Blinners Team
If you’re looking to learn how to make peanut butter at home, you’ve come to the right guide! You only need one or two (three at most) ingredients and a food processor, or high-powered blender, to home-make peanut butter. Chances are that once you try it, you might never want to buy from store again.
The truth is that making your own peanut butter is much cheaper and potentially tastier than most store-bought brands. It’s very easy and takes around 5 minutes! Just throw peanuts into a food processor (and maybe also salt, honey?) and let it go. Let’s see how it’s done…
Let’s go…
Table of content
What is peanut butter?
You may already know that we like to define things so we’re clear from the start about what we’re talking about.
You may already know what it is, otherwise you wouldn’t be reading this, but we’d still like to provide an explicit definition of peanut butter for you…
Definition
Peanut butter is a food paste or spread made from ground, dry-roasted peanuts. It commonly contains additional ingredients that modify the taste or texture, such as salt, sweeteners, or emulsifiers.
Consumed in many countries, it is the most commonly used of the nut butters, a group that also includes cashew butter and almond butter. Peanut butter is a nutrient-rich food containing high levels of protein, several vitamins, and dietary minerals.
Now let’s see how to actually make peanut butter…
Ingredients
As we previously mentioned, you can make peanut butter with one to three ingredients. We will opt for including all three in this guide, but feel free to exclude any of them if you so prefer (except for the peanuts, please)…
Peanut Butter
We prefer to use dry-roasted, unsalted peanuts for this one. They’re simple but deliciously roasty for that intense peanut flavor. You could try with other nuts (like cashews, almonds, hazelnuts, etc.) but we haven’t tried with any of them; feel free to experiment, though!
Honey
You could also use another liquid sweetener like agave. Even sugar, if you’d like.
We prefer honey for this preparation.
Sea Salt
This is completely optional, especially if you opted for salted peanuts (we recommend unsalted).
If you’d like your peanut butter to be saltier, add some extra salt to the mix.
Preparation
You will need a food processor or a high-speed blender such as a Blendtec or a Vitamix. A regular mixer will not work for this preparation.
Once you have your food processor or high-speed blender ready, do the following:
- Add enough peanuts that the blade of your food processor bowl is well covered by an inch or two. Not adding enough won’t let it blend properly.
- Add honey and salt to the peanuts. While both of these are optional, we recommend them for a tastier result. But feel free to not use either of them.
- Have a jar ready for when you finish with the blend. For 2 cups of peanuts you could use a 16 oz jar like one of these.
Processing
Start processing the mix inside of the food processor or the high speed blender.
Initially, you might get something like this that looks more like chopped peanuts.
It might be a matter of either keeping it going or adding a bit more nuts or honey. We recommend you blend it for a little longer without adding anything to it. It should get creamier in not too much time.
After some time (a few more seconds), you should have a mix looking like this, which is still too thick for what we recommend.
We continue to process it until it’s 100% runny. Although it’s very runny at room temperature, once you refrigerate it, it’ll thicken quite a bit.
Note that if you process your peanut butter so that it’s not so runny, your recipes using peanut butter might not come out as intended.
So, the following is what it should look like once it’s done.
Now you’re done!
You can proceed to serve it with anything that you’d like or to store it for a later use.
Right below we answer some questions that you may have after this peanut butter preparation.
Frequently Asked Questions
We recommend you use roasted peanuts to get the most flavorful peanut butter.
If you happen to have raw peanuts, we strongly suggest roasting them before making peanut butter with them.
Each food processor’s strength is just a little bit different and it might just need a few extra minutes in the food processor.
Be a little patient, it’ll get there!
The honey helps balance out the saltiness of the peanuts (if they are salted or if you use salt), but if you want to keep it sugar-free, just keep the honey out.
This also applies to any other kind of sweetener.
It should last for about 3 to 6 months in the refrigerator. If it’s gone bad, you can tell by its rancid smell.
Fridge or at room temperature is okay for your peanut butter.
It’s best in the fridge if it’s going to be several weeks before you get through it.
Definitely, NOT!
As we mentioned before, you’ll need a more powerful, high-speed blender such as a Blendtec or Vitaminx.
Your regular blender might break or might just not be able to properly blend the peanuts.
If instead of a high-speed blender you go with a food processor, you could go with one between 700 to 1000 watts.
Might not work with one with lower watts as it’s unlikely to have the required power to process the mix properly.
Most definitely!
If you want to add vanilla, you can use the seeds of a vanilla bean.
You may add a little cinnamon too.
Our recommendation is to make your peanut butter, and once it’s at your desired creamyness, pour some peanut butter in a little bowl, add a little of whatever you want to add, and see if it works.
This way you’ll taste it without the risk of ruining your whole batch.
Many other peanut butter recipes say to add oil, but we don’t think you have to.
Just keep processing, take breaks if necessary, and don’t give up! It’ll come together!
We thought you’d never ask!
Making your own peanut butter ensures there aren’t any strange fillers or too much salt, or other harmful ingredients that are hard to pronounce, so we’re already off to a good start.
Peanut butter is high in protein, full of fiber and healthy fats which help stabilize insulin levels and gives you a constant supply of energy for hours. It’s perfect at breakfast, giving you a boost of energy throughout your day.
Peanut butter is also loaded with antioxidants. It has a high concentration of folate, niacin, riboflavin and thiamin. This helps control cancers, heart and chronic diseases and fungal infections.
It’s high in vitamin E and B6, manganese and magnesium and a good source of copper as well.
Whatever you use it in, just know that by making your own, you’re making healthier decisions, saving some money and adding good nutrition into your diet!
Usage of peanut butter
If you’re not going to eat it straight from the spoon, here are some suggestions.
There are MANY ways to use peanut butter, but here are some of the most basic ones:
- As a spread on a toast for breakfast or snack.
- Drizzle it on your favorite fruit (such as bananas).
- Add some to your smoothies.
- Pour it and stir it into your oatmeal for a protein boost.
- Make peanut butter protein balls.
- Make peanut butter oatmeal cookies.
Equipment recommendation
On the ingredients section we already included our recommendations for those.
As for the actual equipment to use to make the peanut butter, we have these.
Remember, you only need either a food processor OR a high-speed blender.
Cuisinart Food Processor
Make any kind of dip, puree soup or sauce including hummus, salsa, guacamole – the possibilities are endless.
Also includes a spatula, instruction manual and recipe booklet with dishwasher-safe parts.
Blendtec Total Blender Classic
Includes FourSide Jar (75 oz) – 10-Speed Professional-Grade Countertop Blender – High-Power Kitchen Blender with 6 Pre-Programmed Cycles.
Vitamix Explorian Blender – Professional Grade
The aircraft-grade stainless steel blades are designed to handle the toughest ingredients, so from the first blend to the last, you get the same quality results.
STARSIDE 16 oz Glass Mason jars with Lids
These 16 oz mason jars are made of the highest quality glass and the silver screw lids are made of high quality metal for maximum durability and convenience.
Affiliate Disclosure
This post may contain affiliate links, i.e., when you buy any product using these links, we get commissions. However, it doesn’t cost you anything extra. If you do purchase any product using the given links, we thank you in advance!
Related posts and recipes
We have a number of posts and recipes where we make reference to peanut butter and we’ve listed them below.
You can explore our recipes and get some more ideas about using peanut butter
If you have any questions or comments, make sure to reach out to us or leave us a comment down below.
Thank you for reading us!
