Bootien Peanut Brittle

Business hour	Sunday	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday
Open	9:30	9:30	9:30	9:30	9:30	9:30	9:30
Close	21:30	21:30	21:30	21:30	21:30	21:30	21:30

Business hour	Open	Close
Sunday	9:30	21:30
Monday	9:30	21:30
Tuesday	9:30	21:30
Wednesday	9:30	21:30
Thursday	9:30	21:30
Friday	9:30	21:30
Saturday	9:30	21:30

Back in the 1960s, everyday in the early morning, Chen Yun-cheng, the first-generation owner of Bootien, went to the nearby grocery store on a bicycle to get supplies. He came home at close to noon, then he put the peanut brittles in tubs, tied them up, and stacked them one after another on a pallet truck. He then dragged them to Wanhua Railway Station to send them to other counties. Not many people know that, about fifty years ago, Mengjia was where most peanut brittle productions took place. In its heyday, ten to twenty peanut brittle production companies provided supplies to grocery stores all around Taiwan, and they satisfied the sweet tooth of adults and children.

 

The shops of the old Mengjia at the time would heat up stoves with wood shavings  in early mornings to boil sugar. More wood shavings needed to be added into the stoves after noon, and to control the intensity of the fire, a person would need to step on them to flatten them. Chen Chin-tsun (Father Chen), the second-generation owner of Bootien, recalls the days of stoves back in his teenage years: "The residual heat would still be high when new wood shavings were being added. Every time I stepped on it, I couldn't help but do an indigenous dance. I had to tolerate it even though it was very hot. I couldn't slack off. Making the wood shavings dense by stepping on them could maintain the heat, which would allow the sugar to boil thoroughly and be even more fragrant". Maybe this is what "keeping your feet on the ground" means!