Making peanut butter or other nut butters with a food processor is easy and straightforward. Homemade nut butters do not require many ingredients, plus the food processor performs all of the monotonous chopping and mixing. Further, homemade own peanut butter is a healthier alternative to commercial, store bought items, as homemade peanut butter is free from preservatives, high fructose corn syrup and other additives. On the other hand, due to the lack of preservatives, homemade peanut butter will have a shorter shelf life compared to store brands. So smaller homemade quantities that can be refrigerated and eaten in a shorter period of time is best

Ingredients

- Peanuts, almonds, cashews, pecans or other nuts

- Peanut oil or other oil, if desired or needed

- Cinnamon, vanilla, molasses, or other sweeteners, if desired

Preparation

When making peanut butter or other nut butters, the food processor needs to run continuously in order to grind the nuts down into a smooth paste. Because of this, it is best to grind smaller amounts or batches of nuts at one time. Depending on the size of the food processor’s work bowl, up to 8 ounces, or one cup, of nuts should be processed at once. Leave some room in the work bowl for the nuts to rise up the sides as they are processed.

- Place the nuts in the food processor’s work bowl

- Grind the nuts continuously for up to two minutes

- After 1½ to 2 minutes, the ground nuts will begin to form a ball

- Further processing will make the ball gradually smooth out

- Scrape the sides and push the nuts back down towards the blades and continue processing until drops of oil are visible

- Some nuts, like cashews could use a bit of oil added to the mixture

- Taste the nut butter for consistency and smoothness

- The longer the nuts are processed the softer the nut butter will be

- For chunkier nut butter, add a small amount of nuts after the ball of nut butter begins to smooth out

- Extra ingredients can be added and mixed in to create different tasting nut butters, including salt, sugar, honey, maple syrup, molasses, cinnamon or vanilla.

- Butters can be made with different combinations of nuts including pecan, cashew, almond and peanuts.

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Published 8/19/2011 12:00:00 AM

Tags: Food Processor Recipes