Recipe: Cereal Niblets

One of the things we have always made at the holidays is Chex Mix.  But not just any Chex Mix!  The recipe we use is one my Nans (Great-Grandmother) wrote down off of the Chex box when they first printed it on the back...so to our knowledge this is the original Chex Mix.  On the recipe card I have, she calls it "Cereal Niblets," and here's how you make it...

It's super simple, you'll need the following:

For the cereal mixture, Pretzel Sticks, Cheerios, Rice Chex, Wheat Chex, and Cocktail Peanuts.  For seasoning, you'll need Garlic Salt, Celery Salt, Season Salt, Worcestershire Sauce, and butter.

You'll start by pre-heating the oven to 250 degrees and melting 2 sticks of butter and 2 tablespoons of Worcestershire sauce in a small saucepan.

Butter and Worcestershire Sauce

While that is melting, you'll want half of the bag of Pretzel Sticks in a big Roasting Pan (I use my turkey roaster, but I've also bought those disposable ones before I had a big enough pan.)  I always start with the pretzels because you need to break them in half, like this:

Pretzel sticks

Apparently they used to sell bags of pretzels that were already just broken pieces, but I've never seen them in stores, so we break all the sticks into smaller pieces.  They soak up the butter better that way...yum!

After the pretzels, continue adding the rest of the cereal mixture, half a box each of the Cheerios, Wheat Chex & Rice Chex, and half a can of cocktail peanuts:

Cereal Mixture

Then mix it all together with your hands, so you'll wind up with something like this:

Cereal Mixture

By now, the oven should be pre-heated and the butter should be melted.  Stir up the butter and pour it over the cereal, mixing as you go along.  Be sure to get the butter over everything, so mix well!

You'll put it in the oven for an hour, stirring occasionally - I take it out and stir every 15 minutes.  You want to be sure that nothing will stick to the bottom of the pan.

While it's baking, mix together the salts.

Salts

You'll want 1 teaspoon of Garlic salt, 2 teaspoons of Celery salt, and 2 teaspoons of Season salt.  Mix them up and set aside.

After an hour, pull the cereal out of the oven and sprinkle on the salt.  Again, make sure you coat the cereal evenly.  It's important to do this step immediately after pulling it out of the oven so the salts will stick to the cereal.

Let it cool and store in air-tight containers.  It's that easy!

Yes, they are WDW popcorn buckets.  Don't judge.

Recipe:
2 Sticks of Butter
2 Tablespoons Worcestershire Sauce
1/2 Box Cheerios (there are many different sizes out there - just pick one that's about the same size as the Rice Chex box)
1/2 Box Rice Chex
1/2 Box Wheat Chex
1/2 Can of Cocktail Peanuts (Geoff really likes it with honey roasted peanuts.  It strays away from the traditional recipe, but I have to admit, it's really tasty!)
1/2 Bag of Pretzel Sticks, broken
1 Teaspoon Garlic Salt
2 Teaspoons Celery Salt
2 Teaspoons Season Salt

Pre-heat oven to 250 degrees.  Melt butter & Worcestershire sauce in small sauce pan.  Meanwhile, in large roasting pan, mix together cereals, peanuts, & pretzels.  Once the butter is melted, pour over cereal mixture and stir well.
Bake cereal mixture in oven for an hour, stirring every 15 minutes.  While baking, mix together salts.
Pull out of the oven, sprinkle salts on top of mixture, stirring well.  Let cool and store in air-tight containers.