make my own peanut butter

Made some last night! I used the wet/dry grinder again and added a small amount of walnut oil, no salt. It was good, but not as good as the peanut butter. I think this may have been because the cashews I bought weren’t roasted whereas the peanuts were. Next time I might roast the cashews first but not quite sure how to do that – what temperature/how long – does anyone have any ideas?

everyone’s been waiting with bated breath for me to report back on the first experiment!

After reading denises’s advice that making pb can be hard on a food processor, I decided to use my wet and dry grinder (a fantastic gadget, which only electrocutes me occasionally – only joking! – the reviews on Amazon don’t do it justice). I used natural roasted peanuts which cost less than a quid for a 250g bag. I don’t have any kitchen scales at the moment so put an estimated 50g of peanuts in, added a little drizzle of walnut oil as I had been unable to find peanut oil, and a pinch of sea salt.

Several short bursts later the stuff had turned into a paste and I scooped it out into a jar with a spatula and made another batch, which turned out the same.

I’ve just eaten it and can report that I over-salted it, but otherwise it was very nice, with a light, nutty taste. The commercial stuff is very densely packed into the jar, whereas this wasn’t, which meant the 100g paste (approx) filled over half a jar and gave me the impression that I was eating more than I really was, always a good thing for a greedy pussycat like me.

So, a great success! I shall try it again later in the week, with less salt. Stay tuned for next week: cashew nut butter!

Went to my local supermarket today and found that they are no longer selling the variety of peanut butter which like – a crunchy one with no added palm oil. Palm oil is quite evil e.g. it destroys the habitat of the orang-utan, so I’m not prepared to buy peanut butter with it in and shall be writing a stroppy letter to said supermarket expressing my displeasure!

Clearly the time has come to experiment with making my own peanut butter. Am looking forward to doing this tomorrow. As far as I can see you just whiz up peanuts in a food processor and add a little oil and salt as required. Piece of cake!

I am planning to…

With raw peanuts from the shell :-)
More like Peanut Paste.
Smelled good though

I want to start making a lot of stuff from scratch unless it is way too expensive compared with store-bought. Most things are cheaper but a big reason is that I will have control over the ingredients.

I remember peanut butter being much darker and more flavourful than the pale tasteless stuff they make today.

Peanut butter is my love. I’ve been living one whole year with out it, in Portugal where they don’t have much custom to eat the heaven in a jar. I’m thinking when I get home to California, just to be healthier I’d like to avoid the Skippy/Peter Pan/Jif/etc, and make a more natural peanut butter.

It sounds like all is needed are the peanuts! :-)

Maybe I could try to make Almond butter or Cashew butter too, to spread on toast in the mornings… mmmm these last 7 days with out my PB are going to be so harddddd!

I just made some in my blender. I took out the ‘crunchy’ blend and mixed in a touch of olive oil in a bowl, which gave it a nice alternative taste. :)

We used to buy a case of peanut butter every three months or so, at about $50 a pop. (My wife isn’t a huge fan, but the kids and I could simply live on peanut butter.) Last time around, we bought a case (30 lb.) of shelled peanuts instead. So I guess you could say we took the leap. So glad we did. You throw a few cups of peanuts in the food processor, add a little oil to get it started (once they start breaking up, the peanuts will add their own oil), and some salt. Then grind it for 3 or 4 minutes until it’s—well, buttery. Absolutely delicious stuff. And as an added bonus, now whenever we make peanut butter (once every two or three weeks), we whip up a batch of peanut butter cookies with the fresh stuff. Oh man, there’s nothing like those cookies. At some point we’ll have to try some other things with it as well. (Can you say peanut butter pie, boys and girls? Sure, I knew you could.)

I measured out the nuts pretty closely last time in order to calculate the cost. Even taking into account the handfuls of nuts that the kids eat while we’re making it, we’re cutting our cost almost exactly in half. Which is like $8-10 a month. I’d do it even without that, because this peanut butter is the best I’ve ever had and because it’s so much more environmentally friendly (no packaging—just a few reused jars), but considering that cost savings I don’t think we’ll ever buy another jar of peanut butter.

Oh and plus: No salmonella! Yay!