Here's How To Make Peanut Butter At Home

It's the perfect partner for apple slices, on toast, crackers, and with jelly — of course. What are we talking about? Most definitely peanut butter. But, we aren't all excited about the stuff you buy at the grocery store (added sugar, salt). No sir, we are jazzed up about making your very own nut butter at home. It might seem like a difficult, or maybe even impossible task, however, making your own natural peanut butter is actually super easy. Homemade peanut butter is as simple or fancy as you want to make it. You can easily just put peanuts in a food processor to produce smooth, simple, and healthy peanut butter. You can also customize your butter in loads of ways.

So, for the basic butter you'll need plain un-shelled peanuts. You can toast the nuts in the oven at 350 degrees for ten minutes if you'd like, but this step is totally optional. If you are using pre-roasted nuts, definitely skip this step. The benefit of roasted nuts is it simplifies the blending step by pulling out the oils in the nuts beforehand (via Kitchn).

Next, take your nuts and pulse them in a food processor that's been fitted with a blade attachment or just a plain old blender. Pulse the nuts until they are chopped. Then scrape the sides. Run them through the machine again continuously for one minute. At this point, the soon-to-be peanut butter will look sort of dry and sandy.

Next, push the peanuts to the bottom again and repeat. This time the butter will start to look a little more like the butter you are familiar with but it's not done yet.

Push the peanut mixture toward the bottom of the chopper again, and process for another few minutes. At this point the butter will look and feel thick and creamy. You can call it quits, but if you want to be really extra, you can add in salt, peanut oil, and any sweetener you'd like. Honey is an excellent addition to your homemade butter.

If you're anything like us, you probably like your peanut butter spiced up a bit. Try adding in some cinnamon, raisins, and vanilla to create peanut butter raisin bread in a jar. Or microwave some chocolate chips in a bowl and mix them into your peanut butter for a totally decadent take on the stuff. Get creative; one of the perks of making homemade nut butter is that the sky is really the limit (via Cheat Sheet). 

You can use other nuts for this recipe if you and peanuts don't mix well. Imagine how beautiful something like pistachio butter would be — totally food-bloggable.