Sunday, May 17, 2009

Homemade Peanut Butter

Why would anyone make homemade peanut butter when you can go to the store and get some peanut butter for about $1.50?


Well, first is quality.

Most of the cheaper peanut butters are loaded with sugar and hydrogenated oil. Even the organic or all natural peanut butters have sugar in them and they are well over $1.50. You get to control what you add and how smooth or crunchy it is.

Second would be cost. The cheapest and most basic peanut butter (think peanuts, salt and oil listed as the only ingredients) I found at my local store is close to $4 for a jar. On the other hand a 16 oz jar of roasted peanuts cost about $2 and yields the same amount of peanut butter as the $4 jar.

Lastly would be the ease which it takes to actually make homemade peanut butter. If you have a food processor, you basically just throw everything in the bowl and turn it on.

In the beginning it will look like the mixture will never become peanut butter, but trust me, it will. One trick is to add the oil to the bowl first so that it comes up over the blades or close to them. Then add the salt and peanuts. Turn it on and just let it go.

I probably processed the peanut butter for close to 3 minutes before I got the consistency I wanted. I normally like super crunchy peanut butter, but with homemade, and even natural, it is a whole different ball game. Even the smoothest of homemade peanut butter is crunchy and that is fine by me.

Ingredients:
2 cups lightly salted dry roasted peanuts
4 tablespoons canola oil
1 teaspoon salt or more to taste

Directions:
~Combine all the in the bowl of a food processor and blend until the desire consistency.

~Store in an airtight container in the fridge.

recipe by: The Good Wife

See? Cheap, easy and fun, just like me. Wait a minute....

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

What a great idea. I'm totally making this.

Anonymous said...

The natural grocery store by my house has dealie where it crushes your peanuts with oil into peanut butter in the store. It still cost more than $2.

I'm going to have to suck it up and buy a food processor, aren't I?

The Good Wife said...

mesha - I made this in my tiny little 2 cup food processor, which costs about $20. I need to get a bigger one, but a small one will do you just fine.