Small Batch Peanut Butter
Sometimes I think it’s important to remember that cooking doesn’t always have to be a means to an end. Yea, I do think that you can generally eat healthier and better by cooking your own meals just because you know exactly what’s going into the dishes. But sometimes you just need to have fun and there’s no reason why you shouldn’t have fun in the kitchen!
And that’s why homemade peanut butter rocks. Is it faster or healthier than buying peanut butter in the store? It’s probably not faster and probably equally healthy. Is it cheaper? Well, actually it is, but that’s kind of secondary to the fact that it’s a lot of fun!
Making peanut butter is one of those things you can do with your kids. It’s like a magic show. You start with, well, peanuts and you end up with this delicious stuff.
Umm... easy.
This is kind of comical, but I’ll list the ingredients to this meal just for fun.
Homemade Peanut Butter
Yield: 2 Cups
Prep Time:
Total Time:
Ingredients:
2 cups peanuts
1 Teaspoon neutral oil (opt.)
Directions:
1) Pulse peanuts in a food processor until they form a rough paste.
2) Depending on the peanuts, it might help to add a small drizzle of oil to get the peanuts to come together.
3) Once the peanut butter is made, serve it immediately or store it for up to a few weeks in the fridge.
You can make peanut butter with literally just peanuts, but it takes awhile. If you add just a few drops of neutral oil you can really speed up the process. It’s seriously magical.
You start with, well…
The ingredients...
I used roasted and salted peanuts but you don’t need to necessarily use those. If I didn’t use salted, I’d probably hit my peanut butter with just a pinch of salt near the end.
Anyway, add your peanuts to a food processor. I used my little mini processor. I added about two cups of peanuts to start.
Is this really going to work?
Then just start pulsing the peanuts! At first, it won’t seem like you’re getting anywhere other than making a lot of chopped peanuts. Stop here if you need nuts for a sundae. Otherwise keep going!
Ok... chopped peanuts.
Keep your finger on the trigger. At this point, I’ve pulsed my peanuts for probably 30-45 seconds.
Chopped even more!
I honestly think that if I would’ve kept at it, it would’ve formed peanut butter, but to speed up the process I added a very small amount of canola oil (1 teaspoon). After another few seconds of pulsing it started to get creamy.
This is when the kids would say, “WHOA!”
Now we're getting there.
After another few seconds of pulsing, you’ll have very legit peanut butter.
Awesome.
So I left my peanut butter pretty plain, but the obvious advantage of making your own is you could experiment with add-ins. Honey? Cinnamon? Cayenne? Who knows. Go crazy!
Very peanuty.
I’ll tell you one thing about this peanut butter that I loved: It tasted like peanuts! It was actually somewhere in between the creamy and chunky varieties that you’ll find in the store, but the flavor was really deep and intense.
I actually made this batch around lunch time over a weekend so I decided to use it for lunch!
For half the lunch, I made some toast and slathered one piece of toast with peanut butter and one with honey.
Jelly would be the obvious choice.
Slap those together and you’ll have a pretty tasty sandwich. I also couldn’t resist making some classic ants on a log!
Awesome lunch.
Start to finish, I’d say this took me 15 minutes to do and I’ll admit that it would definitely be faster to reach for the jar. But it was really cool.
If I had kids, I think it’d be fun to have a peanut butter party. Make a bunch of peanut butter with the kids and then provide a bunch of fun mix-ins. Everyone can make their own sandwiches out of their own peanut butter!
What do you think? What would you add in?
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Man, I really do need to get a decent food processor, don't I? Rats.
I'd be interested in adding in dried tart cherries, I think — I kind of like the idea of not having to use any other kind of spread but peanut butter, and if the peanut butter already had something kind of sweet and chewy to offset the salty nuts, that might be perfect.
Is that crazy?
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Nick replied: — April 19th, 2010 @ 8:43 pm
That’s not crazy at all! Sounds good to me ;)
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a friend of mine kept telling me about curry peanut butter he'd found in a health food store. he loved it so much, his fingers were yellow-ish. this seems perfect — you could just add the curry to your peanuts.
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Nick, I loved seeing this today. Yesterday we had some Kenyan friends here for dinner, and food came up, as usual — always fun to compare cultures. My friend said she makes her own walnut butter — I’d never heard of walnuts being made into butter but she said they love it…now I can’t wait to try it.
And, Nervous Cook, the cherries would be great, but for them to be sorta like a topping, best to add them only at the end, and then keep them pretty coarse-chopped. You can blend them in right from the start, but then you’ll have cherry-flavored pb — a slightly different taste.
Yum all around!!
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theres this store in philly that sells all sorts of nuts and dried fruits and grains in bulk and they make fill-in-the-blank nut butter right there in front of you. you can choose any nut – i picked cashew – and its dropped through this machine, which already is filled with oil and in like 30 second – nut butter. i was like, damn, this is easy. of course i never realized itd be easy enough to do at home. bravo!
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Perfect! When I was in 2nd or 3rd grade, we did make peanut butter in class! By hand with mortar and pestles. It was hard work, but very tasty reward!
To make it chunkier, I guess you could set aside some of those ice cream topping nut bits and add them back in at the end. Or, that’s what I’d do. I love me some chunky peanut butter!
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This goes right along with my new hobby of concocting homemade condiments. Satisfying to make and delicious to eat without all the added junk. My kids are going to love it!
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Thanks for the comments everyone. It’s a fun little dish :)
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This is great!
How long does this keep? Should it be kept in the fridge?
My family is going to try this soon, thanks for the great idea.
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Sheesh, barely married and thinking about kids already? :P
Would this work the same way for almond butter?
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I don’t know why I never thought of this. Kids love to push buttons and this can inspire two very skinny little boys to eat a little more. Wish I had that problem. :)
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I've literally got my laptop on my kitchen counter right now alongside my food processor. Mine peanuts still have a pretty solid consistency…not creamy yet. Wonder if I'm doing it right?
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Success! Pulsing didn't work for me, so I just held the button down and voila! The very first peanut butter I've ever had! Still don't think I did it right, but it's a start!
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jumped from the milkshake to here – only problem, my son's allergic to peanuts and it is quite a dangerous allergy to have and irony is my daughter loves peanut butter – might try the party idea for her next birthday
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I made some of this with almonds instead of peanuts (toasted em up a bit first). It was an interesting twist. I bet you could do it with almost any nut.
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