# Making peanut butter



## Saltygreasybacon (Oct 21, 2006)

Has anyone ever tried making peanut butter.  Would like to try making some so I could control the sugar content.


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## Gretchen (Oct 21, 2006)

You could leave out the chocolate from this for regular peanut butter but you might enjoy the extra treat.
You could use already roasted peanuts to begin with.


*Spiced Chocolate Peanut Butter*
125 grams (1 cup) raw peeled peanuts
40 grams (1 1/2 ounces) Xocopili (substitute bittersweet chocolate, chopped, plus a _teeny-tiny_ pinch each of ground chili, curry, paprika, and cardamom) 
Sea salt, to taste
Makes about a cup.
Preheat the oven to 180°C (350°F). Spread the peanuts on a rimmed baking sheet and roast for 5 to 7 minutes, keeping an eye on them and stirring halfway through, until golden and fragrant. Let cool.
Combine the nuts and chocolate in a food processor, and process until the mixture turns creamy, scraping the sides of the bowl every once in a while. . Add salt to taste and mix again.
Transfer to a jar and close tightly. The texture is best for spreading at room temperature, but keep in the fridge if you're not going to consume it right away or if the weather is very warm.


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## XeniA (Oct 22, 2006)

Tried making it as a kid. It was amusing. It was edible. Peanut butter as we know it, it was not!


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## corazon (Oct 22, 2006)

Yum, chocolate peanut butter!

There's a place in town that makes peanut butter from honey roasted peanuts.  It's delicious!  I don't think they add anything else.


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## SNPiccolo5 (Oct 22, 2006)

I love trying to make chocolate hazelnut butter that doesn't have as much sugar as nutella....

Any reason why the "nut butter" is a different recipe than the peanut butter, daisy?  Are peanuts just that different from nuts? Thanks!

-Tim


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## TexanFrench (Oct 23, 2006)

My mom had an old-fashioned hand meat grinder with a special wheel for making peanut butter.  It crushed the peanuts as well as grinding them, which released the oils to make spreadable peanut butter out of plain old salted peanuts.  Took a lot of work and a lot of peanuts!  Don't know of any current electrical machine that does this.

If you read the labels, you should be able to find peanut butter without sugar.  This is usually the kind that separates, with the oil on top when it is stored. (Laura Scudder's comes to mind: "Peanuts and salt, that's all!"  If you close the lid tightly and turn the jar upside down between uses, the oil will be on the bottom of the jar when you open it.)


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## daisy (Oct 23, 2006)

The difference is with the oils. We are used to having our peanut butter oily, so we add peanut oil to them when making peanut butter. You can't always get Cashew Oil, or Pecan Oil, so water is used. That's about it, really.


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## Saltygreasybacon (Oct 24, 2006)

Thanks again my friends for all the replies


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