Make your own peanut butter

In my ongoing attempt to green up my family's life and leave behind as many preservatives and additives as possible, I thought I would try making my own peanut butter. I love peanut butter by the spoonful and the kids eat it on their sammys.....not their daycare ones though, of course. But I find commercial peanut butter far too sweet and depending on what brand you buy it has various things added to it apart from the basics.

Now if you ask Master Chef Google how to do this you will come up with many similar answers.

Peanuts, oil, no oil, salt, sugar, honey........hmmmm.


Well, I did it this way:

I used my Thermomix, though I presume any half decent food processor would the job.
Into that I added 500 grams roasted, un-salted peanuts.
I blitzed these until I they were very very finely ground. At this point some of my searches had said my peanuts should turn to a paste and bind together. Well, mine didn't.
So I added a splash of olive oil - peanut is recommended but I didn't have any, and blitzed again. Better.
Another dribble of oil and blitz again.
Ok, looks good now, paler than commercial peanut butter but the correct consistency.
Taste. Hmmm, a bit.....bland?
Add some salt. Mix. Better.
Add a bit more salt. (Confession, I like my food salty, great for my health I know) Mix.
Just right.
Store in recycled glass jar in fridge, where it should keep for 2-3 weeks.

Only I'm not sure even I can eat that much p/b in 2-3 weeks.

On the left is home made nutella, which I also made today, much to my 4 year old's delight. Nutella is not something I buy, ever, but I had a recipe and wanted to try it. Preliminary tastings were promising, though it had to go into the fridge to set, so I haven't tried it out since then.

I'll keep you posted on that one....




Ha, you can now tell exactly how lazy I am, my peanut butter is labeled Archibald's honey and my nutella is some sort of mayo. I just cannot be bothered soaking labels off jars. Laaazzzy, yay me!