What's so great about peanut butter? Firstly, it's yummy! Secondly, it's a healthy treat that kids love and I'm all about getting kids to eat real, healthy foods as much as possible.
What are some of the benefits to eating peanuts?
- Peanuts are rich in energy and contain loads of healthy nutrients, minerals, antioxidants and vitamins that are essential to keep you healthy. Included in these are important B-complex vitamins such as riboflavin, niacin, thiamin, pantothenic acid, vitamin B-6, and folates. Minerals include copper, manganese, potassium, calcium, iron, magnesium, zinc, and selenium.
- They're a great source of dietary protein
- Studies have shown that peanuts contain high concentrations of poly-phenolic antioxidants, the main one being p-coumaric acid. It's thought that this can reduce the risk of stomach cancer by limiting the formation of carcinogenic nitrosamines in the stomach
- Peanuts are an excellent source of resveratrol, another polyphenolic antioxidant. Resveratrol has been found to protect against cancers, heart disease, degenerative nerve disease, Alzheimer's disease, viral/fungal infections and the risk of strokes
- They're an excellent source of vitamin E. There's about 8grams of vitamin E per every 100grams. Vitamin E is a powerful antioxidant which protects your cells from harmful free radicals
The thing with nuts is that you can't generally just eat them right out of the bag. Most nuts and seeds need to be soaked properly before you can eat them. Let me explain this a bit. Some seeds WANT you to eat them, like fruit seeds. That’s why fruit is sweet and colourful. They attract animals to them and we eat them, but their seeds aren't digested and leave our bodies still intact. That's how they spread themselves around the world. They actually NEED you to eat them. Nuts, legumes and grains are a different story. They are digestible, so they don't actually want you to eat them or they will be unable to spread themselves around the world. To protect themselves, they are full of anti-nutrients, lectins and toxic enzymes to irritate your colon and block nutrition absorption by any animal that dares to eat them. It makes sense though because they’re a plant. They can’t run away. This is all they've got;)
If you eat nuts, legumes and grains over and over without properly preparing them you are setting yourself up for a world of hurt. To learn how to soak nuts properly, read this post. When you are going to make any nut butter, make sure you prepare the nuts first. That will be your first step.
Put them in a bowl and cover them with salty water. I usually add a tablespoon or two of salt but it also depends how many peanuts you are soaking. For larger amounts, use 2 tablespoons. Leave them to soak overnight or for about 12 hours. If you have a dehydrator, that will be your next step. Put all the nuts in your dehydrator for at least 12 hours, or until they are all dry. If you don't have a dehydrator, you can turn your oven on VERY low, no more than 50°C, place all the peanuts on a tray and put them in the oven. Drying them can take anywhere from 2 hours to 8 hours so be patient. You don't want to burn them, just dry them. Once you have your soaked, dried nuts you are good to go!
This may sound like a lot of work and you're probably wondering why you can't just go to Pick n Pay and buy some Yum Yum peanut butter. The soaking is part of the "why". The peanuts won't be soaked if you buy a store bought peanut butter. So eating it over a long period of time is going to affect your health. For some people, particularly those who suffer from IBS, it will be immediate and the pain won't be worth it. Another big problem with store bought peanut butters is that you are never sure of exactly what you are getting. 99% of them have added sugar, vegetable oil, salt and transfats plus some nasty preservatives to allow them to live on a shelf indefinitely. Buying Woolies organic peanut butter is far better BUT there is still the soaking issue.
That's why I decided to try it at home. Anything you make yourself is going to be INFINITELY better than store bought products because you know exactly what is going into your recipe and exactly how much of everything is going in. There are hidden calories or toxins so it's far healthier for you and your family.
Homemade Peanut Butter
Ingredients
Raw, soaked, dried peanuts (I used 250grams which made about 250grams peanut butter.)
1 Tbs neutral tasting oil (optional)
1 Tbs neutral tasting oil (optional)
Method
- If your peanuts have their skins on and you don't want them, remove them while they're still wet by just squeezing the tip of the nut. The skins will slide off. This will give your peanut butter a lighter colour but honestly, any extra fibre that you can add to your peanut butter isn't a bad thing. I left my skins on!
- Place your peanuts in a food processor
- Turn on and process until the nuts form nut flour (yes that's how you make nut flour! You can stop there if you want to bake with it;)
- Keep a spatula handy and keep processing, stopping now and then to scrape the peanuts off the side of the processor if necessary
- They will start to release oil and you will see more chunks sticking together as the peanuts break down
- Just keep going until you are happy with the consistency
- At this point, you can add what you want. Some people add peanut oil, or some other neutral tasting oil, to make it creamier. Some people like to add some salt. Some even add some chocolate to make chocolate peanut butter! It's up to you. I added a tablespoon of organic coconut oil because it made it creamier. I didn't need to add salt because I'd soaked them in salt beforehand.
- Scoop peanut butter into a jar and store in the fridge for several weeks (because it has no preservatives and will eventually go off)
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| Look! I made freaking peanut butter!!! |
I have to say, I never thought I'd be so excited to accomplish something so small but it's satisfying I gotta say;) That's it! I'm off to make a slice of fresh gluten-free bread with peanut butter and honey!!! Have a super weekend everyone:)
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