Make your own nut butter

One of my favourite foods is nut butters – almond butter and peanut butter in particular.  Almond butter is pretty expensive to buy, and if you want the peanut butter with nothing added, well that’s a bit more pricey than your average peanut butter too.

But the good news is it’s so easy to make your own.  I don’t know why I didn’t do it earlier.  The past few weeks I’ve made almond butter, and peanut butter – both with excellent results.  All you need is nuts, a decent food processor and some clean, sterilised jars.

For the almond butter I made, I used about $5 worth of almonds and filled a jam jar.  This compares to paying around $11 for a jar at the supermarket.  The peanuts I bought were $3 and it filled a fairly large jar – as pictured.

NOTE: I accidentally bought blanched peanuts so my peanut butter looks very white! Buy the raw peanuts with skin on so you get more fibre and the more traditional peanut butter colour!

Here’s how I made mine.

1.  Preheat oven to 180 degrees celcius.  Spread your nuts in a single layer on a roasting dish and place in the oven for 20 minutes, turning them over at ten minutes.  Leave to cool for 15 minutes so they are still slightly warm (makes them easier to blend up)

2.  Place nuts in a food processor and blend on high.  You’ll need to stop the food processor occasionally and push down the nuts that have moved up the side of the processor.  Continue blending.  You’ll see the nuts go through several stages – firstly they’ll get chopped into chunks, then into an nut meal consistency, then it will come together like a dough.  Keep blending a little bit past this stage and you’ll get a soft nut butter.

Crunchy nut butter version – take out some of the finely chopped nuts at the start of the blending process and set aside.  Stir through the butter at the end.

Smother on some grainy toast or use as a dip for carrots/celery/apple.  I also like a dollop of almond butter on my porridge – it’s so good, it adds some healthy fats and a yummy flavour.