Roasted Peanuts with Chili and Sichuan Pepper

Preparing the peanuts and pepper

1. It is easier to roast peanuts that are already peeled of their red skins. They are large and a pleasant yellowish-white. By the way, raw peanuts taste like beans. Chew one and you will see.

   

2. Prepare the hot pepper in advance: remove the seeds, stems and, if possible, the inner membranes from the dried pods.

   Once, roasted peanuts with hot pepper and Sichuan pepper were brought back from China. Understandably, the ingredients looked a little frightening: a bright red color is firmly associated with fiery heat. Red means fiery, as an indicator. That is, until we tried the peanuts with pepper. They are delicious, and not fiery at all. There is heat, of course, but it is soft and very pleasant. I would even say the peanuts with these additions fall well short of “hot”.

   The dried peppers brought from China are hot, but more gently so. If you throw away the seeds and white membranes, where most of the capsaicin is, the taste is closer to neutral with a not-too-strong aftertaste. I would say no more than 500-600 units on the Scoville scale. For comparison, Tabasco sauce is 2,500-5,000. The hot peppers sold here are much hotter than the Chinese ones. But to my surprise I found Chinese peppers for sale here, in almost any big store; we simply never noticed them.

   Cut the remaining red pods any way you like with a knife, preferably into thin strips.

   If you don’t have mild peppers, you can take a much smaller amount of ordinary hot pods and chop them more finely. But I wouldn’t advise using pepper ground to a powder, because it instantly sticks to the oily surface of the peanuts.

   

   If you like, measure out 1 tsp of Sichuan pepper (2 g): a small amount noticeably improves the snack, and it is also on sale.

   The Sichuan pepper used in cooking is the husk of the fruit of the citrus-family plant Zanthoxylum piperitum. Its flavor is like nothing else, something between anise, nutmeg and lemon. It is not so much hot as very aromatic, and leaves a lasting pleasant taste in the mouth with a slight numbness.

   

3. Dissolve 1 tsp of salt (6 g) in a small amount of boiling water.

   The peanuts need salting. If you just sprinkle salt over peanuts and roast them, the salt will most likely crunch on your teeth like sand. Oily peanuts don’t dissolve salt. There are different ways to salt them, but I found brine convenient.

   Pour the brine over the raw kernels for 1-2 minutes.

   

   Drain the peanuts in a colander.

   When you start cooking in the microwave, the water evaporates very quickly while the salt stays behind, invisible and not felt as grains. The peanuts are perfectly and moderately salted, and that is the main thing. I have even read that raw peanuts are boiled in salted water before roasting.

Roasting in the microwave

1. What you roast peanuts in doesn’t matter much. They roast beautifully in a dry hot frying pan or in the oven. What matters is to watch the process constantly and carefully.

2. Spread the salted peanuts on a large plate in a single layer and put them in the microwave. If your oven is powerful enough, you may want to lower the power for roasting. Heat: during the initial heating, the water left from the brine evaporates very quickly. After that the peanuts start to roast fast. While roasting, stir fairly often, or the peanuts will simply start to burn.

4. Once they start to roast, you will notice it by a pleasant nutty smell and a slight sizzle. At that point add the Sichuan pepper, to taste. For 0.5 kg of peanuts, 1 tsp of Sichuan pepper (2 g) is enough.

   Spices usually don’t tolerate heat treatment well, but they will be in the microwave for only a few minutes, so don’t worry. If you are really concerned, add the pepper a minute before the end of roasting.

   

   Roast the peanuts in 20-30 second increments, stirring, until they reach the doneness you want: a light golden color.

   Note that because of the large amount of fat in the kernels, peanuts get very hot and hold their heat for a long time, so they keep roasting after you take them out of the microwave (oven, stove, or simply stop heating). This is important! It is fine to slightly underroast the peanuts; they will finish cooking as they cool.

5. As soon as the peanuts stop heating, add the prepared, chopped hot pepper.

   

   Stir and wait until completely cool.

   

Storing

1. It is best to store peanuts with pepper in an airtight jar or container. First, roasted peanuts are very aromatic. Second, they absorb moisture and foreign odors.

   

Serving

1. Serve. Then again, this tasty snack gets eaten quite quickly, especially when friends get together for a beer.