Sweet Chili Peanuts from the Candy Manufactory
Slightly sweet, slightly hot, 100 percent delicious!
One of the tastiest treats we craft at the Candy Manufactory, these Sweet Chili Peanuts are ideal for this time of year! They taste great, of course. And take note that they also hold up in the heat, which means you can bring them on summer picnics or camping trips. Then there are all the wonderful ways you might enjoy them in any season: serve them with cocktails, eat them as a snack any time of the day, or toss them onto salads or noodle dishes.
The key ingredient in the peanuts are the very special Korean red pepper flakes we get from our friends at Épices de Cru in Quebec. What we’re getting now, Miss Kim chef and Managing Partner Ji Hye Kim says, is “very close to the best of what she had growing up in Korea.” The red pepper is produced by a family-owned company whose quest to make ever-better kimchi led them to grow and process their own chilies. It’s from the area around the town of Cheongsong, a well-known pepper-growing region in the East.
These special pepper flakes are what we use at Miss Kim for our kimchi and a whole range of other dishes. At my house, they’re on the kitchen table next to the Fleur de Sel sea salt and the grinder filled with Tellicherry black pepper. All three get used at virtually every meal, as they’re awesome on almost everything. I sprinkle the chili flakes on salads, soups, pasta dishes, fish—you name it, it’s good! I love the fact that the chili has some spice but not too much, and a nice undertone of sweetness but, again, not too much.
To make the Sweet Chili Peanuts, we toss toasted Virginia peanuts with butter, sea salt, and a bit of cane sugar, in addition to the pepper flakes. They’re terrific and really sort of magically compelling—sweet, salty, spicy, and crunchy all at the same time. Try them to discover a flavor that makes me think of what writer Maria Popova calls “that rare miracle of insight at the meeting point of the lucid and the luminous.”
