Dry Roasted Edamame Brittle

For those of you having trouble with this recipe let me point out a few things.
First, its the same candy making technique as Alton’s Peanut Brittle. 2nd Watch the video for the Pnut version and you will get the hang of it. 3rd use a candy thermometer. Yea Alton says eyeball it it but in the video he points out to take the sugar to 340 deg F. Eye balling sugar crack points is for experts like my grandma was. 4th Read my review of the peanut brittle recipe 🙂

Okay, I think there’s a bit of a liability issue here. Molten sugar is extremely hot and very, very sticky, which makes it very dangerous. I think all the monkey motion with dissolving the sugar in water, then boiling the water out to be left with melted sugar, is supposed to be a relatively safer way of melting the sugar. I tried it this way twice, burned it once and had it seize in the pan once. Nonetheless the flavor was so good I persevered, and the third time I just threw the sugar in the pan dry over high heat, stirring frequently. The sugar melted beautifully and it poured out onto my silicone mat perfectly.

Keep at this one, it’s worth mastering!

Something is missing. Followed directions twice. By time sugar is amber it is dry.This recipe is not good eats. Please review it. Have done countless other recipes from this show. All have been good. This one should be modified.

I am not sure what I did wrong. I followed this recipe to a “T”. But the sugar never hardened. I left it overnight, but it was not set by morning. I have no idea what I could have done differently. The taste was very good, and I can only imagine how great it would have been as a brittle. I want to try it again, but don’t want the same results. Does anyone have a clue why it wouldn’t have hardened?

I am certain I followed the recipe correctly. It looked good but tasted awful. I was trying to put a tub of dry roasted edamame to use & this was the only recipe I could find. I put it in the break room at work and noticed people were spitting it out into the trash saying it tasted like, cat food, dog food, barf, a joke, salty, nasty, and not thaaaaat bad. I will keep looking/ thinking of things to do with this tub of dry roasted edamame…

I don’t have a cast iron skillet to use as a heat diffuser (shame on me, I know) but I just had to try this recipe. I was doing other chores while the first batch cooked, so of course it burnt badly over the direct heat when my back was turned. So I poured it out to cool and throw away without wasting the soynuts. For the second batch, I boiled over medium-high (instead of high) and cooked for 15 minutes over medium-low (instead of medium). It obviously wasn’t done yet, but I was afraid of it burning again, so I checked other brittle recipes and the consensus seemed to be getting the syrup to 340 F. I got out my thermometer and watched it like while it went from 295 to 340 (another five minutes or so) and pulled it off the heat immediately to go on with the rest of the recipe. It turned out beautifully!

I was sitting down with some dry roasted edamame and a beer, flipped over to Good Eats and this episode was on – right at the part where they were eating edamame and drinking beer. 🙂

I had picked up a large 29 oz container of dry roasted edamame at CostCo, I think it was around $6. It was about 1/3 gone when I saw this episode. A few days later, I had to try it.

The flavor is great – salty, sweet, a hint of heat, and a great texture. I was actually snacking on the edamame a little with just the soy/salt/cayenne on it while the sugar was cooking.

Speaking of the sugar cooking, something went horribly wrong with my execution. I did the cast iron trick with a stainless stell pot inside it.. that worked fine… but as the sugar was cooking, it wasn’t changing color at all. 20….25…30…35 minutes went by. I was just going to keep going, but there was a large ring of sugar crystals forming around the pot, and you could see chunks of sugar on the surface of the bubbles. It was only getting worse after about 35 minutes of cooking, so I added the edamame and … it was a grainy ugly horrible mess. A very tasty, grainy, ugly, horrible mess.

I didn’t stir the sugar while it was cooking – the recipe didn’t mention stirring, and Alton is always VERY clear on dos/don’ts. I’ll have to do some research and see what I did wrong, or if it was just bad luck and I should try again.

I loved cooking peanut brittle with my dad when I was a kid, but lost the taste for it in my 30’s. I saw Alton’s show last week on this and had to try it (had a similar impulse for the lemon curd show…) My dad passed away in September, so maybe I’m a bit more nostalgic now.

My local grocery (an H.E.B.) called them “Dry roasted soy nuts, unsalted”. They were organic and $3.79/lb (vs peanuts at $2.79/lb), so no sweat for 7 oz.

Cook time was a bit longer than I expected, but not much. The cast iron skillet trick worked great, and he’s absolutely right about working VERY quickly when you start to spread. I’d suggest spreading even while it’s foaming up with the nuts- I waited for the foaming to die down and almost had a pile ‘o brittle.

The taste is FANTASTIC – just a bit of zing. I like hot, but even my wife who doesn’t like hot still enjoyed them.

I bought enough soy nuts for two batches – glad I did since I think a lot of friends will be getting this for Christmas!

As always Alton, thanks for shining a new light on an old favorite. My dad would be pleased.