Shelly Ludlum Cheers is 59 years old, but her face lights up like a child’s when she talks about things she loves. Her father. Her family. Her customers. And all things that grow from long toil and good soil.

“Have you ever seen green peanuts?” Cheers asks, holding out a bundle of fresh white jumbos like a bag of precious gems. The shells are light brown, nearly white.

“Smell them,” she urges, then presses the bag to her face. She closes her eyes and draws in a long, slow breath.

“Isn’t that wonderful?”

It is. Roasted peanuts smell absolutely harsh compared to the delicate, earthy aroma of peanuts straight from the field. Combine with hot water, salt, and patience for a heavenly Southern delicacy.

Shelly Ludlum Cheers is the third generation of her family to run their roadside produce store.  photograph by Matt Ray Photography

Anyone who has traveled through the rural South has seen hand-lettered signs for boiled peanuts, sold on the side of the road in a paper sack. But connoisseurs of boiled peanuts go to places like Ludlum’s Produce. Located on Holden Beach Road, it’s a longtime stop for locals and vacationers.

You won’t get any that are too soft, too hard, or too sour from sitting out in the heat because these are Mr. Benny’s boiled peanuts. And they are the stuff of legend.

The first batch goes on between 5 and 6 a.m., the second at 9 a.m. On a high-demand weekend, like July 4, they make four batches a day. By the end of the summer, they’ll have boiled more than 14,000 pounds.

Thanks to Cheers’s dad, Benny Ludlum, a big draw at Ludlum’s remains his secret recipe for boiled peanuts. photograph by Matt Ray Photography

Dwight Fleming of Ohio, who has been vacationing at Holden Beach for 30 years, gets one bag to eat right away and one to take home.

“They taste like they just came out of the earth,” Fleming says.

Ludlum’s has been growing crops from seed for three generations. Cheers’s grandparents started selling vegetables from a picnic table in their front yard in 1952. Cheers’s father, Benny Ludlum, opened the current produce stand in 1980. Once just a shack with a dirt floor and roll-up doors, it’s now an air-conditioned store as clean and homey as your grandma’s kitchen.

Mr. Benny, as her father was known, gave away nearly as much as he sold, especially after July 4, when he knew the bills were paid. “We’re just having fun now,” he’d tell his daughter.

Mr. Benny perfected a way to make boiled peanuts delectable to even the toughest skeptic and helped Ludlum’s Produce become a must-stop for many. photograph by Matt Ray Photography

Cheers retired from teaching in 2017 to help her father and his wife, Sylvia, run the business, and took over a few years later when his health began to fail. Mr. Benny stayed to do what he loved best — talk to customers.

You can see him on the store’s logo, sitting in a tub of hot water with his arms around two peanuts wearing sunglasses. Mr. Benny died last October at age 85. But the quilt-covered armchair, where he held court and ate boiled peanuts from a tomato box lid, still sits by the pots he once used.

“This was his life,” says Cheers, her hazel eyes filling with tears.

She follows her dad’s recipe to the letter.

After gingerly lighting the outdoor propane burner, Cheers pours a bushel of fresh peanuts into a massive steel pot and adds table salt by the box. Just how much is a family secret. Using a garden hose, she fills the pot until the water reaches the first set of bolts on the handle.

Peanuts reach full boil in about an hour. Cheers checks and stirs the pot periodically, adding water as needed. Over the four-hour boil, the savory aroma fills the air — a musky combination that suggests baked potatoes or boiled beans — luring people straight from the parking lot.

When the boiling is done, the peanuts soak for another hour to absorb the salty brine. Then they’re dipped from the pot, golden brown and steaming, with a wire skimmer the size of a dinner plate, and taken straight into the store for the customers who like them hot. That includes Dub Fulford, who lives down the road.

Over the four-hour boil, the savory aroma fills the air, luring people straight from the parking lot.

“I love the taste, and they’re soft,” he says, “so even people with bad teeth can eat them.”

It was Fulford who finally convinced Wendy Thompson to give boiled peanuts a try. She was skeptical at first.

“I thought it sounded like the most disgusting thing in the world,” says Thompson, who works at the store.

She doesn’t think that way anymore. She’s a convert. She’s heard others compare the taste to potatoes or field peas. But Thompson equates the earthy flavor to beans. “You either love them or hate them,” she says of boiled peanuts.

Ludlum’s remains open until mid-September, creating a community drawn by local produce, boiled peanuts, and cherished memories of Mr. Benny. photograph by Matt Ray Photography

When Ludlum’s opens for the season in April, Cheers uses redskin Spanish peanuts from Florida, since North Carolina peanuts don’t come in until late summer. Those peanuts — white jumbos from Columbus County — are anticipated like the season’s first strawberries.

Just ask Taylor Kirby. On his last trip home to Supply, he heard the white jumbos were in, and he told his mom, “Why are we still sitting here?”

The allure of boiled peanuts is not just the taste. It’s the texture, the aroma, the peanut pop when you crack the shell. But never eat it. Cheers has seen people do that. She has a better way.

“First, you put it between your teeth, crack the shell, and suck out the juice,” Cheers says. “Then, you open the shell and suck the peanuts out.”

The warm salty water trickles down your throat, and the peanuts yield to the tooth with just enough resistance to be satisfying.

“You know what I think it is? They taste like the beach.”

“You know what I think it is? They taste like the beach,” says customer Karily Bayliff of Kitty Hawk.

At Ludlum’s, you can wash them down with a muscadine slushy. Made entirely from Elizabethtown grapes, they may just be the reason why muscadines exist.

But once you taste Ludlum’s boiled peanuts, you may decide that’s why peanuts exist. Every pot is an homage to Mr. Benny: made with his recipe and imbued with a daughter’s love.

Ludlum’s Produce
2406 Holden Beach Road Southwest
Supply, NC 28462
(910) 842-6253
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