Peanut Brittle

Made Dec 15, 2024

Note: The humidity of your house affects the brittle's texture, low humidity (or dry air) is what you want for the brittle to set and be crunchy.

It's really helpful to have two people when pouring the hot mixture out on parchment paper. It really begins to set quickly, and you want to spread the mixture out thin so you don't feel like your going to break your teeth biting into it.

Some things to consider about the peanuts:

-Spanish peanuts are smaller than the typical peanuts you find around. Smaller is a bit nicer visually and for distribution and texture. I've only seen Spanish peanuts available to buy raw, so that's why there's roasting directions. You could buy roasted peanuts and skip that step.

-We have used regular raw peanuts before and gave them a quick blitz in the food processor and it turned out well (see more about that in final notes).

-I have not tried this, but it might be interesting to try using salted and roasted peanuts. There is no salt in the recipe, so if you like salted caramel, salted peanuts might make a similar flavor (see more about salt in final notes).

Ingredients:

1 pound Raw, Unsalted Spanish Peanuts

2 cup (400g) White Sugar

½ cup Water 1 cup (368g) Corn Syrup

2 tablespoons Unsalted Butter

2 teaspoons Baking Soda

1½ tablespoons Pure Vanilla Extract

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 200°F (94°C).

Spread raw peanuts out on a baking sheet and cook for one hour, stir once halfway through.

Get out and measure all ingredients, it's very helpful to everything already ready to go.

Recommended: Pulse the peanuts in the food processor with the S-blade attachment for 3 pulses.

In a large, heavy pot, mix water, sugar, and syrup on medium heat. Stirring every now and then. Heat until the sugar spins a long thread, about 235°F (113°C) - 250°F (120°C).

Slowly add the nuts and stir constantly until 295°F (146°C), sugar may be golden brown and stiff. Turn off heat.

Add butter and stir until melted. Gently stir in baking soda till just mixed (over-stirring will knock out air) and let foam and rise as much as it will. Carefully add the vanilla (it'll steam on your hand and it's hot!) and gently fold in till just mixed.

Quickly spread the mixture out on parchment paper in a thin layer.

Allow to cool for an hour, then break into small pieces. Careful again, broken edges of brittle are sharp!) Resist the urge to eat while it's still warm, it sticks to your teeth so much more than after it's cooled.

Final Notes:

2023

Certainly not necessary, but I really like how the brittle turns out when you do the painstaking task of removing the dark brown skin from all the peanuts after roasting and they've cooled. That way the candy is actually on the nut. When it's on the skin, the peanuts will easily pop out of the candy when breaking it apart. To me, it also looks a little nicer in a more professional way.

I didn't feel like hunting down Spanish peanuts, so I got normal, larger peanuts and pulsed some in the food processor for very short blitz. The chopping might have caused more peanut oil to release, because that batch tasted more peanutty than a batch of the same, regular peanuts that didn't get chopped.

I got curious as to why there is no salt in the recipe, so I sprinkled some Maldon sea salt flakes immediately after spreading the brittle out on parchment paper. As someone who enjoys salted caramel, this tasted similar but was a lateral move. It didn't really improve the recipe, but didn't make it worse.

2024

This is my mother-in-law's recipe, she experimented with brown sugar this year: half white-half brown sugar and full brown sugar. Full brown sugar added a hint of roasty-depth that just was not necessary. Half white-half brown had an even smaller hint of that, but it just wasn't an improvement or even a lateral move to us (myself and my husband, mother-in-law, and father-in-law). Full white sugar is the way to go!

Luke and I tried not spreading the brittle out thin with a rubber spatula. In the past we'd kind of dump the hot brittle in mostly one pile and spread it out as thinly as possible as quickly as possible, before it'd start to set. This year, we"spread" the brittle out by moving the pot around the parchment paper more and letting the brittle settle/spread out mostly on it's own. This left more air pockets in the brittle, and even though the these pieces were thicker than the smoothed out ones, it was still easy to bite through. Though we wouldn't mind trying out running a rubber spatula gently over the top of "self settled" brittle to see it that makes the top shinny (see top-left picture below for shine comparison).

Maybe one day try adding a little cinnamon and/or other "warm" spices to a small batch.

UNNECESSARY BUT FUN TO ME STORY WARNING - As I said, this is my mother-in-law's recipe. She got it when a preacher from Louisiana came to her Tennessee high school's home-ec class and showed them how to make it. That's all I know, and that's all I want to know about that story because I love it as is. Any more context would ruin the mystique I've built in my head about that whole situation.