Goober peas

Drive around the back roads of Gulf Coast Florida, and you may encounter farm stands that sell local produce. Depending on the season, you might find tomatoes, sweet corn, rattlesnake watermelons, citrus....

And boiled peanuts.

Roasted peanuts

If you're only familiar with the ubiquitous peanut in its roasted form - ball-park peanuts, foil packaged airline peanuts, dry-roasted peanuts in jars, peanut brittle, French burnt peanuts or peanut butter - this is a totally different peanut experience.

The way you experience boiled peanuts is you pull your car onto the sandy shoulder of a country road beneath towering cypress and pine trees. From beneath the shelter of a wood-roofed shed or open pavilion, a fellow in a gimme-cap dips a battered old sieve or plastic colander into a big aluminum pot simmering darkly over a propane flame or a charcoal burner. The murky brown water drips back into the pot, and a scoop of boiled peanuts goes into a white plastic grocery bag, which is then nestled into a brown paper bag, and then again into a white plastic grocery bag, whose handles are tied in a knot to secure the package.

If there's a lot of you in the car and you have a ways to go, most of the time the boiled peanuts don't make it home - they get eaten up before you arrive at your destination.

Boiled peanuts are a common delicacy in the American South. Raw green peanuts are boiled for a long period - sometimes up to nine hours - in water with salt and sometimes other flavorings such as beer, red pepper flakes, or Cajun spices. They're best eaten warm, and best in the car, while you barrel down a country road, licking salt from your fingers. It's considered a courtesy for the passenger to help peel them for the driver.

Boiled peanut on the left, roasted peanut on the right.

The shell of a boiled peanut is soft and swollen, and the color and texture of soaked corrugated cardboard. They split open easily as you squeeze them, or with the pressure of a bite. Inside, the peanuts themselves are swimming in brine, their reddish skins damp and clinging, and split into their two halves as the shell comes apart. They are soft, pale and translucent, and the flesh is pulpy like a boiled waxy potato. The taste is starchy, vegetal, salty, and a little smoky from the fire.



You can't stop eating them.

In the years after the Civil War, a popular folk song for rural folk was called "Goober Peas." It told how Confederate soldiers, as the war turned against their cause, lacking provisions and hungry, were reduced to eating boiled peanuts salvaged from nearby fields.

Sitting by the roadside on a summer's day

Chatting with my mess-mates, passing time away

Lying in the shadows underneath the trees

Goodness, how delicious, eating goober peas.

Peas, peas, peas, peas

Eating goober peas

Goodness, how delicious,

Eating goober peas.

Thought the peanut originated in South America, it came to the American South from West Africa, where the Portuguese had imported it to grow in their other colonies. The peanut isn't really a nut, it's a legume, like beans or peas. In Africa, they are called "ground nut." They also became popular in Asia, in India, Thailand and Vietnam. In Vietnam, as in the American South, boiled peanuts are a treat enjoyed with a cold beer.

Today, my brother-in-law brought a couple bags of boiled peanuts home to the beach house to share with us, so I was able to eat them in a luxurious setting - in a bowl with a couple of napkins.


Goodness, how delicious!