chinese salted and dried peanuts - 咸乾花生

A few years ago while traveling to China I bought some of these salted and dried peanuts (咸乾花生). These peanuts are prepared different from the common roasted peanut in shells in the West.
These are much tastier and have a distinct crunchiness to them. The reason these are tastier is because of the dehydration making the flavor more concentrated. Also, they are roasted only very lightly so the umami of the meat is better preserved.

if you look in Asian grocery stores you might find them - but avoid those has saccharine added

While I don't know how it is process, my intuition tell me this is how it must be done. The raw peanuts was soaked in a salt brine to season the nuts inside the shell. Then the peanuts in whole are slowly roasted for a long time until much of the water content is removed and the peanut is cooked.

I became quite addicted to them of late as snacks - they are very addictive

here you can see the peanut inside the shell has shrunk in size due to the dehydration