South Carolina Boiled Peanuts

An iconic staple food of South Carolina, boiled peanuts are a simple snack consisting of raw, semi-mature peanuts in their shells that get boiled in salty water for a long time, with the optional addition of a piquant spice mixture. Peanuts arrived in the South in the 18th century on slave ships, when they were known as ground-nuts, ground peas or goobers.

Numerous theories claim that the practice of boiling peanuts began with Confederate soldiers in the time of the Civil War, when they were hungry because the food was scarce, so they dug up raw peanuts and boiled them. The first recipe was published in 1899 by Almeda Lambert.

Today, boiled peanuts are so popular that they are declared as South Carolina's official snack food since 2006, consumed wet, by cracking the softened shell open and eating the peanuts along with the salty brine.