Su sha is a Chaoshan candied peanut: skinned peanuts fried or roasted crisp, then coated in a dry, white, knobbly shell of re-crystallized sugar. Boiled to a thick syrup, the sugar is tossed with the warm peanuts off the heat and stirred again and again until the sucrose 'sands' back out of solution, crusting onto each nut as a frosty, sandy-white coat. Each peanut comes out wearing its own bumpy white jacket; the shell is crisp and snaps off the nut at a touch. Sweet, brittle and nutty, it is a tea-time confection and a New Year gift of the Shantou-Chaoshan region — the version from Xiancheng is the most famous.
Su sha is a traditional sweet of the Chaoshan region of eastern Guangdong, made simply from peanuts and white sugar. The most renowned, Xiancheng su sha, is documented as the creation of one Zhao Jiahe, a Xiancheng man, during the Tongzhi reign of the Qing (1862-1874): he tossed roasted peanuts with white sugar that had been boiled down to a sweet syrup and shook them in a sieve until they set into grains, which he called su sha — 'binding the sand,' for the sugar 'sand' that binds onto the nut. By the Guangxu reign it was widely known, and a local rhyme paired 'a plate of su sha and a brew of tea' as the taste of Chaoshan. The name is also written with the homophone for 'frosted sand.' It is eaten as a tea-time companion to gongfu tea and given as a festival gift or used as a temple offering; in Vietnam the same candy is known as a sugar-wrapped peanut.
A small white nugget, its surface rough and frosted like a knot of dry sugar crystals. The shell is hard and crisp; it snaps and crumbles to powder at the first bite, then cleanly releases the peanut inside. Underneath, the nut is dry-roasted, crunchy and deeply fragrant. The eating is a play of two crunches — a brittle sugar crust that dissolves to clean sweetness, then the toasty snap of the peanut. It is sweet but light and cooling, never sticky or chewy: the sugar is set hard and sandy rather than soft, so it shatters instead of clinging to the teeth.
The white coat is sucrose deliberately crystallized back out of syrup — the candy-maker's 'return to sand.' Sugar dissolved in a little water and boiled grows highly concentrated, far past the point it could hold when cool, so the syrup is supersaturated: at the boil it can carry several times its weight of sugar over the water. Tossed with the warm peanuts and stirred off the heat, this unstable solution is agitated and seeded by the dry nut surfaces, and the excess sucrose drops out of solution as a mass of fine, hard crystals that crust onto each peanut — the frosted, sandy-white shell. Getting it right is all in the syrup: boiled too little it stays wet and will not sand; too far and it scorches or hard-cracks. The roughly 1 to 1.4 ratio of peanuts to sugar, and stirring the batch through five turns, builds an even coat thick enough to whiten yet crisp enough to snap. The peanuts are roasted dry and crisp first so their crunch survives under the sugar.
Variations
The classic is pure white, but some su sha is tinted pale pink, and a little toasted sesame or a pinch of salt is sometimes worked into the coating. Peanuts are the standard core; the same sand-coating technique is used on other nuts and on puffed grains. The most esteemed name is Xiancheng su sha of Chaonan, Shantou; the sweet is also made across the wider Chaozhou-Shantou region. Industrial production now roasts the peanuts electrically and uses a semi-automatic line, but the defining step is unchanged — boil the syrup, then crystallize it back onto the nut. It belongs to the family of Chaoshan 'return-to-sand' sweets, alongside reverse-sanded taro and sweet potato, which share the same crusted-sugar finish.
On the Palate
Where Su Sha sits in the Chinese flavor cloud
Ingredients
Serves 6How it's made
6 steps · 30 min active + 10 min waiting
- 112 min
Roast or fry the peanuts dry until crisp and fragrant, then rub off and discard the red skins so the nuts are clean and pale.
- 24 min
Put white sugar and a little water in a wok in a ratio of about 1.4 parts sugar to 1 part peanuts, and boil to a thick syrup.
Watch outBoil the sugar and water to a thick, heavy syrup — you're making a supersaturated syrup that will crystallize back out; too thin and it never sands, too dry and it hardens in the pan.
- 35 min
Watch the syrup closely and judge the heat: take it off when it is neither thin nor dry but has thickened to a heavy, paste-like syrup.
- 42 min
Tip in the warm peanuts off the heat and stir hard so every nut is coated, scattering in a little toasted sesame if you like.
- 56 min
Keep stirring and tossing the batch through about five turns as the syrup cools and the sugar 'sands' back out into a white frosted crust around each peanut.
Watch outKeep tossing off the heat as the syrup cools and 'sands' into a white frosted crust on each peanut — stop stirring and it clumps into one hard block instead of coating each nut.
- 610 min
Spread the candied peanuts out to cool completely and set hard, then store airtight to keep the coat crisp.
