Welcome To Wonkette Happy Hour, With This Week’s Bar Snack, Candied Angostura Nuts!

The drink is a little bourbon, some cold brew coffee, and a dash of heavy cream and simple syrup, for what it’s worth.

Greetings, Wonketeers! I’m Hooper, your bartender, and I’m on vacation! Feel free to make up one of my old recipes while I’m gone, or drink your own creations. I’m not going to just leave you alone to drink, though. Instead, I thought I’d offer up the recipe for my favorite bar snack to go with your cocktail. Let’s make up some Candied Angostura Nuts. Here’s the recipe:

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1 egg white

2 T Angostura Bitters

½ cup sugar

¾ t ground black pepper

½ t ground cinnamon

4 cups lightly salted mixed nuts

Preheat oven to 275 degrees F. Whisk egg white with bitters until frothy. Whisk in sugar, pepper, and cinnamon; stir in nuts and toss to coat. 

Spread in an even layer on a parchment-lined baking sheet. Bake, stirring occasionally, until golden and crystallized, 45 to 60 minutes. Let cool completely. Store in an airtight container at room temperature up to 1 week. 

It seems that watering holes have offered pickled or salty snacks at the bar for as long as bars have existed. Archaeologists have uncovered a tavern from the ruins of Pompeii. Duck wing bones were found in some of the pots around the place. I have no doubt that the Romans had their own version of hot wings. In the 1850s, London pub goers snacked on pickled whelks and sheep trotters. No matter the time or place, the basic idea has always been the same: Serve cheap, salty, filling snacks to customers. Anything salty or spicy that staves off hunger and soaks up the booze in your belly is fair game. 

The drive for finger food that is cheap, salty and above all, filling, has created some culinary milestones over the years. (And it has to be finger food, no mistake. Bartenders do not want to roll silverware.)  The classic ploughman’s lunch probably qualifies as bar food. In the ‘70s, The Anchor Bar fried up some cheap chicken wings and tossed them with Frank’s Hot Sauce and butter, creating the first order of Buffalo wings. Today, bars have a match made in heaven with the modern food truck craze. Bars will cheerfully let a food truck set up shop in their parking lot. It takes food preparation out of the bar owner’s hands, lets the customers drink longer, and creates an event that can drive business.     

I’d be remiss if I didn’t leave you with one of my favorite bar snack stories from my time behind the stick. I was working a long, dull Sunday shift at the country club. It had been raining all day, there was a tournament at a sister club, and the bar was basically empty. I was getting ready to shut down … and then nine wet golfers lurched drunkenly into the bar. They had been waiting out the rain at our sister club, and wanted to keep the party going. They demanded food, Miller Light, and vodka sodas. The kitchen had closed long before, so I provided big bowls of goldfish crackers. They threw fistfuls of crackers at each other like rowdy kids. My heart sank — I’d be sweeping up cracker crumbs from the floor all night. “Don’t tell my wife I’m here,” the ringleader slurred at me. As if on cue, his wife showed up at the bar twenty minutes later … with his mother in tow. They sipped Chardonnay and stared at him, icily, until he broke. “I have to go. My mommy’s taking me home,” he moaned to his compatriots. He followed his wife and his mother out of the bar with a hangdog expression. The party ground to a halt shortly after that. 

Let’s talk ingredients:

Egg white: The egg white is sheer genius here. Using a protein to stick the spices and flavorings to the nuts instead of more sugar is fantastic. I’ve never seen egg white used like this before. Kudos to Riley Wofford, the original author of this recipe in Martha Stewart November 2021. 

Angostura bitters: It tickles me pink to see my favorite cocktail flavoring used in a bar snack. The gentian root in Ango bitters tamps down the sweetness and fattiness of the nuts here, making this snack far more balanced than you’d expect. 

Sugar: Nothing fancy here. I might use honey or demerara sugar based on the nuts you choose.

Cinnamon and pepper: Use other spices if you like. Black pepper is my favorite spice; I tend to be heavy handed when measuring it out for this recipe. 

Salted nuts: Use what you like. This recipe will work fine with a jar of peanuts, but I prefer the classic bridge mix (save me the cashews!). Try to find a “lightly salted” brand. Standard cans of nuts can be a salt bomb. If you have only unsalted nuts at hand, add two teaspoons of kosher salt.  

In summary and conclusion, drink well, drink often, and tip your bartender — donate to Wonkette at the link below!  And if you’d like to buy some bar gear or books from Amazon, please click here!

You can find me on Threads and Insta at samurai_grog!

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