Clover Valley Dry Roasted Salted Peanuts (Dollar General)
I’m a peanut fan. I especially like them in the shells, but I’ll take them in the jars when necessary. I grew up eating them as a snack and I still package them as part of lunch. They also have the virtue of being filling.
Dollar General sells a couple of varieties of peanuts. One is its house brand, Clover Valley, which comes in unsalted, salted, and honey roasted varieties.
DG also sells brand-name Planters Peanuts.
I decided to try the Clover Valley Dry Roasted Salted Peanuts. They were $2 for a 16-ounce plastic container, which is a fair bit less than the Planters and about the same as Aldi’s Southern Grove Dry Roasted Salted Peanuts.
I noticed a couple of things about the Dollar General peanuts. One, the peanuts are … well, tiny.
This isn’t exactly a problem, per say, but wherever Dollar General gets its peanuts from, they don’t get as big, because I felt like I was popping sunflower seeds. Okay, that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but suffice to say that the peanuts are small compared to a Planters Peanut or even a peanut from Aldi.
As for taste? They’re merely passable. Almost nothing tops a traditional Planters peanut, but among the various generic peanuts I’ve sampled over the years I’d say that Dollar General’s Clover Valley peanuts are, at best, in the mid-to-lower tier. They’re reasonably salty, but they lack the seasoning that many peanuts have, particularly Planters. That lack of seasoning certainly gives them a salty taste, but not the seasoned dry roasted taste one sees elsewhere.
Nutritionally, they’re about on par with many other peanuts I’ve tried.
The Verdict:
Clover Valley Dry Roasted Salted Peanuts aren’t terrible, but they aren’t great, either. They are salty, but they don’t have a lot of seasoning. They’re also really tiny, for some reason. If you’re a real peanut fan, you might want to look instead at the brand-name Planters, which Dollar General also carries, or look for another generic, like Aldi’s Southern Grove Dry Roasted Salted Peanuts. Either way, these Clover Valley peanuts are a passable option, but that’s about it.
