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Spicy Party Mix
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- Total Time
- 1½ hours
- Rating
- Notes
- Read community notes
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Ingredients
- 9cups rice, corn or wheat Chex or Crispix cereal, or a combination
- 2cups any kind of lightly salted nut
- 2cups small pretzels
- 3cups add-ins, such as cheese crackers, rice crackers, bagel chips, sesame sticks or a combination
- ½cup unsalted butter (1 stick)
- 2tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
- 1 to 2tablespoons hot sauce, plus more to taste
- 1teaspoon garlic powder, plus more to taste
- 1teaspoon onion powder, plus more to taste
- ¼teaspoon sweet or smoked paprika
- 1½teaspoons fine sea salt
- ¼teaspoon black pepper, plus more to taste
Preparation
- Step 1
Arrange racks in the top and bottom thirds of the oven and heat to 250 degrees. Line two sheet pans with parchment paper.
- Step 2
Combine cereal, nuts, pretzels and add-ins in a very large bowl. In a medium, microwave-safe bowl, melt butter in the microwave in 20-second increments, about 1 minute. (You can also do this in a small saucepan over low heat on the stovetop.) Add Worcestershire sauce, hot sauce, garlic powder, onion powder, paprika, salt and pepper. Stir until well mixed.
- Step 3
Add half of the melted butter mixture to the cereal mixture. Gently and thoroughly fold to combine. Add the rest of the melted butter mixture and stir until evenly coated. Taste and adjust seasonings.
- Step 4
Divide the mixture evenly across the prepared pans. Bake, stirring and switching racks every 15 minutes, until crisp and slightly darkened in color, about 1 hour. Cool completely on the pans on wire racks before serving (if you can wait that long). Store in an airtight container for up to 3 weeks.
Private Notes
Cooking Notes
Save your parchment paper and bowl for melting butter and just use a roasting pan. Melt the butter in the pan as you heat up the oven to temp. Add the Worcestershire sauce, hot sauce, garlic powder, onion powder, paprika, salt and pepper to the roasting pan. Then add the cereal mix a little at a time to the butter and seasonings. Stir the amount until the mixture sounds wet. Stir every 15 min for 1 hour.
I have been making chex mix once a month in the fall for years in a super large roasting pan (yield fills a 2-gallon ziplock bag). About ten years ago, I substituted sunflower or light olive oil for the butter and haven’t looked back. I use a mix of 1-1/2 cups oil and 1/2 cup Worcestershire sauce to coat all the dry ingredients. My family’s favorite recipe uses 3-4 packets of ranch seasoning to flavor the mix.
Not enough butter. For 16 total cups of crunchy mixture, 1/2 cup barely coated. I double the mixture & then it finally covered. I used Siracha for heat & sweet paprika. Yummy!!
I substitute a garlic clove grated on a Microplane into the butter, then as it melts, the garlic mellows a bit. That way I can skip the garlic powder altogether. I also up the Worcestshire to about 3-4 tablespoons, and use Siracha, which I think adds another level of flavor, making it preferable to a hot sauce like Tabasco.
Years ago, a professor brought in his wife's Texas Trash. She used a 1:1 ratio of melted butter to bacon drippings for the party mix. Sooo good.
This was a hit - made my second batch today. So much better than boxed at bagged snack versions at our grocery store. I halve the dry ingredients for our two-person household but, based on reviews, make with the full amount wet ingredients. The flavor is just right. Mini rice cakes are terrific as an add-in.
That's how my mom used to make it as well, Kate. And she always doubled the sauce from what the recipe on the Chex box said. Yum.
Definitely needed more of the butter mixture. Felt like the mix just wasn’t seasoned enough.
I agree with the doubling of the butter mix, one stick left much of the mix dry. DRY MIX IS SAD MIX.
I have made this in various themes for years. I like crispix instead of chex. They seem to crumble less. I add sesame stix. Unsalted nuts, delux mix . Tiny pretzels balls or alphabet pretzels, goldfish, or any crispy left over things, and at-least 1/4 cup of Worcestershire sauce. As well as the hot sauce , onion ( dried, I cheat) As above, melt butter while heating, add 1/2 at a time, stir a lot. Use a roasting pan. Much easier to stir.
This is my favorite recipe.My Favorite Party Mix Butter 4 Tbsp. Worcestershire sauce 1 tsp. garlic powder 1 tsp. onion powder 1 tsp. celery salt 1 tsp. ground red cayenne pepper Sack of Chex mix from Sam’s Cheerios, optional Bugles Pretzels, I usually get the pretzel gold fish Gold fish, original Oyster Crackers Pecans, lots of these because they give it the best flavor when cooking Mixed nuts English walnuts, optional Preheat oven 250 to 300 degrees. In big mixing bowl, mix the party mix, cheer
For me, Cheerios are a must-have. They absorbed the butter-spice mixture so well and are a crunchy flavor-bomb!
That’s the way i make it as well!
Agree with the other reviewers that there wasn’t enough flavor to go around. Next time double the flavorings and butter or cut down on the mix-ins.
continuedcheerios, pretzels, gold fish and oyster crackers and set aside. This will be enough for little over 2 makings. Put 2 sticks of butter (for each pan you cook) in 12 x 17 x 2-inch pan and put in oven until barely melted. Add Worcestershire sauce, garlic powder, onion powder, celery salt and red pepper and mix with butter. Add all nuts and bugles that you are going to use for this batch to the two sticks of butter melted. Lift from bottom of pan with spatula until all is coated.
I fourpled this recipe. Quadrupled more appropriately. I like the sound of fourple. I added: 8oz Frank's hot sauce, 3T cayenne pepper, 1.5tsp smoked salt &fresh pepper, 8oz L&P Wsauce, 3tsp sweet smoked paprika, 2T each onion &garlic powder, 1tsp sea salt. Melt 6 sticks of butter in a sauce pot. Add all above and stir to combine. Put all your dry in a bin and drizzle the warm wet over the top, pausing half to stir, add the rest. Put in 2 big Al pans.Bake@275 x 75 min. Stir q 15min. Cool & store.
Comments say to double the liquid ingredients.
Based on other reviewers’ comments, I doubled the butter, Worcestershire sauce and salt, and tripled the paprika, garlic and onion powders. I only added a little more than a tablespoon of Crystal hot sauce. The result was just ok, but I made it to bring to a party and now I’m stuck with it. Definitely not enough hot sauce; I should have added at least another tablespoon. It was also incredibly salty. In no way is this the HG of Chex Mix recipes.
Like others have suggested, the butter, spices and sauces need to be doubled. Used hot, smoked paprika. Pleasantly zingy.
Use small round pretzel balls Reduce Amt of salt
Small round pretzel balls are good Plain popcorn Reduce amount of added salt
4x sauce: but only 2.5-3 sticks butter, only 5.5 tablespoon hot sauce, .5 teaspoon of onion powder and paprika
Well, I followed the recipe as written and I regret not reading the user notes. Mine is going into the compost today - my main complaint is that is wasn't seasoned enough and I can't see a way to rescue this as it's already been toasted and browned in the oven. Dang it I wish I'd've halved the recipe to test it first.
for a deeper, richer taste do what my grandmother did: replace half the butter with bacon drippings. healthy eating wasn't a thing back then.
she also used pecans! how could i forget?
Tastes very similar to the original recipe. Added 1 1/2 sticks butter and ued Sirracha vs. hot sauce per another reader’s suggestion. Added low-fat Cheese-Its , lightly salted peanuts and cashews and Stacey’s bagel chips as “extras”. Pretty addictive munch.
I agree with other posters that the mix suggestions for the seasonings are nowhere near what you need to really get it flavorful. Or maybe I just prefer strongly condimented food. Even after tripling the spices, my family said they could barely taste the spices. So, if your people are like my people, knowledge is power. That said, terrific master recipe to tweak to your preferences. I know some might get mad that I didn't follow the recipe exactly as written. Have compassion!
Going to disagree with many of the comments here, the butter mixture is the correct amount. None of these components can really absorb much oil without becoming greasy so anything more than barely coated will be too heavy and overwhelming the flavor of dry components (assuming that the entire liquid mixture is doubled). Only thing I changed was using half the amount of garlic powder and adding a smallish glove of grated fresh garlic.
For me, Cheerios are a must-have. They absorbed the butter-spice mixture so well and are a crunchy flavor-bomb!
I love this recipe as is written. There is plenty of liquid to coat the dry ingredients if you mix, gently, but well!
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