The Homemade Peanut Butter Experiment

Isn't peanut butter a wonderful food?!  Gluten-free and scrumptious, all three of us eat an awful lot of it around here (especially the puppy!).  And while making it at home doesn't save a great deal of money, it does save a bit, and we thought it would be an adventure.  So, we decided to give it a try!  The Smucker's all-natural that we buy runs about $3.50 a jar (which is one pound), and we discovered that we could buy two pounds of peanuts for $6.00 at the local fruit stand.  We started by roasting the peanuts in the oven and then ground them up in the food processor.  Here's what happened: 

There was a pivotal moment where everything suddenly emulsified and became wonderfully creamy- it was pretty magical!  After we had hit the right consistency, we tossed in about a quarter teaspoon of salt, and we've been living off the stuff ever since!  It has a deeply nutty, meaty flavor that is really delicious with a sliced banana for breakfast.  We'll definitely do this again (although it will take us a while to work through two pounds of the stuff!), and the only tweak we'd make would be to roast the nuts a bit longer in the oven before grinding to see how we can play with the deep, roasted flavor.

Have you made any nut butters at home?  How did they turn out?

Lots of love,

~Mersydotes