Boiled peanuts

After boiling in salt water they take on a strong salty taste, becoming softer with prolonged cooking, and somewhat resembling a pea or bean, to which they are related because they are legumes and a nut only in the culinary sense.

[1] The peanuts are sold in the hull and boiled with only salt or with a piquant spice mixture such as Old Bay or Zatarain's.

Boiling peanuts has been a folk cultural practice in the Southern United States, where they were originally called goober peas, since at least the 19th century.

The practice of eating boiled peanuts was likely brought by enslaved black people from West Africa, where the related bambara groundnut is a traditional staple crop.

[2]: 64  A 1925 account from Orangeburg, South Carolina (where author Andrew F. Smith believes the sale of boiled peanuts may have begun), mentions boys hawking the food as a snack for five cents per bag.

[3] Raw peanuts in the shell are put in a large pot of very heavily salted water and boiled.

Flavorings such as ham hocks, hot sauce, Cajun seasonings or beer can be added to the boil.

An alternative method for dried raw mature peanuts is to rehydrate them by soaking overnight in water, after which they can be cooked in the conventional manner.

Often small, immature peanuts (called "pops") are included; these have even softer shells and can be eaten in their entirety.

[4] On May 1, 2006, Governor Mark Sanford signed a bill, H.4585, making boiled peanuts the official snack food of South Carolina.

With itinerant hawkers increasingly rare in the country, boiled peanuts in the shell are now seldom consumed.

[citation needed] Edward Long, in his 1774 History of Jamaica, notes the consumption of boiled peanuts on the island.