The Best 2-Ingredient Summer Snack Starts With a Coke
And it's a Southern staple.
Do you have a favorite unique snack combination? There are some we can all agree on—like French fries dipped in a milkshake—that seem odd at first, but once you try them, make total sense. That’s usually how it works. You have to try it to be convinced.
Often, it’s the way the odd combination of foods balances each other out that wins us over, and frequently, it comes down to a balance between sweet and salt.
Allrecipes video host Annie Campbell tried 10 crazy food combinations, but not all of them worked for her. One that did stand out as particularly tasty is a Southern staple that has just two ingredients: a bottle of Coke (preferably a glass bottle) and salted peanuts—like the kind you get in a traditional Planters canister (though any brand would do). And it’s a marriage of salt and sweet that actually has a whole region of fans.
In the South, this soda plus peanuts snack is often called a “farmer’s Coke.” There is more than one origin story for this pairing that seems to have shown up about 100 years ago, and most of those stories have something to do with the duo being something farm workers enjoyed during a break.
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The Farmer's Coke: Coca-Cola and Salted Peanuts Combo
Making a farmer's Coke takes just a few seconds. Drop a handful of peanuts into a bottle of cola and wait a moment or two for the salt from the peanuts to work its way into the soda.
“The longer the peanuts stay in, the longer they'll soak up the sweet cola flavor to make their own tasty snack,” writes Annie.
In the video, she verbalizes her first impression of the Southern treat.
“Oh, I like that, because the coke is so sweet on its own, the hint of salt is really nice,” she says. “And I guess you can like really let them soak in there and eat them when you’re done.” When she accidentally got a peanut in her mouth as she was drinking, she said, “The peanut’s good, too. This is a win.”
A Nostalgic Favorite
A Reddit thread dedicated to Coke packed with peanuts demonstrates how fond people are of this two-ingredient treat.
“Absolutely a long-time tradition. It worked best with the small glass bottles of Coke back when they were made with cane sugar,” reminisced one commenter.
“I have clear memories of my grandfather swinging on his front porch with a 6-ounce bottle of Coke full of peanuts. That would have been in the late 1960s,” another recalled.
Allrecipes' own Nicole McLaughlin endorses the snack, too.
Mixing Other Soda With Peanuts
The tradition seems to have started with Coke, the most prevalent choice, but any cola will work. According to the Redditors who discussed the snack, other soda varieties jive with the peanuts, too—like Dr Pepper, the cherry-flavored Cheerwine found in the South, and even Mountain Dew. But one alternative seems particularly brilliant.
“My Mom likes peanuts in grape soda. If you think about it, it's kind of a liquid PB&J,” one commenter said. (We want to give that one a try!)
Soda and peanuts satisfies a salty sweet craving by giving you a drink and a snack all at once. Sounds like a great combo this summer, especially if you get the sweet soda icy cold before you add the salty peanuts, it will be, as Annie says, “a win!” And as Nicole says, "If nothing else, it's just fun...Southern people are so smart."
Read the original article on All Recipes.
