Part 3: INGREDIENTS
Great recipes begin with great ingredients. Fine dining is often considered fine simply because of where the ingredients are sourced. Consider the advertisements below:
“Wild Swordfish plucked from the sea outside our fabulous open-air dining room!”
“Farm-fresh mozzarella from raw milk from grass-fed local cows!”
Every foodie has seen similar advertisements. The idea is right. Great ingredients yield great results.
If you use spoiled butter in your candies, the result will be candies that taste like spoiled butter. Not our aim.
The ingredients listed below are what I think of as the best products for the job at hand.
GRANULATED PURE CANE SUGAR
C&H Pure Cane Granulated White Sugar
Different candies are made with different kinds of sugars. For Old Fashioned Peanut Brittle, and most of the candies that I produce, refined granulated sugar is what I prefer. It makes a consistent product and adds to shelf stability. Here in the United States, we can fairly reliably get the same product week after week and year after year, which helps to produce a reliable, professional grade confection.
Not all granulated sugar is the same. While this recipe for peanut brittle will turn out pretty great no matter your brand of sugar, some brands are better than others. I like pure cane granulated sugar best, which seems to have a sweeter taste than simple granulated sugar, which can be sourced from either sugar cane or sugar beets. This isn’t a big deal really, both work just fine. But, I think you’ll find that granulated sugar from sugar beets will result in a milder sweetness.
LIGHT CORN SYRUP
You need the best sugar and sugar-like substances to make incredible candy. Peanut brittle is better texturally – significantly – if you incorporate corn syrup.
Corn Syrup helps with creating a certain snap in the hard crack of brittle. I’ve found brittle much less crisp without it.
COCKTAIL PEANUTS
This is a sticking point for a lot of people. Most peanut brittle recipes call for the use of Spanish peanuts, and you can absolutely do that. I’m not so fond of them myself. I use cocktail peanuts. I think that because they’re already cooked (and shucked of papery skins), you get a deeper peanut flavor. Additionally, salt enhances and balances sweetness, which is essential to good candy.
BUTTER
Tillamook Sea Salted Extra Creamy Butter
Butter matters. Significantly. The brand of butter, the amount of milk fat in your butter, whether the cows are grass-fed or corn-fed…there are many things that effect taste and melt of butter. I have a couple different brands I like to use.
The first is Sea Salted Extra Creamy Tillamook Butter, from the Tillamook Creamery in Tillamook, Oregon. This butter tastes amazing, and it is 81% butter fat. The higher the butter fat percentage, the creamier the texture of the butter.
Tillamook is not sold everywhere, however, and I find that Challenge Salted Butter is also a consistently good product that may be available in your area.
BAKING SODA
I prefer Arm & Hammer brand Baking Soda because of the reliability of the product. Ensure that any baking soda you use is stored tightly closed – I put mine in a Ziploc bag – otherwise the soda will absorb odors which might effect the end product of your candy.
The most important thing to inspect before using baking soda is the expiration date. If your soda is expired and no longer viable, the candy won’t rise when it is added at the end, and you will have created subpar candy. Always check the date!
MARGARINE
This is the brand of margarine that I use, but it is not always available in stores. I like the melt of Earth Balance, as its consistency at room temperature is more like an oil. Butter, at room temperature, is more solid, and I like to avoid the slight film it creates on my candy once it has cooled. Earth Balance’s flavor is great, too. It works well to grease pans and to bake or sauté with.
I only use margarine in this recipe to grease the pans, so feel free to use your preferred brand, or butter, as it will likely make little difference to the overall product.
SALT
Simply, Morton’s is a consistent product without any unpleasant fillers in their salt.