12.02.06
Charcoal Peanuts
These came courtesy of David the Muppet King who seems bound and determined to single-handedly lower the average JSF review. If y’all set your mind back to this summer, you might remember that he contributed Sea Weed candy to the review and he was the original discoverer of Suction cakes. All three of these snacks aren’t exactly what you might consider “happy palatable” to the American taste, especially when you figure the Japanese make Pocky and Pretz as well as charcoal peanuts.
Speaking of which, charcoal peanuts? Whose idea was it to take an innocent peanut and wrap it in a Kingsford briquette? No seriously, who sits around the hibachi pit and thinks “These briquettes could totally use some peanuts!”? (Ahhh…sorry about the punctuation there. If it offends you, feel free to take something out and save it for later.) Now scented briquettes I can get behind because that would be AWESOME! Can you imagine firing up the grill and have the scent of roasted peanut waft through the air? Of course I’d probably go with something more meaty or maybe popcorn but peanut will do and these little charcoal peanuts sure do pack a powerful peanut pungency. Well, OK they aren’t pungent per se, but it was the only P smell word I could come up with. Suffice to say, they smell strongly of the peanut.
As for the taste…well David, the Muppet King, you may have struck out with your attempt to lower the JSF average pea rating because these fellas are surprisingly tasty. They taste even peanuttier than they smell and as I mentioned, they really smell very peanutty. I think Hidemi uses a very top quality peanut which I can not thank them enough for. It’s nice to see a company use the good stuff for a change.
As for the charcoal wrap, if I had gotten these without any indication that they were “charcoal peanuts” I would have never in a million years guessed that that is what they were. The charcoal is nicely salty, airily crispy and completely void of any burnt or briquette-y taste. Seriously. My favorite Guinea Pig and I were the taste testers for these and we both agree that Charcoal peanuts are definitely well above the middle of the road for JSF. Ergo, and much to David the Muppet King’s chagrin, we are going to go with a
Rating
of 4 Wasabi Peas out of a possible 5.
