How to make healthy peanut butter?
Are you a peanut butter addict too? My family is having peanut butter every single morning and we recently devote an addiction to flavored peanut butter – especially chocolate peanut butter. While I love my natural store bought peanut butter brand, I found the flavored peanut butter quite expensive and often loaded with sugar or additives.
So, I asked myself how to make healthy peanut butter from scratch? It is actually ridiculously easy to make your own peanut butter at home. The most difficult part is to reach the right balance of color and texture.
Those are the 3 important things to know before you start making your homemade peanut butter.
1- Peanuts – choose the right one !
I tested ALL sort of peanuts from my store and this is what I recommend
- Use roasted peanuts rather than raw peanuts. Roasting nuts helps releasing the oil from the nuts and create a smoother spread, easier to blend, while adding a deeper flavor.
- Roast the peanuts yourself. You will control the roasting time and temperature which ensure higher nutrient. I am buying raw peanuts with skin on and I roast them at low temperature (180 C/350F) for less than 10 minutes to release their oil but keep most of the nutrient.
- Keep some peanuts skins ! the skin add an even deeper nut flavor to your peanut butter while giving a lovely light brown color to your spread. I recommend to roughly remove half of the skin after roasting the peanuts or it is too hard to process.
Below you can see the HUGE color difference between a homemade peanut butter made of roasted peanuts with no skin and roasted peanuts with skin on.
2 – Food processor or blender ?
Except if you have an expensive blender like Vitamix – I don’t – I would not recommend to use a blender to make your homemade peanut butter. The best tool is a food processor with a sharp S blade attachment. I tested a Kitchenaid and a simple Kenwood from a friend. Both works perfectly well and create a smooth peanut butter within 5 minutes. Two things to remember:
- Make sure the amount of peanuts cover the blade perfectly or it won’t blend properly. Usually 4 cups are perfect for a large food processor.
- Note that 4 cups of peanuts create about 2 cups of peanut butter.
3 – Additives : Oil, salt ?
If you are making a natural smooth peanut butter all you need is peanuts. NO oil, NO salt! I recommend to add a tablespoon of melted coconut oil or peanut oil in my flavored peanut butter recipes simply to balance the texture – it keeps the spread very smooth. Adding ground cinnamon or maple syrup make your peanut butter thicker so it is better to add extra oil if you like smooth spread that is easy to spoon from jar.
Eat it raw or add some flavors !
Natural peanut butter is pretty easy to make and my recipe below create 2 cups of smooth peanut butter using 4 cups of roasted peanuts that you simply blend for 5 minutes. You can use this peanut butter natural or to make my dark chocolate peanut butter spread recipe or my cinnamon peanut butter spread recipe.
Enjoy the tutorial and starts making your own peanut butter now ! you won’t regret it.
Watch the recipe video and make your own peanut butter now
How to make healthy peanut butter in your food processor in only 5 minutes with only natural ingredients. A steps by steps video tutorial and 2 flavored peanut butter recipe: dark chocolate peanut butter and cinnamon peanut butter.
- 4 cups raw peanuts ,skin on, unroasted, unsalted
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Preheat the oven to 180C (350°F). Spread the raw peanuts onto a baking sheet and roast them for 8-10 minutes or until lightly golden and glossy- you will spot some oil coming out of the peanuts.
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Transfer the roasted peanuts onto a towel, rub until the skin of half the peants has been removed. The more skin you keep, the deeper the nutty flavor will be. I recommend to rub off the skin of at least 2 cups of roasted peanuts to make sure it blend easily. The more skin you keep, the more difficult it is to blend into a butter.
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Process on high speed until the peanuts form a ground texture -about 1 minute. If the nuts are still warm it will goes even faster. Stop and scrape down the sides of the bowl. Now the nuts looks like a thick dry ground.
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Process for 1 more minute on high speed. Stop and scrape down the sides of the bowl. Now, your peanut butter start to come together, forming a sort of butter but still dry and thick, almost there!
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Process for 1 more minute on high speed. Stop and scrape down the sides of the bowl as before. Now, the butter is shiny/glossy, soft but still thick.
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Process for few more minutes - usually less than 2 minutes. Now the peanut butter is forming ! It is super smooth, lukewarm, glossy and ready to spread on toast or to use in the next flavored peanut butter recipes. You should obtain 2 cups of natural unsalted peanut butter with this recipe.
Peanuts choice: for a faster recipe you can buy roasted peanuts without skin. I love to use raw peanuts with skin on and roast them myself. I only remove half the skin from my roasted peanuts to keep extra fibre and it also add an extra nutty flavor to the spread.
Quantity: note that 4 cups of peanuts create 2 cups of peanut butter.
Storage: store in glass sealed jar in the pantry for up to 3 months
Nutrition panel is for one serve of homemade peanut butter. This recipe makes 2 cups of smooth peanut butter, 60 servings.
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