs and adorning pottery, peanuts come from two
wild species that were crossed in Bolivia around 10,000 years ago.

But the full story of boiled peanuts, and peanuts in general, is far
from celebratory, as it is also the story of the trans-Atlantic slave
trade. When the Spanish colonized the Americas, starting at the end of
the 15th century, they brought peanuts back to Europe, and the
heat-loving legume was later brought to Africa by the Portuguese.
According to Robert Deen's The Boiled Peanut Book, the peanut’s
nickname, goober, is said to come from the word nguba, or peanut, in
the Kongo and Kimbundi languages. The plants thrived, and the peanuts
returned to the Americas alongside people who would never see their
homelands again. So while the peanut itself is indigenous to the
Americas, the cooking process is African, and this process has spread
around the world, the result of intercontinental trade, colonization,
slavery, and immigration.

The story of boiled peanuts is as complex, fraught, and global as the
South itself. To acknowledge the complexity, and challenges, of their
history is to acknowledge the ingenuity of the people who worked to
preserve their culinary heritage and to bring their love of their food
and their history to us today. As food historian Michael Twitty said,
“Boiled peanuts in every Southern gas station? That’s Senegal.”

Senegal is one of the largest peanut producers in the world, but
they’re a local business, too, sold from street vendors and cooked
in homes. For chef Serigne Mbaye, the founder of Dakar NOLA, boiled
peanuts were a childhood staple. Mbaye was born in the U.S. but spent
most of his childhood and adolescence in Senegal, bringing his deep
love of Senegalese food and heritage with him when he returned to the
States. After graduating from culinary school in 2016, he came to New
Orleans, quickly rising through the ranks of respected restaurants
before eventually founding Dakar NOLA, which uses food to explore the
cultural connections between Louisiana and Senegal. Dakar NOLA has
operated as a pop-up dinner concept for several years, and Mbaye
recently left his role as chef-de-cuisine at Mosquito Supper Club to
pursue a brick-and-mortar space for his restaurant.

While peanuts appear in many Senegalese dishes, such as mafe (meat
stewed in a peanut sauce and served over rice), boiled or steamed
peanuts in particular are a common snack served with tea. In some
cases, the peanuts are boiled, then tossed in a hot pan before
serving. He also likes to toast them and use them as garnish for
salads.

Mbaye says it’s important to use slightly unripe peanuts with a
softer shell, sometimes called green peanuts, because hard-shelled
peanuts take too long to cook. It seems likely that boiled peanuts
emerged from a need to use these slightly underripe peanuts during
harvest season; they couldn’t be stored long-term like dried, mature
peanuts but were still delicious.

When Mbaye moved to the South, he found a familiar taste of home. Over
the years, he’s come up with a new idea that brings together his
family and adopted home. “I saw how people in New Orleans do a
crawfish boil and thought, what if you do a peanut boil the same
way?” Using crawfish boil spices, but adding honey to mimic the
sweetness of the corn, Mbaye makes a boiled peanut that proves even
this old dish can learn new tricks. When he opens Dakar NOLA’s
permanent space, he plans to put the peanuts on the menu.

While the food is a staple in Senegal, boiled peanuts are also found
farther south in Nigeria. In some cases, peanuts are also called
groundnuts, though in many places, the term is used to refer to a
different legume.

Ayeni Dasola’s love for the snack also stretches back to her
childhood in northern Nigeria, where peanuts are grown. Better known
as Chef Dassy, the Nigerian personal chef and food writer from Abuja
recalls, “It was my mother’s favorite roadside snack. She’d buy
enough for the two of us to munch on while watching our favorite
evening TV shows.” Her mom still eats them almost every day.

In Nigeria, boiled peanuts are a street food served plain, she tells
me, and notes that a few brave souls eat them shells and all. In
addition to being a roadside food eaten at home, they’re a seasonal
road trip food, and the peanuts, simply seasoned with salt, are a
favorite travel treat.

Similar to those prepared in Senegal and Nigeria, the Southern boiled
peanut is the food of snacks, road trips, and community. Peanuts were
quick to adapt to the South's long, hot summer days, just as they were
to Senegal’s and Nigeria’s. Here, boiled peanuts are a critical
component of road trips, whether from a roadside stand or from a gas
station. A lot of people in the South have strong summertime memories
around boiled peanuts, and Sylvan Tomlin, a former vegan chef and
founder of Atlanta handiwork collective Queer Hands, is no different.

“When I was growing up, they were always in a brown paper bag lined
with a thin plastic bag. That paper bag managed to keep it together
just long enough for me and my mom to work through all the peanuts,
and then promptly dissolved. When I was a kid … it was always a
Cheerwine or Red Rock ginger ale and boiled peanuts. Or an ICEE. An
ICEE and boiled peanuts are crucial for summertime day trips for me
now.”

Atlanta-based chef and bartender at Fox Bros. Bar-B-Q Kyle Nicklaw has
similar memories, first becoming familiar with boiled peanuts on trips
with his grandmother. He now enjoys them as a bar snack, and
recommends them alongside a beer, noting that the saltiness of the
peanuts and the refreshing beverage “usually pair well together.”

Southern boiled peanuts run the gamut of flavors. Although the
standard boiled peanut, according to Nicklaw, is just a water and salt
brine, there are many variations seasoned with beer, cumin, coriander,
chile flakes, dried chiles, barbecue sauce, and smoked pork. “The
seasoning, I think, is what most people will consider their ‘secret
recipe,’ and everyone has their own,” Nicklaw says.

Tomlin boils them with garlic and cayenne, and she says the setting is
just as important as the seasoning. “The best ones are probably
after swimming all day in a North Georgia swimming hole when I forgot
to pack lunch, and there’s a nice old man, it’s always a nice old
man, with a big pot selling BOILED P-NUTS in his yard, and I’m so
hungry from the cold waters and I practically drink the brine and
throw the shells out the window and it happens over and over, year
after year, and it’s always the best.”

Nicklaw's favorites come from a little roadside stand in McDonough,
Georgia, next to an old tire shop. “It was a husband and wife who
had two big boilers set up outside under this old wood shack. You
could go there on the weekends, and there would be a line because you
could get a grocery bag full for $7 or a large cup for $3. Their two
varieties were just the regular salted peanuts, or you could get the
spicy ones with lots of red chile flake.”

Sometimes the secret recipe takes peanut aficionados to unexpected
places, even to dessert territory. Tomlin recalls a road trip to the
Blue Ridge Mountains where chocolate boiled peanuts were on the menu
of a roadside stand alongside regular and Cajun seasoned ones. The man
who was running the stand had his grandkids with him and told Tomlin
that the kids made him do it because they loved chocolate.

“I’m not a big fan of things being sweet when they aren’t
normally sweet, but I had never seen this before, and $5 was a low
price to sate my curiosity. But here’s the thing I always forget
about boiled peanuts — they're fucking peanuts like what’s in
Snickers, Peanut Buster Parfaits, peanut butter,” Tomlin says.
“Boiled peanuts are so wildly different in flavor, texture, and
presentation, I always forget it’s the same food. But you add
chocolate and it tastes like a Reece’s Peanut Butter Cup but with
the texture of a garbanzo bean. It really messed with my brain … but
it was $5 well spent.”

Despite the surge in popularity of Southern restaurants outside the
South, boiled peanuts are primarily found in the region. According to
Tomlin, most people who’ve spent their lives outside the South have
never tried them.

“Even in Philly, people had no idea what I was talking about. I had
a friend who had just moved here, and she was from Ohio. I tried to
introduce her to boiled peanuts, but she had already tried them — in
China, where she had taught. She said they were very popular there.”

Peanuts have a long history of cultivation in China, going back as far
as the 1500s and likely introduced to port cities in Fujian province
by Portuguese traders. Today China is the world’s largest peanut
producer and consumer, with the legume appearing in a vast array of
dishes across the country’s diverse culinary regions. Peanuts are so
popular that they have to be imported to keep up with demand. Chinese
food expert Fuchsia Dunlop’s Every Grain of Rice shares uses for
boiled peanut flour, peanut oil, crushed peanuts, roasted peanuts, and
just about every other peanut preparation imaginable.

While boiled peanuts tend to be left out of most English-language
Chinese cookbooks, they are a popular snack. Five-spice boiled peanuts
are made with a range of variations in spicing, often eaten at home as
an evening snack. According to food writer Kian Lam Kho, who
specializes in Chinese home cooking in America, “to someone growing
up in Asia in the 1960s ‘boiled peanuts and a movie’ is what
‘popcorn and a movie’ is to the American moviegoers.”

For Chinese-American food writer Su-Jit Lin, boiled peanuts meant time
with family. “I remember having them as a kid in my grandparents’
home in the suburbs of Long Island, New York. The Chinese have a love
affair with peanuts, and my family’s ancestry hails from southern
China — [the city of] Fuzhou. Which is a funny parallel that we
boiled peanuts, since it’s also more prevalent in the American South
to boil instead of roast them. In Chinese beliefs, roasting is a
‘hot’ form of cooking since it’s dry, so boiling them is a
‘cooler’ way to enjoy the snack and better for your health —
less irritating to your internal chi.”

Though Kho’s family would spice the boiling water, in Lin’s
family, the peanuts shone on their own without added seasonings.
“Good peanuts are sweet when you boil them and have their own meaty
flavor. ”

Peanuts made a move again in the 19th century, when Chinese immigrants
brought boiled peanuts to Hawaii. Hawaiian boiled peanuts make
appearances while on the road and at a whole host of events, from
softball games to family potlucks to a day of fishing. According to
Hawaiian chef Sheldon Simeon, they’re also the quintessential pa’u
hana (after work) treat. But unlike Southern boiled peanuts, some
Hawaiian versions, like Simeon’s scented with citrus peel and
five-spice seasoning, speak deeply of the intercontinental story of
boiled peanuts: an ingredient that moved around the world, adapting to
the cuisine in each place it landed. Wherever you find them, boiled
peanuts are a blank canvas for endless personalization and creativity.


Despite the peanut’s global reach, its popularity hasn’t waned in
its native range, either, where boiled peanuts are still eaten. Boiled
peanuts appear in Bahia, Brazil, a state with strong culinary echoes
of African cuisine due to the area’s strong historical ties to the
slave trade. Here, boiled peanuts are eaten as a street food, as are
other foods like acarajé (blacked-eyed pea fritters akin to
Senegalese akara), which is rooted in West African culinary culture.
In Mexico, where peanut cultivation spread during pre-colonial times,
peanuts remain a popular snack. And though they aren’t often boiled,
one of the most popular ways to eat them is cacahuates japonés, so
named because this style was introduced by a Japanese immigrant named
Yoshigei Nakatani.

Peanuts also made their way to India. Nandita Godbole, author of
Masaleydaar: Classic Indian Spice Blends, says they’re “consumed
across the country.” At Godbole’s family farm, they would gather
with the farmhands and everyone would eat boiled peanuts together.

“One large cauldron was made, everyone got a heaping scoop on a
plate, or gathered around a communal plate, and dug in. It is great
during the monsoon season when it is pouring so hard that one can’t
do anything but sit around. The slow and deliberate act of shelling,
popping a few freshly boiled and succulent peanuts, seasoned only with
a hint of salt and turmeric, became a good, lighthearted activity for
a rainy, lazy afternoon.”

Archish Kashikar, an independent food scholar and research chef, notes
that there is no clear origin story for peanut production in India.
However, India has become a major producer of peanuts, and the states
producing them have largely integrated them into local diets. Kashikar
was raised in Nashik in the north of Maharashtra, a peanut-producing
state in the western peninsular region of India. There, peanuts are a
part of daily life.

“Peanuts are found in almost everything we eat, from spice pastes to
dry condiments to boiled peanuts as a snack,” he says.

While Kashikar’s family loves to “boil” them in a pressure
cooker either with salt or with a bit of turmeric powder and black
rock salt, he has also seen boiled peanuts on street carts or near
parks, markets, and other recreational areas. Boiled peanuts are
sometimes eaten as a “chaat,” an umbrella term for a type of spicy
and tangy street food served all across India, where boiled peanuts
are mixed with chopped onions, tomatoes, coriander, lime juice, and
red chili powder. Occasionally, boiled peanuts are also served with
chopped raw mangoes or topped with sev, a crunchy fried snack made
with chickpea flour. They’ve also become a beloved travel food, with
boiled and seasoned peanuts once a common sight on trains.

The peanut’s story is never about just one place or time.

Around the world, the love story of boiled peanuts continues to
unfold. It’s a story primarily divided into two parts: The love of
eating and the love of the people you’re eating with.

So what makes a boiled peanut lovable? For many folks, it’s part
texture, part flavor, and part emotional connection. Lin notes that
boiling peanuts unlocks a completely different flavor from roasting:
“They’re sweeter, meatier, and stay firm but have a slight
tenderness to them.” Boiled peanuts are a blank canvas for your
imagination and your spice cabinet, and can be salty, sweet, or even
chocolatey.

But ultimately, what makes boiled peanuts lovable is the people
they’re shared with. Nicklaw’s grandmother brought him boiled
peanuts each week, an expression of care and love during his first
years living on his own. Some of Lin’s fondest childhood memories
involve peeling open peanuts at the kitchen table and eating them
while watching her grandmother cook. 

Kashikar’s peanut memories are family memories, too. “Eating
boiled peanuts became an occasional family activity as it involved
buying fresh bunches of peanuts, cleaning the dirt off the pods and
picking off the roots and leaves, then cooking them. We used to serve
them whole, and there was a certain joy in peeling the cooked soft
shells open and sucking on the salty, earthy water in it, and then
eating the sweet peanuts hiding inside! Sometimes my cousins and I had
competitions to see who was the fastest in peeling and eating our pile
of peanuts.”

Community is at the heart of eating boiled peanuts, an activity often
done with friends and family. To me, boiled peanuts have always
signaled an adventure: eaten on the way to do something wonderful —
swimming, going to the beach, seeing friends, or hiking in the woods.

The love story is a tangible one: Boiled peanuts ask you to dive in
with your hands and all your senses to peel and eat this special
snack. While community is a big part of the love story, so is joy.
It’s hard to be mad tucking into a perfectly cooked, tender shell.
For Tomlin, it’s the whole peanut experience from start to finish,
and perhaps a future career.

“I love food you gotta work for. I love tossing things out the
window. I love salt so much. I love that maybe one day, if  I’m
cool enough to find a big pot, I could be boiled peanut man, if my
community needed that.”

Julia Skinner, Ph.D., is the founder of Root, an Atlanta-based
fermentation and food history company that offers consulting for
creatives, plus classes and events. She’s the author of the
award-winning book Our Fermented Lives: A History of How Fermented
Foods Have Shaped Cultures and Communities and Afternoon Tea: A
History. Her writing has appeared in magazines and newspapers in the
U.S. and beyond, as well as in her weekly newsletter. She is also a
visual artist, and cares for two small Georgia nature preserves.

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