How to make a homemade peanut butter recipe
Have you ever tried making your own peanut butter recipe? If so, you probably already know how incredibly easy it is to make homemade peanut butter or any other kind of homemade nut butters for that matter. You can use this recipe to make peanut butter, but it works just as well for cashew butter, almond butter, or any other type of nut.
Making Peanut Butter
Making my own peanut butter is usually one of those things I’ve wanted to try for a while, but never got around to it. Until I went to the grocery store recently and they had peanuts on sale. 900 grams of peanuts for 5 Euros. I could not resist and of course this was the perfect opportunity to start making this homemade peanut butter recipe.
Table of Contents
What’s in homemade peanut butter?
For making the peanut butter recipe you need a couple of things. In terms of ingredients it’s really only raw peanuts and a bit of salt. Needless to say for making this you do need to use unsalted peanuts. Apart from that you need a food processor or a high-powered blender. This recipe does make quite a lot of peanut butter. I was left with about 2 regular jars (or one big one)
Depending on the size of your food processor you might need to do this in batches. Don’t overload the bowl and make sure you have a strong food processor. A regular blender will probably not be strong enough to get a smooth consistency.
How to make
The first thing you need to do for making your creamy peanut butter is to roast the peanuts. The darker you roast them, the darker your peanut butter will be. I have to say that the peanuts that I bought in the store were already roasted. So that skipped an entire step and while it’s probably a healthier option to roast them yourself, you can definitely use the roasted ones. If not spread them out in a single layer on parchment paper on a rimmed baking sheet and roast for about 20 minutes or so.
Once the peanuts are roasted let them cool down to room temperature before adding them to the bowl of a food processor. Now you simply start churning the nuts. You will have to scrape down the sides of the bowl a couple of times. It took about 10 minutes to get a lovely creamy consistency and a smooth nut butter. If you like you can turn it for a shorter period and make a crunchy peanut butter. As said, it’s a pretty easy recipe so whatever you prefer you can make. My favorite way of making the peanut butter is by making it smooth. The only thing left to do is to add some sea salt to your liking. You don’t really need much salt but it’s a personal preference.
Additions and variations
Now the fun part of making this peanut butter recipe is that you can add additional flavors once the peanut butter is ready. You can add some cocoa powder for a chocolaty flavor or add some cinnamon (my favorite). I don’t think it needs any added sugar but if you want you can add that in too. Make sure to churn it for a bit if you do add sugar, to make sure you don’t have any grains in the butter. Or add a tablespoon of maple syrup in order to avoid any grains all together.
Other things you might consider adding to the peanut butter are: chili flakes, chocolate chips, honey, little cubes of fudge, little bits of chopped dates or – for a more chunky peanut butter – add in some additional chopped peanuts. Or add an extra pinch of salt and some caramel in there for a salty caramel version.
What can you do with your homemade peanut butter recipe?
Needless to say you can use it for anything you would use a storebought peanut butter. Spread it on some toast, bread or use it to make these peanut butter cookies. Or what about Nigella’s insane peanut butter cheesecake? So many choices.
Is making your own peanut butter cheaper than buying it?
One of the first questions I asked myself was whether making your own peanut butter is cheaper. Of course, you need a lot of nuts. I used about 700 grams of peanuts. Since I bought them on sale, I paid €3.88 for them. That left me with about 650 grams of peanut butter (actually 700 grams, because nothing disappears, but some sticks to the machine). Buying a similar amount at the supermarket varies quite a bit and has everything to do with what brand of peanut butter you buy.
For example, the peanut butter store charges €5.95 for a 420-gram jar. But you can find 100% peanut butter at the grocery store for less.
There’s not much difference in price. In my case, the price per kilo was €5.55. But the most important thing is that yóu can decide what to put in it and you can be sure that there is nothing crazy in your peanut butter and it’s an all natural peanut butter.
Other nuts
The nice thing is that you can use this recipe for any other nut you can think of. So you can easily make your own almond butter, hazelnut butter (but not the sweetened kind), or cashew butter. The difference is that some nuts take longer to turn than others. Hazelnuts, for example, contain less fat, and it takes longer to make a butter from them than from peanuts.
You can even make a kind of butter with sunflower seeds, and making tahini is a similar process. Or go wild and make a mixture of different nuts. There is no end to what you can do to make a creamy butter from any kind of nuts.
Peanut butter
Equipment
- Food processor
Ingredients
- 700 g unsalted roasted peanuts
- 1 teaspoon salt optional
How to make this peanut butter recipe
- This is easiest to do in a heavy duty food processor. If you have a small(er) one, you can process it in parts if necessary.
- Put all the peanuts in the processor and turn it on. Now let it run until it becomes a smooth mass. At first it will be pieces, then the mass will become firmer and then you will naturally see it become more liquid. This will take about 5-10 minutes.
Nutrition Information per portion
Disclaimer
The nutritional values above are calculated per portion. The details are based on standard nutritional tables and do not constitute a professional nutritional advice.
