Boiled Peanuts
and where to find them
There is a particular kind of happiness that only exists on a two-lane highway in the Carolinas, a few hours into a car ride, when you can start to feel the salt in the air, and you look out your window to see hand-painted on a piece of plywood: BOILED PEANUTS. You buy them in a styrofoam cup, hot and dripping, and you eat them while you drive, throwing the shells out the window.
The canonical boiled peanut stop for me now is Bert’s Market on Folly Beach, outside Charleston. It’s a beach convenience store, the kind that sells everything you could ever need within its crowded aisles, in a building that has clearly seen some weather. The peanuts live in slow cookers near the register. If you’re ever there, please don’t miss out.
Last year, I was in a grocery store in Portugal, north of Lisbon, with my friend Alley. Beyond the rows and rows of salted cod, Alley found a bag of raw peanuts and we both knew immediately what we had to do. There was no Old Bay, so we settled on spicy paprika, sweet paprika, garlic powder, cayenne, salt, and pepper, and we forgot to buy beer so we used white wine instead. We cooked them back at the house and ate them outside by the stream. We couldn’t leave them behind on our way to Lagos, so we had to fashion a large water jug into a boiled peanut holder for the car ride.
In 2026, boiled peanuts are still almost impossible to find outside the South. This drives me a little crazy, because they’re not some mysterious, complicated dish. Sure, they take a long time to make, but they require no skill whatsoever. And what a reward for throwing peanuts on the stove with beer, water, and spices. There is no reason they need to be confined to roadside stops within 50 miles of the Southeast coastline.
I do my part to proselytize those north of the Mason Dixon Line by sneaking them onto menus whenever I can. At pop-ups, at dinners, and wherever I think I can get away with it. They don’t always make sense on paper, but I’ve never regretted putting them on a menu.
Which brings me to next Friday, April 10th: I'm doing a pop-up at Heated, my friend Cam's sourdough café in Gladstone, NJ, and there will be boiled peanuts. Cam built Heated herself from the ground up, baking out of her house and doing pop-ups for years before getting a brick and mortar, and the place is a real testament to what that kind of and hard work and dedication produces. The dinner is part of their Heated After Dark series and the menu is Southern-influenced shareable and seasonal bites served alongside a curated wine list. I'm still ironing out the full lineup but I just finalized my deviled crab and sorghum-cured black sea bass recipes this morning. Heated’s incredible sourdough will be woven throughout the menu.
If you can’t make it to the pop up, don’t worry, I’m dropping the peanut recipe here. I’m still using the spicy paprika from that Portuguese grocery store, and a mix of other fun spices, but the base is always the same: raw peanuts, heavily salted water, low heat, a long time. The rest I tinker with constantly. Whatever flavors you want to pull forward, just put them in the broth. It will work. The peanut absorbs everything you throw at it.
