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Peanut Brittle
2 cups granulated sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1 pint chopped peanuts
Put the granulated sugar into an iron frying-pan and heat slowly until the sugar is melted and turns a light brown, or slightly above 300° F., stirring constantly. Have in readiness the finely chopped peanuts, sprinkled with the salt. Place these in a buttered tin, warm slightly and pour over them the melted sugar.
This is a dry-caramel brittle: no water, no corn syrup, no baking soda. It sets hard and glassy rather than light and porous, and it moves fast once the sugar colors.
- The hinge: warm the nuts and the panCold peanuts on a cold tin will chill the caramel on contact and leave you with a lump you cannot spread. Warm the buttered tin and the salted nuts in a low oven while the sugar melts, and have both waiting within arm's reach.
- About that temperatureSugar does not begin to caramelize until roughly 320F, so "slightly above 300F" understates it; light brown is nearer 330-345F. Judge by color, not by the thermometer, and pull the pan the moment it is the shade of a copper penny -- residual heat in cast iron keeps cooking it.
- Dry caramel techniqueMelting plain sugar with no water is the trickiest caramel method. Use a heavy skillet over medium-low heat, stir with a wooden spoon or heatproof spatula, and expect the sugar to clump before it liquefies. Break up the clumps rather than raising the heat.
- A pint of chopped peanutsThat is a volume measure, roughly 10 ounces of shelled nuts, or about 290 to 300 grams. If you substitute salted roasted peanuts for the plain ones the recipe assumes, cut the added teaspoon of salt roughly in half.
- The tinA buttered quarter-sheet pan or a rimmed baking sheet works. Pour and spread immediately with a buttered offset spatula, or tilt the pan -- you have well under a minute before it stiffens.
- No baking soda hereMany brittle recipes stir in a pinch of soda at the end, which foams the caramel and gives the familiar honeycombed, easily snapped texture. This version has none; the result is denser and harder on the teeth.
- Yield and keepingAbout a pound and a half of candy. Break into shards when fully cold and store airtight -- caramel pulls moisture from humid air and turns tacky within a day if left out.
- Cleaning the panDo not scrape hardened caramel from the skillet. Fill it with water and bring it to a simmer; the sugar dissolves on its own.
Peanut brittle is an American candy of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, built on a crop that went from livestock feed and cheap street food to a national staple after the Civil War, as Southern growers expanded acreage and roasted peanuts became a fixture of circuses, ballparks and railway platforms. Brittles themselves are older and not peanut-specific -- caramelized sugar poured over nuts is the same idea as almond croquant or the nut toffees of English and French confectionery -- but the peanut version took hold in the United States because the nut was abundant and cheap. Recipes of this kind reflect how much candy-making was still done at home in this period, when a domestic cook needed little more than a heavy skillet and a few cents' worth of sugar. The soda-leavened, light-textured brittle most people know today is generally thought to be a later development; this recipe belongs to the older, harder school.