Friday, May 27, 2011

Homemade Peanut Butter

As much as I love peanut butter, I had never even thought about making it from scratch until recently. Peanut butter seems like one of those grocery staples you just buy. However after a quick gander at various peanut butter recipes, I quickly realized that there's nothing to making it at all. This recipe requires hardly any ingredients and minimal work, assuming you buy the peanuts sans shell. Trust me, shelling a bag of peanuts to save a couple of dollars is most definitely not worth the time and sore fingers. I usually make more than the recipe below and simply add one tablespoon of oil per cup of shelled peanuts.



Ingredients
1 cup of peanuts, shelled, unsalted and roasted (highly recommend buying in this form)
1 tablespoon peanut oil
Sea salt to taste
Honey to taste

Directions
Combine peanuts and peanut oil in food processor. Don't add more oil if you don't see the peanuts break down right away as it will take a couple of minutes for the peanuts to break down and soften with the oil. If you want your peanut butter chunky, don't allow the substance to break down completely.

Once you achieve your desired texture, it's time to perfect the taste. Add salt and honey in small amounts  until you achieve your desired taste. Make sure to taste the mixture prior to adding any salt or honey to avoid over-salting. Remember, you can always add more so stay on the conservative side.

Spread on anything and everything and enjoy! My favorite is on a warm piece of toast as shown in the picture below. I would recommend storing it in the fridge and using within a month, however I have yet to keep it around any longer than that to see how long it really lasts!