Obsessed: Spicy-Sour Edamame

I can see that this won't make your mouth water, what with it being a bowl of hairy green pods, but it should.

Oh, you guys, I so loved your comments on that last post. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I love you for treating me like your wayward but beloved cousin who is finally making good, and I love you for wanting to pre-order a book that is two years from existing, and I love you for being so. . . loving is really the word that comes to mind. Thank you.

But you are here for a recipe, I know. And I have one.

Do you live nearby? If you do, and you haven’t been to The Quarters yet, you are missing out. It’s all retro pinball and arcade games (everything 25-cents a pop), and then there’s great beer and excellent bar food: deep-friend Brussels sprouts with spicy mayo, perfect sweet-potato fries, mini hotdogs (veggie dogs, if you prefer) with toppings like kimchi and mac and cheese. 

I love it all, but the thing that surprised me the first time, because there was so much deep-fried deliciousness that was inherently more exciting to me, was the edamame. I could not stop eating it—even when there was a basket of fries literally next to it on the table.

This is meant to be more inspiringly simple-looking than unappealingly ruined-seeming.

 I wrote The Quarters guys beggingly for the recipe, and got this back: “It's a mix of lime juice, sriracha, water, salt n pepper. Glad you enjoy!” So this is my interpretation, below. I confess (heresy, I know) to not loving sriracha typically, even though I love almost every other hot sauce. But I love it here. And don’t be dismayed by the amount of salt: you’re seasoning the pods heavily, so that when you bite the beans out of them, they’re seasoned too, if that makes sense.

Trader Joe's.

I cannot enough recommend that you try this. 

The edamame are sensational, in the sense of crazy good and in the sense of there being a lot of sensation: they’re too sour and too spicy in a way that everyone in my family loves. You’ll have to see if you do too. Thank you for everything, Quarters.

All gone. 

The Quarters’ Spicy-Sour Edamame

For this recipe, you want the Invasion-of-the-Body-Snatchers kind of edamame that’s still got the pods.

1 (1-pound) bag frozen edamame

1 tablespoon sriracha

Freshly squeezed juice of 1 lime

2 teaspoons kosher salt (or half as much table salt)

Lots of freshly ground black pepper

Steam the edamame until they are tender. I do this in one of those UFO steamers, the kind that’s always weirdly missing one of its hinged segments, over an inch of boiling water, for about 10 minutes, even though the bag says “5.” (Then again, I don’t really like my pasta al dente either, so use your judgment.)

Meanwhile, whisk together the remaining ingredients in a large bowl. Add the hot edamame and toss well to coat. Eat.