Peanut Brittle (Easiest Microwave Recipe!) - Cooking Classy (2024)

FAQs

Why is my microwave peanut brittle chewy? ›

Adding baking soda when making peanut brittle makes the hot sugar syrup foam, creating lots of tiny air bubbles that give the candy the porous, crispy honeycomb texture it's known for. Why didn't my peanut brittle turn out? If your peanut brittle is light in color and chewy, it was not cooked long enough.

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 sugar needs to be cooked to what is called the hard crack stage, 300ºF.

Baking soda is also very important at this stage since it reacts to the heat, creating carbon dioxide that aerates the caramel, enabling it to snap when someone bites into it rather than requiring them to gnaw at it until it breaks or pulls apart.

Water: Water helps the sugar completely dissolve. Salt: A pinch of salt enhances the other flavors. If you opt for salted butter, you can skip this ingredient. Peanuts: Of course, you'll need peanuts for this classic treat!

Those other liquid sugars have impurities that will burn at the higher temperature of making caramel, leading to a bitter-tasting brittle.

You will want the cookie sheet to be non-stick. Use parchment paper, a silicone baking sheet or a greased cookie sheet. Spread the peanut brittle as thin as you can. Immediately add your sea salt.

So, I Googled Salvaging Undercooked Peanut Brittle and followed Tiffany's helpful instructions to throw the pieces back in the pan, turn the heat up and stir, stir, and stir to a raging boil and wait to pour it in the pan until it reaches 300 degrees.

Just as in homemade syrup or caramel corn, baking soda causes a unique chemical reaction (basically a lot of rising foam) that is crucial in creating the right texture in peanut brittle. If you make it without baking soda but you will notice the brittle is a bit harder to bite through.

A more hands-on meal would mean a washing-up break, but simply pouring your peanuts into the co*ke bottle allowed for a protein boost that you could sip while working. Since then, the salty-sweet pairing of sugary co*ke and savory peanuts has spread across the South, from the Carolinas all the way to Texas.

Is peanut brittle good for you? ›

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.

This peanut brittle recipe will keep for up to 2 months if stored in an airtight container in a cool, dry place. I recommend placing pieces of wax paper or parchment paper between the candy pieces to keep them from sticking together.

The perfect temperature for peanut brittle is 300°F. This is when it will hit the “hard crack stage” to make crispy, crunchy peanut brittle, that's not overcooked.

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.

If your peanut brittle is too hard, it might have cooked too long and reached a temperature higher than the hard crack stage.

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.

It all boils down to the natural sugars found in flour. Flour, milled from wheat, contains gluten (a type of protein) and sugars (which form starch when their molecules are chained together). When these sugars are heated, they melt and then quickly recrystallize, resulting in an undesirable chewy texture.

Low and slow. Simmering the syrup for English toffee to the requisite 300°F temperature can (and should) be a slow process — up to 20 minutes or so. Don't hurry this gradual transformation; syrup that doesn't reach 300°F, or close to it, will make candy with timid flavor and chewy (not crunchy) texture.

Put it in a pan on low heat and very slowly melt it. Once it begins to melt you can increase the heat a bit. The trick to this is that you have to stir it constantly in order to keep the peanuts from burning. You're going to want to bring it back to 300F, then immediately pour into the prepared pan.