Saturday, June 16, 2012

Diversity, My Ass

Over at Say Uncle we learn of a guy in Tennessee selling Cajun-style boiled peanuts.  Really?  Seriously?

There are no Cajun-style boiled peanuts.  They don't exist.  I've been around cajun cooking my whole life, have probably 30 or 40 authentic cajun recipes committed to memory because I learned them at the knee of my mother and grandmother.  No boiled peanuts at all.  Cracklins for sure, boudin absolutely, but boiled peanuts?  Not hardly.

Boiled peanuts is Georgia.  There may be cajun in Georgia, but they're immigrants.  When the English pushed us from Acadia, we settled all over the east coast and Gulf coast.  We don't boil peanuts.  We do lots of stuff with peppers, and onions, garlic, all those spices that make your eyes water, but we don't boil peanuts.  Not even with crawfish.  We boil everything with crawfish.  But not peanuts.

3 comments:

Old NFO said...

LOL, I've NEVER had boiled peanuts of ANY type in Louisiana... We always roasted ours... sigh

mostly cajun said...

Yep, like Old NFO: Raised peanuts. Roasted 'em. "Parched" is what the old folks said.

Outside of Louisiana, if you just dump some cayenne pepper in the mix, you can call it 'Cajun' and nobody will know any better.

I learned to boil peanuts on my own after trying them. They're pretty good, but as far as there being a Cajun tradition of boiling peanuts? Not in my branch.

MC

Anonymous said...

what a moron