We all love peanut butter. The creamy paste made from the simple peanut is a staple of the American diet, but did you know it’s also super simple to make at home? All you need is some shelled peanuts and your blender. However, after years of experimenting, I can tell you that not all blenders are created equal. When you’re planning to make your own PB&J from scratch, it pays to have the right equipment. Otherwise, you may end up with minced nuts, or worse. No one wants to burn out their blender while trying to make something tasty.
How To DIY Peanut Butter in Your Blender
While making peanut butter in a blender is a simple process that anyone can master, there are plenty of tips and tricks that will help you make better butter. First, you need to decide whether you want chunky or creamy PB. The difference is essential to most people.
The good news is that either way, you’ll have fresh peanut butter in a few minutes. Collect your materials like a blender, peanuts, and any additives you want. Honey, sugar, and salt are all popular. However, you don’t technically need any of those things to make peanut butter.
Chunky Style Peanut Butter
Although most people would assume that ‘you just blend less’ to get perfect crunchy peanut butter in the blender, that’s not entirely true. I recommend mincing up your chunky peanuts first and setting them aside. A good food processor is invaluable for this process.
Sure, you can mince nuts in a blender, but it’s faster and more straightforward if you have a food processor to do your chopping there. The reason for this is simple. Blender blades are designed to crush and pulp. Meanwhile, food processors have sharper, thinner cutting blades designed to make slices instead of smashing.
For those who don’t have a food processor, you can still get your chunks pretty quickly, making them by hand. Instead of dumping the nuts in the blender, place them in a plastic bag. Next, you need a hammer or meat tenderizer.
A few good smacks will create chunks. Moreover, you can easily customize how big you want the bits inside your chunky style blend. Simply eyeball what looks best to you by examining the bag every few hits. Make sure you break up all the peanuts. Once you have your desired size peanut chunks, all you need to do is mix them into your peanut butter.
Make & Store Blender Peanut Butter
For the most basic peanut butter, put peanuts in your blender, about a cup at a time. You should never run the blender for more than about twenty seconds at a time. However, you can easily use the pulse function, or short bursts until each cup of nuts is creamy.
If your homemade peanut butter isn’t as creamy as you’d like, you can fix this quickly. Add a tablespoon of peanut oil to your batch. Realistically, you can do this as many times as you like, or use coconut oil if you prefer it. However, too much oil will leave your PB runny. Hence, adding just one Tbsp at a time is better. You can always add more.
Make sure you have a container for your nut butter. As you finish each cup of nuts, use a soft, flexible baking spatula to scrape out the completed portion before adding fresh peanuts. I also recommend making sure the papery outside sheath of your peanuts is removed. Like the shell, this is not something you want to add to your food.
Storing Peanut Butter Properly
Most people simply toss their peanut butter in a cabinet. However, this is a mistake, and doubly so with fresh homemade PB. All nuts have oils that can and do go rancid over time. Commercial nut butter has additional chemicals to keep the oils from separating and to preserve the oils.
Sadly, the flavor of rancid peanut oil is easy to cover, and most people are so used to it that they think peanut butter is supposed to taste like that. The first time you make a fresh batch, you may taste a considerable difference. To keep it that way, store your nut butter in the refrigerator.
What about hard peanut butter? You can’t spread it easily when it’s half-frozen. Well, the answer is simple. Either take your homemade PB out about two hours before you want a sandwich or warm it up.
You can place the whole container of peanut butter in warm water. However, for a faster fix, pull a chunk, just enough for your sandwich, out of the jar. Put it in a small bowl and microwave it twenty seconds at a time, stirring between bursts to keep the cooking evenly throughout. It shouldn’t take more than two or three bursts to turn it back into a paste. However, too much heat will leave you a drippy puddle.
Top Five Best Blenders for Peanut Butter
Most blenders are more than capable of whipping up a passable peanut butter. Still, it takes more than that to be on this top five list. From standard countertop models to space savers and an immersion blender, I covered the whole list. Choosing from among hundreds or thousands of seemingly similar machines is a tough task, so I rounded up five of the very highest quality PB making blenders. Here are the top five best blenders for Peanut Butter.
1. Oster Classic Series Whirlwind Blender
Whenever I make a list of blenders, for peanut butter or any other reason, Oster always comes up at the top. This company is my hands-down favorite blender company. Every Oster I’ve ever had was superb, and many older cooks will swear by it because they’ve had theirs for years.
The Whirlwind is especially useful because it comes with a food processor add-on option. While you can make peanut butter with either a blender or a food processor, having both is always better. Plus, Oster backs their products. A three-year customer satisfaction guarantee is nothing to sneeze at in this disposable-product era.
Though there’s very little to complain about with Osters, I have found that the rubber gaskets don’t last as long as the rest of the machine. Especially if you use a lot of very hot or frozen foods in it, the rubber expands and contracts, over time, causing it to break down. However, replacing a small rubber piece every couple of years is well worth having such a high-quality blender.
Learn more about Oster Whirlwind Blender on Amazon when you click here.
2. La Reveuse Personal Smoothie Blender
For those peanut butter fans who are looking for a powerful, but smaller stand blender, the La Reveuse Personal Smoothie Blender is my top pick. The convenient size, 20 oz. BPA free travel bottle is also ideal for making your PB or other favorite nut butter. Plus its hand’s free and super simple to operate.
My favorite thing about the La Reveuse is the overheating overload protection and automatic recovery function. No one likes to worry about burning out their new blender. Any company that thinks ahead like this is going to make my top three easily.
The only downside to La Reveuse has nothing to do with peanut butter. Unlike some models, you can’t make hot food in this blender. However, for PB and smoothie fans, this is the perfect small-batch, quiet machine.
To get your own mighty yet compact La Reveuse blender click here.
3. VECELO 4-In-1 Immersion Blender
Full disclosure, I hadn’t heard of this company until I got the Vecelo 4-in-1 as a gift. I was skeptical about multitasking blenders, but this one really blew me away. The hundred-percent copper motor is mighty and durable. Plus, at 800 watts, the engine is more powerful than most compact blenders I’ve had in the past.
Safety was clearly what Vecelo had in mind when they designed this do-it-all blender, whisk, food processor, and immersion blender. Moreover, they didn’t skimp on the testing with UL, FDA, RoHS, CE certifications. Better still, it’s BPA free.
My only complaint is more of a warning. Make sure you’re buying from an authorized dealer. There are occasionally knock offs of high-quality products like this. Check for the sixty-day replacement guarantee and seven-hundred and twenty-day quality guarantee.
Read the reviews for yourself on Amazon when you click right here.
4. LINKChef 4-in-1
The stylish red LinkChef is my second pick for a four-in-one that can handle peanut butter. You’ll find all the features you need for a regular immersion blender, food processor, and more on this very sleek design. I was especially impressed with the titanium coated blades.
Twenty-seven-thousand RPMs is enough to handle most any blending job quickly. I can’t think of anything to put on the con-list for this product except the buttons. Plastic buttons make this model feel less high quality, although they work well. That’s hardly worth noting, and it made excellent peanut butter.
Look into getting your LinkChef right here.
5. Oster BVCB07-R00-FFP Reverse Crush
I can never say enough good things about Oster. So I decided to end this list the way I began it, with a fantastic Oster blender to make more peanut butter. Of course, that’s such a limited view of Oster’s capabilities. Plus, this model also comes in a deep, elegant red color.
One of my favorite features of this Oster is the pre-programmed smart settings. Better yet, it has dual direction blades that automatically reverse to help clear up any jams before you ever have a problem. The Reverse Crush is my high tech pick from Oster.
If there’s a downside to this model, it’s the lighter weight plastic screw base. Although not as heavy and durable as some blenders, it’s not a flaw so much as a place where there’s room for improvement. You can certainly make all the peanut butter you need in a Reverse Crush.
To check prices and availability on the Reverse Crush, click here.
Final Thoughts
Like homemade mayonnaise, peanut butter is better right out of your blender than anything you’ll ever find on a grocery shelf. If you haven’t had the pleasure yet, then you are missing out on the best PB&J’s of your life. You can make yours with sugar, salt, honey, or coconut oil to taste so quickly in a good blender.
Blender Thought Pattern
When preparing a protein drink for the gym. can you use a hand blender to make smoothies that taste great?
If you are at camp and you do not wish to carry around a large blender, can food processors be used as blenders since you have one there already in the cabin?
Once you try making your own, it’s hard to understand why you ever liked store-bought peanut butter in the first place. Whichever of the blenders on this list you go with, they’ll all make you amazing nut butter. Try it with almonds or sunflower for a unique twist.
Although most people think George Washington Carver invented peanut butter, the Incas were making a paste out of ground peanuts as far back as 950 BC. Luckily, you don’t have to grind yours by hand to get the same tasty treat that’s been a staple in America since before it had that name.