Fall Food: Rakkasei

落花生 Rakkasei is peanuts

It's one of those words I could recognize but couldn't remember for years.

Anyway.

My husband is from Chiba, and that's where I had boiled peanuts for the first time ever. They grow well there because of the loose soil. 

If you have never seen peanuts growing, they grow like potatoes, under the ground. It's wild!

When I see locally grown fresh peanuts for sale in our area (North Osaka), I buy them all. It's rare to find them and the season is short, so it ends up being about this much once a year.

They just need to be boiled in salt water (I put them in the electric pressure cooker and heated without pressure for 20 minutes, it depends on the texture you're going for). They kinda smell like dirt ... because they are grown underground.

They can be eaten once they are cool enough and shelled, plus we like adding some more salt. There are probably more fancy ways to enjoy them, but this is what we know.

As someone who grew up eating only roasted peanuts, these are tasty and make a really simple dinner. We also had some steamed purple sweet potatoes that day. (I don't really cook, I mostly prepare ingredients.)

Have you tried boiled peanuts?