Homemade peanut brittle is an easy, peanutty sweet treat that satisfies your sweet tooth and crunchy cravings. Bite-sized golden pieces of brittle with peanuts will have coming back for more!
You don’t need a candy thermometer to make this old-fashioned peanut brittle. I’ll show you how to make it without one along with a special “pulling” technique. It’s the only recipe that I use for making Homemade Peanut Brittle.
Don’t worry if you are not an experienced candy maker or know anything about “crack stage” orhow to temper chocolate. (By the way, there is no chocolate in this recipe.)
This recipe came from my Southern mother-in-law. To make her peanut brittle, you need two cups of raw or parched peanuts. (I used the entire contents of a 16-ounce bag of parched peanuts. The more nuts the merrier, in my opinion.)
Let’s look at how to make this Southern treat.
Ingredients
To make this peanut brittle recipe, you need the following ingredients:
⅔ cup light corn syrup
1 ½ cups granulated sugar
2 cups raw peanuts
1 tablespoon baking soda
How To Make Peanut Brittle
In a large saucepan, combine the nuts with corn syrup and sugar and cook over medium-high heat until it turns honey-colored. It takes me about 15 minutes.
Once the color becomes rich, golden brown, add baking soda.
A chemical reaction will occur and the mixture will foam and lighten in color.
Spread the candy mixture onto a baking sheet lined with parchment paper or one that has been well-greased. (A couple of tablespoons of butter should do the trick.) Or you can go all Alton Brown and use a Silpat liner (silicone baking mat).
Spread the mixture out a bit using a wooden spoon or spatula.
Store peanut brittle in an airtight container at room temperature for 6 to 8 weeks.
Before it has cooled completely, take two forks and “pull” the brittle apart. This technique set my mother-in-law’s brittle apart from others. The pulled brittle is easier to eat than the thick brittle typically sold in stores.
Becareful because the brittle is really hot.
Do not attempt to make peanut brittle when it is humid outside or while it is raining. It’s very similar to making divinity. Humidity and peanut brittle are not friends.
Peanut brittle makes a great edible gift during the holiday season. Layer it in a glass jar and tie a festive ribbon. Your gift recipients will thank you for this family favorite delicious treat.
Vernel’s Homemade Peanut Brittle
You don’t need a candy thermometer to make this peanut brittle. The special “pulling” technique creates sweet, crunchy strands of sugar and nuts that you will love.
4.58 from 7 votes
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Course: Desserts
Cuisine: American
Prep Time: 5 minutesminutes
Cook Time: 15 minutesminutes
Total Time: 20 minutesminutes
Servings: 6
Calories: 578kcal
Author: Lynda – Southern Kissed
Ingredients
⅔cuplight corn syrup
1 ½cupssugar
2cupsraw peanuts
1tablespoonbaking soda
Instructions
Grease, butter, or line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Set aside
Mix together corn syrup, sugar and raw peanuts in a large saucepan.
Cook over medium-high heat until mixture turns honey colored.
Remove from heat. Add baking soda and stir well.
Pour mixture onto prepared baking sheet. As soon as brittle has set, use utensils to pull and stretch brittle into pieces. Caution: Brittle will be very hot.
The nice thing about this peanut brittle recipe is that you don’t need a candy thermometer to make it. Once you have made it a few times, you learn how to judge the process by the colors of the mixture.
Be sure to come back and tell us how your homemade peanut brittle turned out!
Hungry for more Southern favorites? Be sure to check out these other delicious recipes:
Easy Chicken and Dumplings – Both a family and reader favorite, this recipe is easy to make and is Southern comfort food at its finest.
Buttermilk Biscuits – You only need three simple ingredients to make these light and fluffy biscuits. They’re perfect for serving alongside a meal or stuffed with meat, egg, and cheese for the main course.
Old Fashioned Tea Cakes – This recipe is an authentic Southern recipe – it was transcribed while my mother-in-law made them by heart.
Classic Pound Cake– This recipe comes from Lulu Buffet, the sister of singer Jimmy Buffet. It’s a great treat to enjoy with company.
Baking soda is a key ingredient in peanut brittle. It's what aerates the candy, giving it a nice light crunch. Why didn't my homemade peanut brittle get hard? The main reason why peanut brittle doesn't get hard and have the crunch we expect is because the sugar was not cooked long enough.
The general origin story of peanut brittle is that it came from the South, and that a Southern woman in the second half of the 19th century came up with peanut brittle by accidentally putting baking soda into her taffy instead of cream of tartar.
This is because you did not cook it long enough in the microwave. If the texture of the peanut brittle is sticky, and not crunchy, this means that you need to cook the mixture longer, until it reaches 300°F.
To store: Store peanut brittle (once it's completely cooled) in an airtight container at room temperature. Do not refrigerate as the moisture from the fridge will cause the brittle to soften. Store for 6-8 weeks. To freeze: Peanut brittle can be frozen and stored up to 3 months.
Working quickly, pour into prepared 10×15 pan. To keep the brittle light and airy, do not spread or flatten the mixture. Instead, let it flow freely. Place in a cool area and leave until completely cooled, about 2-3 hours.
I don't recommend substituting honey, molasses, or agave for the corn syrup. Those other liquid sugars have impurities that will burn at the higher temperature of making caramel, leading to a bitter-tasting brittle.
Peanut brittle has one redeeming quality: peanuts. Outside of that single ingredient, peanut brittle is painfully unhealthy. It contains: sugar, corn syrup, and butter, all of which are unhealthy for your body in different ways.
A Peanut By Any Other Name Would Be As Unappreciated
"The ground pea of the South, or as it is sometimes called, the gouber or pindar pea," said one patent application in 1848. "The earthnut, groundnut, goober, pindar or peanut" is how the Department of Agriculture phrased it.
Why did my peanut brittle turn out chewy? The likely cause is that the sugar mixture didn't reach the proper hard crack stage temperature. Ensuring it reaches 300˚F is key to getting that classic brittle texture.
Didn't get it hot enough. You have to hit hard crack stage heat or it's not going to harden. From internet: Hard-Crack Stage is a cooking term meaning that a sugar syrup being heated has reached 149 – 154 C (300 – 310 F.) It is a test of how hot a sugar syrup is, and of how much water is left in it.
Reviving stale peanut brittle is possible to some extent. You can try placing the stale peanut brittle on a baking sheet and gently heating it in an oven at a low temperature, around 250°F (120°C), for a few minutes. This can help to soften it a bit and restore some of its original texture.
The water is there in the first place to help prevent sugar crystals. Steam from the boiling water washes down the sides of the covered pot as the sugar cooks and takes with it, down into the boiling sugar, any crystals that form or are thrown onto the sides of the pot.
Baking soda helps to aerate brittle — it literally makes the molten candy bubble in the pot — to create a brittle with an airy, almost honeycomblike texture that crunches easily when eaten.
Examples of interfering agents include corn syrup and cream of tartar. A key step in making brittle is heating the syrup to the proper temperature. Typically, this is the hard crack stage or 300° to 310°F.
It uses the most basic of ingredients (sugar, corn syrup, and peanuts). What's important to know is that the corn syrup controls the grain of the brittle so adding too little and you have a grainy textured brittle, while adding too much will result in a stringy and sticky brittle.
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