For the first time, I can confidently say that a recipe in How to Cook Everything seems wrong. Peanut brittle isn't rocket science, it's just sugar, water and nuts. Sugar is a crazy thing to cook with because of all the discrete phases it goes through at various temperatures.
Now the problem here is that the recipe implied that I could keep the sugar on Low-Medium and it would eventually caramelize. Maybe my stove sucks (very possible), but I could've left it there for days and it wouldn't have happened. I compared with some recipes online and found out I had to crank up the heat, which I did.
Now here's where I screwed up. From what I read, I needed to pull the brittle at 290 degrees. I wasn't keeping close track, and I saw it at 300 so I pulled immediately. When I took a second to think, I realized the sugar was still white and totally uncaramelized. Unfortunately, it had already started forming into balls with the nuts. I put the mix back in the pot and started cooking to get it caramelized, which I was able to do. I think the cook-remove-cook steps ended up making a very hard brittle (oxymoron?). Also, some of the caramel ended up burned.
Modifications: More sugar mix, less nuts. The ratio was way off. Cook until caramelized.
Make again?: Peanut brittle is very good, but this is not the recipe for it.
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