| Level: | Intermediate |
| Total: | 1 hr |
| Prep: | 10 min |
| Inactive: | 30 min |
| Cook: | 20 min |
| Yield: | 4 cups |
Ingredients
- 1 1/2 cups lightly salted, roasted peanuts
- 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
- 1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper
- 3 cups sugar
- 1 1/2 cups water
- Vegetable oil, for coating the saucepan
- Softened butter for spatula
Instructions
- In a small bowl combine peanuts, cinnamon, and cayenne. Set aside.
- Brush the inside of a medium sized heavy saucepan with vegetable oil. Add the sugar and water to the saucepan, cook over high heat, stirring occasionally with a wooden spoon, until it comes to a boil. Stop stirring, cover and cook for 3 minutes. Uncover, reduce heat to medium, and cook until the sugar is a light amber color. Stir in peanuts. This will greatly reduce the temperature of the sugar so work quickly. Once evenly mixed, pour mixture onto a sheet pan lined with a silicone baking mat or buttered parchment paper. Using a buttered spatula, spread thin. You will have to work quickly when pouring out and spreading the mixture in the pan. If necessary, in order to achieve single layer of peanuts, top with second sheet pan whose underside has been buttered. Cool completely and then break into pieces.
Nutrition Facts
| Serving Size | 1 of 12 servings |
| Calories | 319 |
| Total Fat | 11 g |
| Saturated Fat | 2 g |
| Carbohydrates | 53 g |
| Dietary Fiber | 2 g |
| Sugar | 51 g |
| Protein | 5 g |
| Cholesterol | 3 mg |
| Sodium | 5 mg |
Reviews
If you’re simply looking to make glass out of sugar this is the recipe for you. Look at how the pros do it before making this recipe. They mix in sodium bicarbonate while cooling to make millions of little bubbles so it’s easy to break with the teeth. It’s NOT supposed to be transparent like glass, and not as hard either. You don’t have to worry about crystallization if you’ll simply add a bit of corn syrup before heating. It achieves the same phenomenon of “dissimilar molecules” at a lower temperature than that required to break down sucrose. AND you should use RAW peanuts and cook them in the sugar mixture, that way the sugar takes on a peanut flavor. Do yourself a favor!
This is a family favorite!
Made this for my dad for Father’s Day and he loved it
Made this 3 times and discarded. Have had good success with other receipes, not this one. Candy never foamed and never hardened. Looks easy but think either steps or ingredients left out.
The recipe came out great for me! I followed Alton’s directions exactly and this was the easiest, simplest brittle i have ever made. So tasty. Thanks as always, Alton! -Anthony B.
This recipe is not good. However, if you use the Betty Crocker and add the cinnamon and chili, it is great!! So three stars for the idea and inspiration (I have since started adding cardamom and using different nuts and have other combinations in mind).
This is Peanut Hard Candy, not Peanut Brittle. What makes Brittle brittle is the addition of baking soda at the very end to make the final product airy, tender, and easier to bite and chew. If you want Peanut Hard Candy, fine, but call it by the right name. (Incidentally, most (all?)commercial “Peanut Brittles” are also hard candy, because true brittle is difficult/impossible to mass-produce; the product cools and “sets” too quickly once the baking soda is added to make it by the vat-load.)
In addition, the use of roasted peanuts (instead of raw added earlier in the cooking process) lessens the amount of peanut flavor in the finished product, because the peanuts simply don’t cook with the sugar that long. (Similar to plopping cooked garlic in at the end of cooking a soup instead of adding it to the pot at the same time the stock goes in.)
Lol! I will master this! This is grandma’s brittle… thin glass like and transparent! No baking soda and corn syrup here… because of this it takes more know how. Watch the video… and have a well lit kitchen. My light was out over the stove and I xoukdnt gauge the color well and I took off to soon… I poured onto the pan… knew then it was too light… and I watched it crystallize before my eyes ! It was fascinating! Then it oozed hot liquid that I touched… ouch! It was really neat to watchl… however I must try again…after I replace my light over the range! On another thought… I was always good on scientific theory but my lab experiments often failed… hmmm.
Disaster. A sugar mess. My family is being kind by eating it anyway. Use a different recipe
Superb!!