Happy Peanut Butter Lover’s Day! Make Your Own!

I’ve just been reminded that this is International Peanut Butter Lover’s Day! Celebrate by making your own and making any of the multitude of goodies – both sweet and savoury – that include peanut butter in their ingredient lists. No, it’s not a hard as you might think!

Homemade PB Ingredients - © 2015  Nadine KalinauskasFour ingredients are all you really need to make your own Peanut Butter:
Peanuts, Salt, a Sweetener and some healthy Oil. That and a little patience…

Here’s the perfect solution for folks who don’t like the flavour of commercial peanut butters, don’t like the (oily) texture of ‘Health Food’ store peanut butters or just want to know what’s in the stuff they eat: Make your own! It takes only a few ingredients ans only a few minutes and you can customized the flavour and texture to suit your own particular taste.

You’ll need:

  • Lots of roasted peanuts. The volume of Peanuts will be reduced by 1/3 to 1/2 when you have given them the royal treatment in the blender or food processor.
  • Honey, maple Syrup or other sweetener of your choice. Some folks swear by a small dose of Molasses!
  • Salt (to taste)
  • Oil. Peanut oil is obviously the first choice aesthetically. But you can use Corn Oil or Canola Oil if you want to save some money. A significant amount of oil will come out of the peanuts themselves during processing.

Now…

  • Toast your Peanuts in a dry frying pan for a few minutes, until they just start to show brown areas on some sides. Allow to cool before going on with the recipe.
  • Place cooled toasted PEanuts in a blender or food processor and buzz, first on slow and then, when they have started to break down into smaller pieces, on high. Buzz until you have what looks like a coarse Peanut Flour, or moist crumbs. The stuff will be sticky, from indigenous Peanut Oil, so you may have to stop once or twice to scrape down the sides of the bowl.
  • Add Oil slowly while buzzing until you have the consistency you want.
  • Taste. Add Salt as required.
  • Add Sugar/sweetener to taste, blending between small additions until you have the flavour you’re looking for.
  • If you want crunchy style, just keep some partly-crushed peanut pieces out of the mix before adding the Oil, and stir them in at the end of the process!

And there you have it!

About storage…

You’ll want to keep your home-made peanut butter in the fridge, since it contains no preservatives aside from a little Salt and Sugar. That means you’ll have to bring it out half an hour before you want to spread it to let it come to room temperature! Store in a covered container (a plastic freezer container will work, as will Mason Jar), and keep for up to a week.

It’s not just for Jelly Sandwiches!

Remember, there’s a world – literally – of Asian recipes that use peanut butter in savoury sauces and garnishes. And there are whole chapters in baking cookbooks devoted to Peanut Butter-based recipes…

And petition your federal representative today to have March 1 be made a statutory holiday!

~ Maggie J.