Homemade peanut butter. An easy recipe for crunchy cashew peanut butter

Make your own nut butters

This may be old news to some of you smart cookies, but I for one was pretty surprised to learn just how easy it is to make your own homemade peanut butter, or any other nut butter.

If you have a blender or food processor, and you have nuts, you are well on your way to nut butter; because all peanut butter or other nut butter is, is blended nuts. That's it…nuts in a blender makes peanut butter. Who would have thought?

Homemade peanut butter is slightly different from commercial peanut butter, and I like it better. It is somehow nuttier (if you can imagine that!) and the taste seems a bit more aggressive, in a good way.

The first and most important thing to consider when making a batch of peanut butter is buying fresh peanuts, or other nuts. Because nuts have such high oil content, they can go rancid if stored improperly, or for too long. Buy your nuts from a busy store, with a good turnover, and you should have no problem.

You can buy already toasted nuts for the easiest possible peanut butter, but toasting your own seems to give a better end result, and gives you more control over the process.

To toast nuts, add a scant Tbls of oil into a good heavy fry pan, and heat over medium low, add all the nuts (as much as you want, but about 1 cup is a very manageable amount) and increase the heat to medium, stirring constantly. When the nuts have browned appropriately, take them off. You can "dry roast them" but it is harder to get an even "roast" without the oil, and the oil roasting seems to give a richer, and more uniform flavor.

That's pretty much the hard work done then, all that remains is to pop these in the blender or food processor, and process them until they are at the desired constancy. You may need to stop the machine a few times and scrape down the sides as you go.

Process until completely smooth and if you want a chunky peanut butter, just add some more nuts in at the end, and give a very quick processing so that they remain "chucky". Add salt to taste; start with a tsp and work your way up from there.

I guess there is no need to tell you how to use your peanut butter once created!

You can also get a little bit more interesting if desired, and mix a couple of nuts together. You can make peanut butter as normal, but instead of adding peanuts for your chunky texture, you can alternatively add in a handful of cashews, or other nut. Very nice, and a pleasant surprise for anyone expecting the usual old peanut butter.

Straight cashew butter is a decadent extravagance…a grown up version of the classic.

Try experimenting with any nuts you have on hand. Great for baking or just on toast…homemade nut butters