When it comes to snack mix, there are rules. Don’t worry, you know most of them already. Unlike the rules of, say, football, this is the kind of intuitive knowledge that babies are born with.
Take Rule #1, which is simply that Variety Is Key. Mix is the key word of snack mix. You can’t make a mix if the only thing in the bowl is pretzels! You know this, and Anna Stockwell knows this, which is why when she was developing a snack mix that would be good enough to be served as an appetizer for a Super Bowl viewing party, she reached for all sorts of crispy, snacky things: fiery green wasabi peas, baked pea crisps, crunchy rice Chex, and toasted coconut chips and sticky rice chips from Dang. “When you’re reaching your hand into a bowl of snack mix, what makes it fun is that you never know what you’re going to get. It’s nice to have a variety of shapes and textures and sizes in there to keep that element of surprise going.”
Moving on to Rule #2: Salty Needs Sweet. Anna had a vision of green for her Super Bowl snack mix—she wanted to conjure the football field as it looks before the game starts—so she created a seasoning mix of dried dill, garlic powder, and ground seaweed snacks. “The dill combined with the roasted, salted seaweed was so delicious—salty and savory—and the garlic really helped give it that ranch flavor,” Anna says. But something was missing. She added “the teeniest bit of cayenne and sugar,” to balance all that salty savoriness, and that was it—“the heat and sugar really helps tie the flavors together.”
And that takes us to Rule #3. This one you may not know by heart. But it may just be the most important of them all: Layer Before You Toss. Here’s how it’s done:
After drizzling your crunchy snacks with a little butter, you’ll warm them and toast them a bit in the oven. Then transfer about a third of the toasted mix into a big bowl and sprinkle with a third of the seasoning powder. That’s layer one. Add another third of the snacks and another third of the powder. That’s layer two. Finally, add the last of the snack mix and the last of the seasoning. Now—and only now!—you can toss the whole thing gently with your hands.
This layering move means that a little of the seasoning mix can soak into each buttery portion, rather than all glomming itself onto the very top and leaving naked snacks below. You very much want an evenly-spiced snack mix. Because snack mix that isn’t evenly spiced...well, that’s against the rules.
