Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Peanut butter

Or: Reducing a big bag of peanuts to a tiny glass of tasty spread.


When buying peanut butter, you have several choices:
  • Regular peanut butter with yummy hydrogenated fats. 
  • Organic peanut butter with palm oil. Why does everything have to contain palm oil? This is really annoying because rain forest is destroyed for palm oil plantations. Even some organic companies have been criticized for it recently.
  • Organic peanut butter without any other ingredient - no salt, nor sugar... hm, possible, but not optimal.
  • I guess there are more options, but these were mine yesterday ;-)
But then you remember that there are some peanuts left somewhere in your kitchen, and just make the peanut butter yourself!

Preparation time: Peanut peeling takes a while, making the spread itself takes about 15 minutes.
Suggested music film: X-Files Season 3 Episode 18 (which has got nothing to do with peanuts, I just watched it while peeling...)

Ingredients:
  • peanuts
  • salt
  • sugar
  • oil (anything that does not taste too weird and does not oxidize too fast; peanut oil for example)

What to do:

Start with a decent amount of peanuts.


Watch an episode of X-Files and magically end up with this:


Take an immersion blender or a food processor and puree the peanuts. I use an immersion blender and puree several small batches of peanuts, otherwise the blender becomes hot and starts smelling like burned plastic. It helps to add a little bit of oil - blending will be easier, and the consistency becomes a bit softer. Then add salt and sugar to taste.


Store the peanut butter in the fridge. I'm not sure how long you can keep it there, because mine rarely lasts for more than two weeks.

2 comments:

  1. Ah, das ist mir neulich tatsächlich auch passiert, ich hab unbesehen Bio-Erdnussbutter gekauft (wie kann man eigentlich, als Veganer...) und daheim wurde mir dann spontan schlecht, weil Palmöl drin war.
    Leider habe ich keinen ordentlichen Mixer und bis zur geplanten Wohnungs- und Küchenvergrößerung wirds auch keinen geben....

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  2. Oh das ist wirklich super, ich liebe Erdnussbutter wirklich so sehr, aber langsam wird mir auch die Problematik um Palmöl immer bewusster.

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