Make This Addictive Thai Chili Lime Peanut Snack at Home

Welcome to Hot Thai Kitchen. So, I often get recipe requests from people who go to Thailand and fall in love with a particular dish and they want to make it at home. But the one dish that comes up again and again from travelers to Thailand is actually not any kind of curry, stir fry, or any meals at all, but these Thai peanuts. Peanuts does not seem like it should be anything special, right? But these peanuts are fried with iconic Thai herbs like garlic, lemongrass, lime leaves, and chilies. And they are incredibly addictive. And thing is, you probably can't find these outside of Thailand. So, the only real solution is to make it at home. So, today the recipe is going to be my

version of these peanuts with my own special seasoning blend that's a little sweet, salty, sour, umami. M. I'm telling you, every time I put these out, they disappear fast. So, I suggest you make a lot. In Thai, these peanuts are called tua to samun. Tua means nuts. Todd means fried, and samun pry means herbs. So, here are all the samun you're going to need. First, the garlic. You want to choose large cloves for this because we're going to fry them into garlic chips. I'm going to use a mandolin to thinly slice them to get even slices so they fry evenly. Don't slice your fingertips. Please don't go fast and pay attention always to how far your fingertips are from the blade. And once you are close, stop and save the

stops for another dish. If the mandolin terrifies you, or if you don't have one, hand slicing is fine, but do try to make them as even as possible. You want to prep the garlic first and then spread them all out to let them dry while you prep other things because the drier the garlic, the faster they will fry. By the way, mandolins do come with this guard, but I find it really clunky and it really doesn't work with the garlic cuz they are too small. Next, mrude lime leaves, which is my favorite part of this whole mix. If you just wash them, it is critical that you dry them completely because any water left on

them will cause your oil to splatter aggressively. Then tear off the center stems like so. Then for each half of the leaf, tear them in half. So for each leaf, you should get four stemfree pieces. Next, we have lemongrass, which I'm going to just thinly slice on a diagonal. You don't have to be precise or meticulous with this because we're not going to actually eat these, and I will explain more later. We also have some dried chilies. Anything that's about this size will do. These are just no-name Chinese dried chilies, but our bowl will also work.

Now, the peanuts, you're going to need raw peanuts cuz we're going to be frying them if possible. I find that the skin on ones do taste better and they also look better. If you go to an Asian store, you're going to have choices maybe of different types of skin on peanuts. In my experience, the red skin ones, which tend to be smaller, taste better. They're a little bit more expensive, but for a reason, it's worth it. So, if you have the option, choose that. If not, whatever you've got available is fine. You can do only peanuts, but I find that if you mix in some cashews, the whole thing looks better and tastes better. If you're allergic to peanuts, you're probably not going to watch this video, but yes, you

can do this with all cashews as well. Now, for the seasonings, I'm going to give you two options. The first is the classic traditional way. If you go eat this in Thailand, most of the time it's just going to be this very simple, just salt. So, if you want to keep things simple, you can stop here. But when I make it, I like to make it more interesting. So, in addition to salt, I'm also going to add some sugar, which is going to be that sweet and salty contrast. That is why this is really addictive. We've got salty, we've got sweet. To complete our trio of taste, we're going to need sour, which is going to come in the form of lime juice powder, which I use this brand. I highly recommend it. You've seen me use it

before in my chicken wings recipe. It's so handy when you want to add acidity and lime juice flavor, but you don't want any liquid. I recommend this brand, which I get on Amazon, and I will link to below. If you want to make it spicy, you can add some kind of chili powder. This is just cayenne pepper, but you can do whatever you've got available or omit it altogether if you don't want to make it spicy. And finally, the special ingredient, the secret to all of your Asian aunties delicious cooking, chicken buong powder, aka how to add MSG without saying that you added MSG. This is going to add umami to our nut mix and it just makes it super addictive and delicious. It is optional, but highly recommended. Now, I'm going

to blitz everything together in a coffee grinder because the finer the seasoning, the better they will stick to the nuts. You could potentially do everything just as is. Oops. But you will notice that a lot of the seasoning does fall to the bottom of the bowl. That's it. Let it settle before you open. And don't take a big inhale when you do open. Just saying. Tada. Perfect. Before we get to frying, I want to take a quick moment to let you know that I have launched a new ebook.

It's got 25 of the most popular Thai dishes. I wanted to make this the most convenient way for you to cook from my recipes. You don't have to go online and you don't have to navigate any ads. Each recipe also links directly to my YouTube video tutorial, so you don't have to go searching if you need it. So, check it out at the link in the description below. And thank you in advance for your support of Hot Thai Kitchen. Let's get to frying. And the key thing to remember here is you must fry the herbs first. Let them infuse their flavors into the oil and then you fry the nuts so that the nuts can then pick up the flavors from the oil. If you do it the opposite will not taste as good. Okay, so let's

start with the garlic. I've got about 1 in of oil here over medium heat. And while the oil is still cold, I'm going to add one slice of garlic as my temperature tester. Once it starts to bubble, I will add the rest of the garlic and turn the heat down to low. Low temperature is absolutely critical here because you want the garlic to turn crispy before they brown. And to become crispy, they need enough time for all the moisture to evaporate. If your heat is high, it'll brown before all the moisture is gone. How do we know the moisture is gone? The bubbles. The bubbles are steam exiting the garlic. So, when the bubbles are mostly gone, the garlic is crispy. And if you did it right, this should happen shortly before

they are golden or at the same time. Once they're golden, fish them out and drain them on paper towel. Do not let the garlic brown or it will be bitter. Next is the lime leaves. Still on low heat. I'm going to add them to the oil and they'll fry up in seconds. Again, we are looking for the bubbles to stop, a sign that our leaves are now crispy. And then out they come. Oh no. Then the lemongrass, which we're also going to fry on low heat, but I'm actually only frying them to infuse the flavor into the oil and not to eat them because fried lemongrass does not turn crispy and delicious like the garlic and

the lime leaves. They just kind of turn hard and chewy and not particularly pleasant. Thai people typically leave them in the mix, but I prefer not to. So once the bubbles subside, I'm going to just fish them out and discard them. Don't feel bad. There's basically no flavor left in them. Then the chilies, also on low heat. And there's not going to be much happening here because the chilies are already dry. So you're just waiting for the color to turn a little bit darker and they'll go from chewy to crispy. This take just seconds. So don't walk away. Okay. Now we're going to fry the nuts. So, using the same oil, this is the critical part. Same oil. Turn it up to about medium high. And I'm going

to wait for the temperature to come to 350. Okay. And then I'm going to add my peanuts first. Careful. And then fry them. And at this point, you just need enough oil for the peanuts to be submerged. So, if you don't have enough oil, just add enough so that all the peanuts are covered. They don't have to go above the peanuts by any amount at all. Once the peanuts are in, you want to be stirring all the time in order to promote even cooking because otherwise the ones at the very bottom will brown more than the top. So, you kind of want to just be here. Now, how you can tell these are done because they're covered in the skin and the skin will not change color is you're going to just have faith in the ones that are

open, right? And cuz there's always going to be a few that are going to be split open and you can see the inside and you're going for a color that is golden brown and they will continue to darken once they exit the oil from the residual heat. So, it's important that you keep an eye on them and take them out sooner than later. Remember, if they're under, you can fry them again, but if they're over, they're toast. Ah, some of them will kind of have small explosions from like the skin popping open. It's It's completely normal. I have yet to have one actually explode. So, it's all It's okay, I think.

Everything is fine. It's totally safe, everybody. I swear this is the most explosion I've ever seen. I've done this so many times. And of course, this time they're exploding just for you. Getting pretty close now. These peanuts are quite small, so they don't take very long in my experience. 7 minutes for peanuts that are on the smaller side. 10 minutes for bigger ones, but this varies significantly based on your heat and all this stuff. So, this is not something you want to walk away from. Okay, I'm gonna take this one. Take a look. Okay, out it comes. I'm going to lift it off heat a bit. And then in goes to my brownie pan, which I have lined with paper towel. And the reason I am using a brownie pan

rather than a mixing bowl is so that they will cool faster because if they're in a small bowl or a mixing bowl, it just takes forever. And trust me, you're going to want to eat these ASAP. Okay, finally, the cashews in the same oil. And these take less time even though they're bigger for some reason. In my experience, 3 to 5 minutes. again. Stand here. Stir them for even browning. That did not take long at all. I think my heat was a little high, but there we go. Beautiful. Look at this.

Right into the peanuts. And time to put it all together. All right. Here we go. I'm going to remove my paper towel. And while the nuts are still hot and oily, I'm going to sprinkle the seasoning all over them as much as I can. And then toss, toss, toss. Try not to inhale the seasoning. One. The one thing that does happen when you powderize your seasoning is they fly in the air. So once the nuts all look like they are have good coverage, you're going to get a lot of seasoning at the bottom. That's totally fine. Not all of your seasonings will cling onto the nuts. We want to have more than we need so that all the nuts get as much seasoning as they can. Now all the herbs go in. Woohoo.

M look at that. That looks so good. And by the way, the amounts of herbs and garlic and chilies, those are all just suggestions. If you want less, more, you know, it's totally fine. Okay. And now, unfortunately, you're going to have to wait for these to cool because the nuts will not be crunchy while they're still warm. Not to mention, you burn yourself. So, we have to now wait for the 15 longest minutes of your life. But while we wait, let me show you the lemongrass. And the reason why I don't bother putting them in, like they look fine, and if you add them, they'll actually look nice, but like they're just kind of chewy

and there's not much flavor left in them cuz all the flavors have gone into the oil. So, it doesn't taste like anything. And if I kept frying them until they lose all moisture, then they just become hard. They've done their job. Look at this gloriousness. My goodness. I'm going to taste. And the question is always, what do I eat? Because there's so many options. So, I'm going to do peanuts and cashews together with a lime leaf and a garlic piece and have everything all in one bite. They're dangerous. And I have had people actually say this. It's like, oh, they're so dangerous. The lime leaves, you can really taste them and they're so crispy. So, it's not like uncomfortable, you know, like if I were to put

these in soups, I wouldn't eat them. But crispy like this. The garlic is my favorite part, I think. Or the lime leaves. I can't decide. But if you fry them correctly, they'll be crispy. The chilies, you might be wondering, what do I do with this? I'm sorry, spicy. You might be wondering, well, what to do with the chilies? You can eat them if you want. Or you can just leave them there as garnish because trust me, the mix just looks so much better with the chilies in. Um, and if you did add chili powder, it kind of gives an indication that this is a spicy mix. So, people are not surprised. But if the chilies are not too spicy, you can absolutely eat them. And they're actually really good cuz they've got chili flavor with the nut. These are not

too spicy. They're great. Eat them with the spoon. And that is it. I hope you give these a try and trust me, they will become your new favorite party snack. The recipe, as always, will be on hot thaiikitchen.com along with all the questions you might have, including ingredient questions, substitutions, and storage, and so on and so forth. A special thanks to all of our Patreon members who help support the show. Thank you to everyone who's watching, and I will see you next time.