Sunday Morning

Boiled peanuts: The "Caviar of the South"

November 22, 2015 / 9:29 AM EST / CBS News

Boiled peanuts: "Caviar of the South"

Susan Spencer of "48 Hours" travels to South Carolina for a treat on the menu:

Meet Chris Bible, a.k.a. the Peanut Dude, who is definitely a little nutty.

"We've got traditional boiled peanuts, and we've got Cajun boiled peanuts..."

Boiled WHAT? if you're asking why would anyone boil a peanut, you're probably not from the Deep South.

"Boiled peanuts, for me, really take me back to my childhood here in Charleston," said Bible.

That's Charleston, South Carolina, home of the so-called "Caviar of the South."

South Carolina's Traditional Boiled Peanuts add a little Southern flair to soups, salads, chili or, yes, pizza. The Peanut Dude

Bible boils his nuts in his backyard in giant, briny vats. He's been pedaling them at his parking lot nut stand for almost nine years.

His staff? Him and his dog. "What does your dog do?" Spencer asked.

"Loves me through it all," Bible replied.

And has right from the start, when Bible was making peanuts selling peanuts. These days he can go through a few hundred pounds on a good weekend.

"Steve Jobs once said, 'You cannot connect the dots looking forward, only looking back.'"

"So you see yourself as the Steve Jobs of the boiled peanut?"

"I see myself as the Steve Jobs, Ted Turner, Henry Ford, Gandhi, and shall we say John F. Kennedy of boiled peanuts!"

Doesn't take much to bring him out of his shell, unless you try to get him to divulge his secret formula.

"Would you have ever asked the founder of Coca-Cola what his recipe was?" Bible said.

There is no official way to make boiled peanuts. "Everyone puts the salt in at a different time," he said. "The heat high at a different time."

The possibilities, he admits, are endless.

Believe me, staring down into the vat, it's a daunting question. Best to just get cracking ... or at least get it over with, then again ...

"This could grow on you, you know," Spencer said.

"Take the word 'peanut,' throw it away, and have an expectation more of a a potato-like texture," Bible said.

Spencer asked one of the Peanut Dude's customers, "Other people will look at this and go, uhhh..."

"Well, they're not from the South," she delicately offered.

Maybe it does take a true Southerner to appreciate the lowly peanut's finer points.

Spencer asked a young boy, "Did you like them from the very beginning?"

"Yes!"

And what do they taste like? "Boiled peanuts!"

Silly question.

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