Making peanut butter at home is awesomely easy. Well, as long as you have a food processor or blender. Otherwise it is quite a task and you are probably better off buying a jar. Just look for the natural kind without all the added sugar and extra oils.
If you can make it at home you’ll have the best peanut butter around and it only has two ingredients. One is peanuts (crazy, I know!) and one of them is salt! That doesn’t even really count as an ingredient in my book.
Other pluses to making your own peanut butter:
- The roasting nuts make your kitchen smell incredible.
- The grinding is really interesting to watch.
- People are totally impressed.
- It’s cheap! In NYC you can often get a 1 lb. bag of peanuts from the produce carts for like $2-$3. I know peanut butter is already cheap, but yours will be better, believe me!
If you prefer your peanut butter with raw peanuts you can skip the roasting. Alternatively you can buy roasted peanuts to skip a step. I like to roast because the flavor is more intense and roasting brings the oils to the surface so the peanut butter becomes a smooth paste more easily.
If you prefer the sweetened and fluffy peanut butters like Jiffy, you can add a bit of peanut oil, and some sugar or molasses to sweeten. Then if you run the food processor for a while it will add more air to the mixture and your peanut butter will be super smooth and fluffy.
I personally enjoy a little molasses or brown sugar rather than regular white sugar if I want sweet peanut butter. It just works well with the intense nutty and toasty flavor of the peanuts.
You can use this general method to make any nut butter you want. You can even mix and match. Try a half peanut and half almond butter. I think I will try pistachio butter next. The color would be beautiful!
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Homemade Peanut Butter
Ingredients
- 1 lb peanuts shelled and peeled
- 1/2-1 tsp salt
Instructions
- Set the oven at 375 F. Spread peanuts evenly onto a cookie sheet. Pictured are the nuts before going into the oven.
- Roast for 5 to 15 minutes depending on how dark you want them. I roasted mine for about 10 minutes total. When you pull them out of the oven they will be shiny with oil and golden like the ones pictured here. Let them sit on the tray until they are cool to the touch.
- Dump the peanuts into a food processor or blender and add the salt. Grind it! For the first 30 seconds it will be extremely loud. Don't worry, it will quiet down.
- Grind for another couple of minutes. It should start to look a little sticky and gummy as the oils release. Use a spatula to scrape down the sides of your food processor occasionally just to make sure that every bit is incorporated into the final peanut butter.
- Keep grinding and will start to become a recognizable, chunky peanut butter. But keep going, it will get smoother and looser.
- Grind until it reaches a consistency you like. I would suggest that if you like a chunky peanut butter to keep some peanuts aside at the beginning and then break them up a bit with a knife and simply stir them into your creamy peanut butter. Scoop into a jar and enjoy!
