Peanut Butter

It's always been a bit of a dream of mine to make as much of the food I eat as possible, and make it from scratch. I think it's perhaps a bit of a prairie aspiration--most of us have grand parents who grew up on farms with only very distant neighbours, and told stories about childhoods without fridges or proper electricity, their mothers making sauerkraut in the cellar, homemade ice cream on November weekends, and having to freeze food in the barn all winter. 

So during this quarantine, I have tried to invest some time getting better at some of those time-intensive recipes I haven't yet been able to master, and also just try making some staples from scratch that I'm used to buying ready-made. 

One of the things I've been working hardest on is bread. I've always had difficulties with bread - mine never rises properly. I don't know if it's that I'm not patient enough in the rising process, or whether it's the large percentages of whole wheat flour I use.

This is not a post about bread, however, because I don't have a successful story or recipe to share yet. It's a post about the one thing I love most to eat with bread - which I've been enjoying with my dense toasted slices every morning - peanut butter. 

I had never made my own peanut butter until this lock down began, but it is dead simple and delicious, and definitely saves you a little money if you compare the price of raw peanuts with natural peanut butters. So I do think it is a practice that I will be continuing post-lock down.

I first tried making my homemade peanut butter a few weeks into lock down, because I was about to run out of peanut butter, and at that point it was pretty difficult to get groceries if you were at all fussy about quality. So I did some googling and decided to try it out. 

Truthfully, I don't have an exactly set recipe I have been using for peanut butter, because it is just  so no-fail, provided you have a food processor and follow two basic steps: roast and then grind. There are just four ingredients: peanuts, oil, salt, and (if you choose to include it) sugar. One thing to note, though, is the importance of toasting the peanuts. The flavour of the peanuts only comes out if they are toasted to a nice golden brown colour, and grinding the peanuts while they are still hot helps break them down quicker. Furthermore the "roasted peanuts" that are sold in stores are doused in an ungodly amount of salt. So I firmly recommend that you buy raw, unsalted peanuts, and roast them yourself in a pan or the oven. 

One more note is that you can choose which oil you put in your peanut butter, and depending on how much oil you decide to use, it will probably shape the taste a bit. When I lived in Nova Scotia, there was an amazing coconut peanut butter we used to buy there. There was just a slight coconut aroma that rounded out the toasty, sweet peanuts perfectly. It was addictive. So I have been using coconut oil in my peanut butter. But you can use any oil you want, just choose a good quality oil and be aware that you will be able to taste it a little in the final product, so either go with a tasteless oil or one whose taste will compliment the peanuts.

Homemade Peanut Butter from 1 kg of Peanuts

Ingredients:

• 1 kg raw peanuts
• 1-2 tsp finely ground salt
• 4 tbsp to 1/4 cup coconut oil, groundnut oil, or canola oil (actually optional, but if you include it, use a good-quality oil, and add until the PB is your desired consistency)
• 3-4 tbsp finely ground sugar

Directions:

1. Toast your peanuts in a preheated oven or a large wok, stirring, until golden brown - 5-10 minutes over a stove top, or 20-30 minutes in an oven, at 350 degrees F, if they are totally raw (the raw peanuts you get at Asian grocery stores)
2. If you want to remove the skins, you can attempt to do that at this point with a tea towel. I don't remove the skins on mine as I like the taste, and they have some good additional nutrients
3. Put the warm peanuts into a food processor fitted with the blade attachment. Grind the peanuts alone for 5-10 minutes or until they're quite fine. 
4. Add a little oil, grind further, give it a stir and a taste, and then add a little more if you want. More oil will make for a smoother, thinner peanut butter. 
5. Add salt and sugar to taste. You don't need much of either and the sugar is optional, but I added 4 tbsp of sugar because I like my peanut butter a little sweet. You could probably add close to 1/4 cup of sugar and still have less sugar in your peanut butter than in its processed counter parts, but I don't recommend this because it will just taste too sweet.
6. When your peanut butter is ready, transfer it into a few jars and store it in the fridge. It will keep for a long time provided it's kept in the fridge. Just take it out a few minutes before you want to use it, as it will get firmer when cold, but loosen up once it's back at room temperature.

Now that I am 8 weeks into lock down, I have made peanut butter twice, as well as small batches of almond butter and cashew butter - all using this process and just adjusting the ratios depending on how I'm feeling. I loved every batch. I don't think I'll go back to buying peanut butter anytime soon, because I'm getting addicted to this stuff, and while natural peanut butter here is probably about $6 for 500g, it only costs me $3 on Amazon for 1 kg of raw peanuts, so it's a money saver too. There are so many reasons to make your own peanut butter at home!

PS. above you can see a photo of one of my quarantine bread attempts. It doesn't look great, though actually it was quite a delicious loaf. slightly lighter. Clearly I need to keep working on my method and ratios.  Let's see if I can make some more progress before this global house arrest eventually ends.