Homemade Peanut Butter: A Guide + Pictures

Today, I made peanut butter from scratch (raw peanuts) and decided to document the process. For a couple of reasons:

1. My dad is visiting my grandma right now in St. Petersburg, FL and they both love to cook. I’m sure they will get a kick out of learning how I do this. 
2. It’s important for me to demonstrate to my friends, family, and any random internet strangers how I made it through Peace Corps without starving or going broke. 
3. Hopefully inspire somebody to make and sell something equivalent to a pilão in the States before I get home so I don’t have to give my money to JIF. Any takers?

Step 1: Sort the peanuts. 

I buy peanuts from a shop that sells them from giant bags. These bags are not bug or dirt or rock resistant, so it’s important to sort them. Once, I got lazy and just threw them all in the pan to roast without sorting, and there were over a dozen near-chipped tooth experiences because of the rocks. I’m not sure how many bugs I ingested that week, either. When I sort, the dogs hang close by to ensure that any unworthy peanut gets gobbled up ASAP.

Always ready to pounce on a throw-away nutter.

Step 2: Roast the Peanuts.

You can do this over a stove or in an oven. I choose the oven because I don’t pay for my own electricity and I do pay for the gas for the stove; It’s more economical this way. Roasting requires stirring every few minutes so the layer of peanuts closest to the heat doesn’t burn. You roast until you can start to smell roasted peanuts, and they look almost burnt. The line between “not done enough” and “burnt to a crisp” is very, very thin…I’ve eaten many a bitter, burnt spoonful of PB during my Peace Corps service. When you see your neighbors living in poverty and malnourished children every single day, charred PB starts to taste pretty okay. Nothing here goes to waste, not even peanut butter so burnt it could pass for Nutella. 

That's our Mozambican stove. It doesn't have temperature control, just on or off. You can plug it in on top or on bottom, never both at the same time.

Some insight into our kitchen. L to R: Gas, Electric oven, Burner.

Roasted Peanuts. 

Almost burnt but not quite.

Step 3: Peel the peanuts.

After the peanuts are roasted and cool enough to touch, I peel them. I put them in a wide, flat, woven basket-type thing and start from one side. It takes forever (almost) and your fingers get tired, but the more skinless nutters, the better the peanut butter tastes. I usually watch some mindless show while doing it or else I go crazy with boredom. I don’t know how many hundreds of peanuts are in a whole kilogram, but it’s so so many. One time I should really count, considering I’m OCD anyways and counting is kinda my thing. 

Half peeled, half unpeeled. Also, that's the basket thing I use to separate skins from nuts in Step 4.

See the difference between the peeled and the unpeeled?

Step Four: Separate Peanuts from Skins

When I reach a point where I'm content with how many naked peanuts I have, it’s important to separate the peanuts from the skins (or what would be the point of peeling in the first place?). To do this, I use the basket-like thing…flick it hard enough so the fine shells fling out but the peanuts only dance a little bit. Essentially, I bounce the peanuts in the basket and let the wind take the skins elsewhere...continuing until no more skins fly out. It took me a long time to learn this technique and I'm still not a pro (Mozambicans are super good at it), so sometimes random peanuts will fly out. The dogs hover close to catch any yummy peanut comets. 

Amêndoa waiting patiently for a rogue nut.

Step 5: Pummel the peanuts until they become butter.

There is a tool called a pilão that is used to crush food. Many traditional mozambican dishes are made using peanut powder and greens. The pilão is what is used to crush the greens into tiny pieces to make sauce for rice, or grind peanuts down into powder to add flavor and nutrients to the sauce. This tool doesn’t exist in the States, but I kind of wish it did. When my neighbors see me using it, they laugh, because white people using a pilão isn’t exactly a thing. Anyways, as I said early, I am OCD with counting things so I bash the peanuts exactly 800 times. I don’t lose count because my OCD doesn’t let me. Eight. Hundred. Pummels. Bam. Bam. Bam. x800. Any less and it doesn’t turn out quite as creamy as I’d like and any more isn’t worth the effort. So 800 became my magic number after many trials (a couple of times I went for 1000—definitely not worth it). 

Note: This is also a great way to relieve stress after a long day. It’s more productive than a punching bag because it outputs PB, and MUCH better than drinking because it won’t encourage to you text your ex. 

 

400 bams in.

Step 6: Add salt and sugar

At the 700 bam mark, I add two teaspoons of sugar and 1/2 teaspoon of salt to a batch of 1kg peanuts, then finish out the last 100 bams. It gives it a little extra flavor but still tastes like 99.9% peanuts only. The oils from the peanuts are extracted as the crushing continues, and this is what makes it creamy and liquidy, so there is no need to add oil. I was very surprised by this, and now it makes me mad when I see oil on the ingredient list of pre-package peanut butter. It’s totally unnecessary. Peanuts have everything they need within them to make the best food on earth. Shout out to all the peanuts out there—super proud of you guys!

Step Seven: Jar it.

Scoop the peanut butter into jars (pretty straightforward step, eh?). I copied my roommate and use two little jars instead of one big jar to help monitor my intake. I try to eat only one small jar per week—keyword: try. This week, Andy will arrive on Friday and we will go to a beach about 11 hours north of us on Wednesday. I will try to save one of the jars to bring with us on the trip…but since Andy’s idea of a “1 spoonful snack” is actually half a jar, we’ll have to see how it goes. We really are two peas in a pod when it comes to binge eating peanut butter.  #noshame

Yummy finished product.

The dark spots are just residual burnt PB from the last batch. What's the point of washing the jars when you're just going to add more PB anyways. (Same mentality for not making your bed because you're just going to sleep in it again tonight...)

Step Eight: Let the dogs lick the stick.

Hahaha that step sounds hilarious LET THE DOGS LICK THE STICK, but it is a very important one. Blondie and Amêndoa love it. They become peanut butter drunk and are happy and giddy the rest of the night. That doesn’t mean they show gratitude by actually listening to me, but hey, you can’t win ‘em all. 

Final Step: Try not to eat it all in one sitting. 

I wish I looked this cute after a binge.