Wasabi peas are a snack food you can find in Asian grocery stores. They are little crunchy dried green peas coated with a spicy nuclear green wasabi powder. They are a deliciously different snack.

Yet another weird Asian snack food. These are Japanese in origin; they're ordinary green peas which have been coated in a batter containing potent quantities of wasabi (or a cheap Western substitute such as mustard), then cooked. They are quite tasty, and quite hot as well.

The container of wasabi green peas (or rather, as noted above, actually mustard green peas) I recently purchased at Stop & Shop contains a good number of yellow peas as well. I suppose this means the manufacturer gets supplies from the Gregor Mendel Pea Laboratory.

I saw a bag of these green peas a few months ago. It is perhaps a testament to the Japanese obsession on small things that each small plastic wrapper in the bag contained exactly three peas.

Imagine that! Wrapping every three peas in plastic. Not only is it impractical - people don't usually just eat three peas and stop - it is also not environmentally friendly.

Those wrapped peas looked cute though. Which is probably the whole point to it.

Kasugai Roasted Hot Green Peas

"A HAPPY PRESENT FROM THE EARTH!"

As my tolerance to wasabi increased, I suddenly discovered I was addicted to these, and had to fight to not eat an entire bag in one sitting.

Notice particularly the order of the ingredients:

Green peas, corn starch, canola oil, soybean oil, sugar, wheat flour, salt, monosodium glutamate, baking powder, soy lecithin, artificial flavor (wasabi), artificial color, FD & C yellow #5, blue #1 (brilliant blue FCF).

That's right, these are not wasabi peas. They are MSG peas. I just hope that stuff isn't as bad for you as they say, because I don't know if I can kick the habit.

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