Eating homegrown peanuts
Peanuts are one of our
easiest crops...until the time comes to eat them. As long as I
choose a sunny, loamy spot for the plants, they grow like crazy and
outcompete weeds even if I forget to mulch them. Digging
them is easy, and
I'm testing out a new method of curing peanuts on a line under the
porch roof which seems to be equally speedy.
The trouble is that my
fingers get sore from peanut shell fibers after about ten minutes of
shelling. I'm extremely ashamed to admit that I made one batch of
homemade
peanut butter last
fall, and then let the other half of our harvest sit on a shelf while
we bought peanut butter from the store. There has to be an easier
way to get those doggone peanuts out of their shells!
"In Africa it takes 5 people all
day to shell 100 lbs. of sun dried peanuts," writes the Fully Belly
Project, who
send hand-cranked
peanut sheller kits
to Africa. But no one seems interested in making similar peanut
shellers for homesteaders in the U.S. Instead, the best I could
find on the internet is a little hand-held nutcracker, or the option of
taking your peanuts to an industrial-scale shelling facility.
Although I love peanut
butter, I wouldn't mind turning our peanuts into salted, roasted
peanuts since Mark enjoys salty snacks and would probably crack them a
few at a time as he ate them. It looks like if I mixed a cup of
salt into a gallon of water, soaked the peanuts for six to eight hours,
poured off the water and let the nuts drain for 24 hours, and then
roasted them for ten or fifteen minutes at 350 degrees Fahrenheit, I
might come up with a snack Mark would enjoy.
Any other ideas for
eating our peanuts that don't rub my fingers raw? Or has anyone
had experience with making homemade, salted peanuts? I'm all ears!
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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1) Use the wringer on your washing machine. Set the wringer rolls on a distance slightly bigger than the diameter of the nuts themselves, and slightly smaller than that of the shells. Put the peanuts in a cloth bag or old pillowcase, and feed that through the wringer. It should at least crack the shells.
2) Build a universal nut sheller (which in principle isn't more than an upsized burr mill). (Building moulds for the concrete parts of the nut sheller isn't that hard. Use a conical flowerpot to cast the inner part in. Then use beeswax to modify the outside of the cone to a different tangent, put it in a box and cast the outside around it. The goal of the beeswax is to create a different profile on the outside of the pot, so that the space between the inner and outer cast concrete parts gets smaller as the peanuts drop down. If you're interested, I could make you a sketch if this isn't clear.)
3) Ye olde mortar and pestle should work, but the nut sheller is a lot faster.
David and Shannon --- Yet more proof that Appalachia's not part of the south --- I've never tried boiled peanuts and don't have a clue if we like them. If I can talk myself into it, I might give it a try.
Jessie --- I totally agree! Maybe we can build our own universal nut sheller the way Roland suggests below.
Roland --- The universal nut sheller is what the nonprofit I linked to gives to folks in Africa. I was hoping they had a kit we could buy in the US, but your idea of making one ourselves sounds intriguing as a winter project. I think I might need more info to completely parse what you were describing, but we wouldn't try to make anything for a while, so I'll poke you when I get stuck.
I like your other two ideas, but they sound a bit messy/tough. I may try your wringer idea if the idea my mom sent me doesn't work. (It's pretty similar, but rolls over the enclosed nuts with a rolling pin, which sounds easier.)
I live in zone 3 so peanuts out of my area of knowledge.
Are you roasting them before you shell them?
I did see plans online for a peanut sheller of some sort, but I don't recall where, if I remember I will let you know.
I think you will like boiled peanuts. I easily found several "recipes" online so you shouldn't have any trouble with ideas. It's just boiling the peanuts in salt water. The trick is getting enough salt and boiling until the peanuts are tender. You might be able to find some in a can at the grocery store. It would be a good sample opportunity and they are surprising good for not home cooked. We stick with the plain salted kind and stay clear of the hot and spicy options.
I need to start looking for some to boil myself. I'm considering growing some next year. The last time I tried to grow just a few in the garden, something helped themselves to my seeds. I don't think I had one plant come up.
Good luck. Let us know how it goes.
J.
Justin --- Yup, I was going to roast them before shelling if I tried the snack route. Please do check back if you find plans for a peanut sheller!
Jeremy --- Clearly we're going to have to try at least a small batch of boiled peanuts. I did once eat and enjoy peanut butter soup, so I guess I like them boiled in certain ways...
Your problem was probably bad seeds not critters. Peanut seeds outside the shell don't last long at all, so it's best to make sure the ones you buy are very fresh. Nearly all seeds are good the second year, but when I did my seed test this spring, I found out that our second year peanut seeds weren't going to sprout.
Daddy --- Thanks for the reminder! You mentioned that before, and I had forgotten. I'll have to give it a try.
Rebecca --- Thanks for the tip on small batches. Since we don't know if we'll hate them, we'll definitely make our first try a small batch.