Do you want to know how to make peanut butter at home ? So keep reading and I will tell you how to turn only ONE ingredient into a creamy smooth homemade spread.
Are you a peanut butter addict? Undoubtedly we are all in love with this popular breakfast spread that can be used in so many ways. Not only you can eat it by itself or on toasts but also make delicious homemade peanut butter cookies. Unfortunately, the store-bought versions can have many additives, starting with sugar, oil or preservatives. So let me show you my tips to make delicious peanut butter at home with only one ingredient.
3 tips to making perfect peanut butter
While all you need to make peanut butter is peanuts, there are a few tips and tricks to turn the precious nuts into a creamy, smooth spread. First, the choice of peanuts matters.
Choice of peanuts
- Use roasted peanuts rather than raw. Roasted nuts release their oil better. Consequently your spread will be smoother, easier to spread on toast and it will have a deeper flavor.
- Roast them yourself. This gives you control on time and temperature. It should be noted that peanuts keep more nutrients if roasted below 180C. So, buy raw peanuts, skin-on and roast them at low temperature (160C-180 C/350F) for a maximum of 10 minutes. They will release their oil and keep most of their nutrients.
- Keep some peanuts with their skins! the skin adds an even deeper nut flavor and a lovely light brown color to your spread. However, if you keep all the skin from your batch of roasted peanuts it will get very difficult to process. So remove the skin of roughly half the nuts.
Below you can see the HUGE color difference between a homemade peanut butter made with roasted peanuts with no skin (left) and roasted peanuts with skin on (right).
Pick the right equipment
Next, make sure you have the right equipment to turn your nuts into nut butter. There is two options.
1 . Blender. Clearly not all blenders can crush peanuts into butter. You must have a professional blender like with a square base and a stick that helps moving the nuts in the jug. Luckily, this blender creates smooth peanut butter in less than 2 minutes.
2. Food processor. Good news, most food processors can create a smooth nut butter too! However, there is one main rule to stick with. You must add enough peanuts to fully cover the blade or it won’t blend properly. Usually you need 4 cups of nuts for a large food processor bowl. Note that 4 cups of peanuts give about 2 cups of peanut butter. As you can see below, the longer you process the nuts, the smoother it gets.
Add some flavor
You don’t need to add flavor to your spread, a pinch of salt is great that’s all. However if you really fancy some flavors, you can add a liquid sweetener or cocoa powder, but you must know that this will dry out the spread. Consequently you will need to balance the texture with the addition of oil or you will lose the smooth texture.
Which flavored peanut butter are tasty?
So if you love a boost of flavor into your spread, I recommend adding chocolate or cinnamon.
Peanut butter recipes ideas
Here are the best 3 recipes to use your homemade spread.
xoxo Carine
How to make peanut butter
Ingredients
Natural Unsalted Peanut Butter
- 4 cups raw peanuts ,skin on, unroasted, unsalted
Instructions
Roast the Raw Peanuts (skin on)
- 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.
- 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.
Process 1 minute - Total: 1 minute
- 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.
Process 1 extra minute - Total: 2 minutes
- 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!
Process 1 minute again - Total: 3 minutes
- 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.
Process 1 last minute (or so) - Total: 5 minutes
- 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.
Leave a comment
Absolutely lovely! Do you rate it would work the same with any other type of nut such as macadamia or hazelnuts?
Sure it does! Actually, it is even faster to turn macadamia nuts into nut butter! For hazelnuts you can look at my healthy hazelnut chocolate spread recipe for tips. Enjoy! XOXO Carine.
How many carbs per serving and what is a serving? One tablespoon? A teaspoon? Trying to stay within the limits of the keto diet but hard with recipes I don’t know the amount.
The full nutrition panel is in the recipe card after the instructions. This recipe makes 60 servings of 10 grams, one serving contains 103 kcal, 3.8 g net carbs and 0.9 g fiber which means only 2.9 g net carbs per serve.
I am confused, you said to buy roasted nuts , but you gave the recipe for raw. Now i dont know how to make it with roasted nuts.
No the recipe ingredients says to buy raw nuts and I explain how to roast them before processing. However this is not a problem if you buy peanuts that are already roasted simply skip the roasting step! Go directly to step 2, add your nuts to the food processor and process to form your nut butter. It will end up the same. Enjoy the recipe. XOXO Carine.
I prepared it with both raw peanuts and roasted peanuts. It tasted better with roasted peanuts.
Agree! My fav too ! Enjoy the low carb recipes on the blog. XOXO Carine.
This is an awesome recipe/tip. Thanks for sharing. Been on keto for 6 weeks and PB hits the spot. Love the flavored variations.
I am so glad you appreciate the flavored PB option I provided here. I am a PB lover too and the cinnamon one is dream ! Enjoy the keto baking recipes on the blog, XOXO Carine.
This is a very thorough step-by-step process on how to make a delicious peanut butter (and two flavored variations). I do however have a few questions, specifically on storage. After I make this peanut butter, should I store it at room temperature or in a refrigerator? I do not mean it as in a sense of whether or not the peanut butter would stay good or not—it will at room temperature—but rather on whether or not storing it in the refrigerator will prevent any oils from rising up from the peanut butter. Also, if I were to add a little bit of salt to my peanut butter for taste, would I need to add anything to it? Thank you!
Thank you for trying my peanut butter recipe ! adding a pinch of salt is a great idea, simply add at the end of the blending process, 1/4 teaspoon per 2 cups of peanuts sounds great. I never store my peanut butter in the fridge because it gets harder and difficult to spread, plus it doesn’t prevent the oil to separate from the nuts either so I do prefer to store mine in the pantry. I hope this is helpful! Enjoy the low carb recipes on the blog, XOXO Carine.
I love drizzly homemade peanut butter! It’s seriously the bomb dot com – the packaged stuff just doesn’t even compare. I have been trying to talk myself out of buying a food processor for myself, but I think this post really tips the scales… I could have homemade PB all the time! Magical.
Homemade peanut butter is the ebst, and so simple to make ! Enjoy the recipe. XOXO Carine.