How to Make Peanut Butter
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the peanuts
Put the roasted peanuts through a mill to break up the shells and remove the red skins.
Use a hand bellows or windmill to blow away the shells.
Add enough salt to the kernels to adhere to them.
Grind the peanut butter
Pass the salted kernels through the mill again, grinding until you achieve a fine, smooth, and oily peanut butter.
Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.
Explore the science
What each ingredient does
- Roasted peanuts
- Provide the oil and solids that grind into the spread's body and flavour.
- Coarse sea salt
- Seasons the peanuts so the finished butter tastes balanced rather than flat.
The step that matters
Grinding until fine and smooth. Peanuts release their oil only as they are ground finer, so stopping early leaves a grainy, dry texture. Repeated passes through the mill break particles down further and let the natural oils coat them, producing a smooth, spreadable butter.
“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.
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