A Mockable Review: Hot Boiled Peanuts
I was standing in a gas station in southern Georgia when I had the following text conversation with Jeff Kay.
metten: Dude…they have hot boiled peanuts…heh.
Kay: Get some!
metten: What am I, Jimmy Carter? I’m from Iowa.
Kay: They’re fantastic!
metten: Okay, but I’m only doing this to bridge cultural boundaries.
Kay: Put some south in your mouth!
metten: I’ve tried them. For the sake of clarity, please provide me with your personal definition of ‘fantastic’.
Kay: [No response 'cause I'm a big internet star]
As I said above, I am from Iowa. I know what it’s like to have an abundance of one cheap crop and a need to find new and innovative ways to consume it. I’ve had scalloped corn, corn chowder, corn flakes, corn cakes, corn-based deserts, corn booze and a gas tank full of corn. I get it – you’ve got lots of peanuts – you looked for new ways to eat them and boiling them was an option. Well, as I told Kel Mitchell before he signed on to make the movie Mystery Men, “Just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should.” He ignored my advice and now he’s standing there on his website dressed like some sort of mongoloid pimp. What was I talking about? Oh yeah…peanuts.
So I grabbed the slotted spoon and ladled the wet and mushy peanuts into a paper cup. The smell intrigued me. More than once I’ve been at a party or something and some know-it-all shitbag would snidely announce that peanuts are not nuts, but rather legumes. I always wondered why people chose to share this type of information. Can you imagine a member of the opposite sex saying, “I had not planned to engage in sexual intercourse with that individual…until they provided that magical fact about peanuts! I simply cannot wait to procreate with this peanut expert!” What was I…oh yeah…peanuts.
So anyway, other members of the legume family include alfalfa, clover, peas, beans, lentils, lupins, mesquite, carob, soy, cashews, and of course, peanuts. When one boils a peanut – it begins to smell like a legume. It’s a very rich and vegetabley odor…and the salt helps. I was actually a bit excited to try it. I went to the checkout counter and waited an eternity for a really mean lady to take my money in exchange for her boiled nuts. Southern hospitality my ass…you should have seen the lady at Subway. I’m pretty sure that she was considering kicking my ass because I asked for my sandwich to be toasted. Oh yeah…peanuts.
I get to the car and grabbed my first peanut. I squeezed the saturated legume between my index finger and thumb and frowned as the salt water squished out of it like a nerf ball in the ocean. The skin peeled off easily and I popped the peanuts into my mouth. They had a consistency somewhere between a cooked pea and a cooked water chestnut…surprisingly soft and a bit sandy. I didn’t much care for it. When I bit into them I felt a familiar sensation. They tasted like mashed potatoes…kinda.
I thought about it as I slowly ate the entire cup. That’s right, I ate them all…but it wasn’t until I had finished the whole thing that I realized what they tasted most like. They tasted like over-salted mashed potatoes that had been allowed to sit in the fridge for about a week. I think that if I had grown up in southern Georgia that I would eventually acquire a taste for them. But I didn’t…and they tasted like half-rotten mashed potatoes.
In summary, it sounds kinda gay when a man suggests that another man should “put some south in his mouth”.
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I love boiled peanuts – but they are messy. I grew up in Alabama and Georgia and it would be anti-American to not love boiled peanuts in those areas. I actually have to order them online to get them in WV.
Did you shuffle on into the men’s room and get yourself a month’s supply of condoms, too? Jesus Christ–you don’t buy boiled peanuts at a gas station. If the Hardy Farm Peanut stand is shuttered up, they’re done until next season. Those peanuts probably came from a grow tank in Thailand or somewhere.
I have to state that boiled peanuts purchased in a gas station are in that category of foods like pickled pigs feet and pickled eggs. It may look interesting when your drunk but your gonna eventually regret you ate it. Pass the beer nuts please…
We lived in Augusta GA for a year. The husband loves those damn things. Me, not so much.
Vicky & Shiny are correct. I never eat boiled peanuts from any commercial source. I boild them myself – very easy to do – and they are fantastic! The ones you had were over salted and over cooked.
I wouldn’t put any south in my mouth either…
Come on to West Virginia Metten and experience the Pepperoni Roll. Somebody decided cramming a pepperoni stick in a biscuit was high cuisine and a food tradition was born. I guess it makes sense, since we haven’t found a way to come up with the exact formula for boiled or creamed coal.
I like boiled peanuts, and I’m not that picky about where I buy them. Some are better than others I guess, but I’ve never gotten ahold of any that kept me from stuffing them into my mouth one after another with a steady machine-like rhythm of gluttony. I like to eat them in the presence of a northerner, because they look at me in disbelief that I could eat such nasty looking things, like a primate that just doesn’t know any better. As far as they are concerned, I could be munching out of a wet paper sack of turds. It’s easy to see why; the peanuts in the above picture do have a turd-like sheen.
I’ve had some south in my mouth….but of course Mr.Man is from West Virginia so it just makes sense. And I’m talking about pinto beans and biscuits and gravy….hehehehe