Homemade Peanut Butter

Peanut Butter...yum.

(sorry if you have nut allergies I am going to spew wonderful nut fantasies here for a minute)

Whether you like it on apples or celery, sandwiches, with bananas or crackers, mixed in baked goods or even blended into a protein shake or some Greek yogurt (or straight off the spoon shhhhh, don't tell) peanut butter is just one of nature's yummy inventions.

But I am not talking about the stuff off the shelf I am talking about real, homemade, 1 ingredient peanut butter. SERIOUSLY!

 Here is what you need:

That's right. Just peanuts. Unsalted roasted peanuts (or you can use raw and roast them yourself but I don't always have time for that and my kids seem to like the store bought ones a bit better) and a really really good blender or food processor.

Now I happen to have a vitamix (which I love) and it is able to process this peanut butter without any additional ingredients. I am sure there are other amazing blenders and food processors that can do the same thing but I have only been successful using the vitamix. I have made peanut butter with a food processor but ended up adding a touch of peanut oil just to get the consistency I was looking for but if you don't have a vitamix experiment with what you've got- I will attach a few links to the bottom of the post for some other good recipes.

I put 3 cups of peanuts in the vitamix

Turn it onto setting 1 and then slowly increase the power to 10 while using the tamper to get all the nuts moving.

It sounds pretty loud and like its working hard (which I assure you it is) but just keep smushing the nuts down until the magic happens and they transform into liquid gold. 

Ok seriously though, once the peanut butter starts flowing freely the motor sound will change into a high pitched sound and this is when your peanut butter is done so turn of the blender.

For real now, turn it off!
(I have heard that if you run it much longer it can overheat the motor and thank GOODNESS that has never happened to me but I usually turn it off before I hear the high pitched noise just to be on the safe side!)

And that's it! 

No salt, no additional oil, definitely no sugar. 

Just delicious, velvety peanut butter!

I pour mine into a few little ball jars and seal them up and pop them in the fridge. 

3 cups of nuts usually gives me about 2 8oz jars full.

If that's too much trouble for you at least read the labels on the store bought stuff.

I mean wouldn't you rather eat this:

 

Than this:

 That is a whole lot of extra ingredients don't you think?

So go try it, I promise it's easy and the taste is so different!

As promised if you don't have a vitamix here are a few other recipes that might work better for you:

Peanut butter in food processor

(don't judge me here this ladies pictures are WAY better than mine-they even made me hungry)

Don't like it plain or the kids aren't buying it? Try this food network recipe, its got a few more ingredients but it's still better than the stuff on the shelf and you control everything that goes in so you know exactly whats in there!

Alton Brown's homemade Peanut Butter