I was amazed at how easy this was to make and how good it is. I will NEVER be tempted to eat commercial peanut butter again. I am looking forward to soaking and dehydrating some peanuts so that I can also make peanut butter.
I think the success of this recipe is very much due to the quality of crispy almonds that you have. I happened to get mine from JoshEWEa’s Garden, and they have a special drying process that makes the nuts extra crispy. Mine at home turned out ok too, but the crispy almonds from JoshEWEa’s Garden were phenomenal! Right now, they are even giving away 1.5 ounce sample jars of nut butter with any order (follow instructions on the site to order the free sample).
Tips for making Nut Butters
- Always use soaked and dehydrated ‘crispy nuts’ to make nut butters. Nuts have a lot of phytic acids and other anti-nutrients in them that can only be removed with the soaking/drying process. Once nuts are soaked and dried, they are much more digestible.
- This nut butter will be kind of liquid when you make it, but will harden in the refrigerator. To make it so it will be less hard when cold, substitute about half of the oil with cold pressed sunflower or (untoasted) sesame oil.
Almond Butter
Rating: 4 forks (key)
Difficulty:
Easy
Page in NT: 516
Ingredients:
2 cups crispy nuts, such as almonds, peanuts or cashews
3/4 cup coconut oil
2 Tablespoons raw honey or grade B maple syrup
1 teaspoon sea salt
Preparation:
Place nuts and sea salt in food processor and grind to a fine powder. Add honey and coconut oil and process until ‘butter’ becomes smooth. It will be somewhat liquid but will harden when chilled. Store in an airtight container in the refrigerator. Serve at room temperature.
Photo courtesy of The Messy Chef on Flickr
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Yum! Next week I’m going to tackle this.
OK, that sounds quite easy…. and delicious! Organic nut butters are crazy expensive and not soaked (at least 99% of them aren’t), and I like the idea of having coconut oil in my nut butter. This is going on my “must do” list! Thanks!!
We make an almond paste that’s very similar to this. It’s great in our morning oats. I posted about it awhile back: http://likeabubblingbrook.blogspot.com/2010/03/making-almond-paste-for-your-morning.html
I may have to try your almond butter, though… the coconut oil seems like a good idea! Thanks for sharing!
Just came across your blog through twitter. Wow are you in for an adventure. I hope I haven’t missed the cooking of the organs section
oh cool, welcome! You have only missed one or two organ meat recipes, the ‘good stuff’ is still to come… hehe. Here are a few:
http://thenourishingcook.com/2009/12/the-spaghetti-wars-kim-zero-shawn-1/
http://thenourishingcook.com/2010/01/liver-and-onions-offal-good/
For some reason, I have NOT has success at all making almond butter. Mine never turns liquid- it never really ‘turns’. I’ve tried a few times and have sadly given up, settling for buying organic peanut butter (almond butter is too expensive) One thought I did have is perhaps I’m not filling the food processor up enough with nuts? Perhaps it needs to be more full? I also wondered if dehydrating the nuts dries out some of the oil making it harder to turn into butter when using crispy nuts. I haven’t tried making almond butter with unsoaked nuts. Any one have any suggestions?
Hi Kylie… thanks for your comment! Are you adding in any kind of oil to your almond butter mix? This recipe has coconut oil which is tasty and when it’s in the food processor, it warms up and helps the butter be a little more liquid. If you’re still having problems I would add some expeller pressed sunflower oil, even though it’s not as good of an oil it’s still on the WAPF list.
Hi, how long can this keep refrigerated?
Tks
I have had mine for about two weeks and it is still fine so I would say a month or maybe more…
I made this and it’s yummy, but the only problem is the coconut oil gets hard in the refrigerator, so the almond butter is hard as a rock. The recipe says to store it in the fridge but ‘serve at room temp”. That’s kind of hard to do as you’d need to take it out of the fridge a good hour or two before you’re going to use it. Just not very practical…
I’m all for soaking my almonds, but is it absolutely necessary that I dry them as well to have successful nut butter?
Just finished a batch of almond butter. I soak the almonds overnight and then throw them in the dehydrator for about 12 hours before processing them. I sort of just threw some ingredients together and after 15 minutes it was perfectly smooth. You have to be patient here, it will eventually turn from a crumbly state to a creamy buttery state. It’s like churning cream into butter. I used almonds from livingnutz.com because they are completely raw, along with a few dashes of Himalayan sea salt, raw local honey, and virgin coconut oil. I looked up these recipes after I finished to see what other people used. Looks like we think alike, though I used used about a quarter cup of coconut oil. The coconut oil does get hard in the refrigerator, just take a servings worth out an hour before you use it. Planning ahead makes most foods better. Such as preparing kefir, fermenting sauerkraut, marinating meats, soaking legumes, and in this case soaking almonds. You can get away with storing the almond butter at room temperature, it would just last a bit longer in the fridge.
Greg… thanks for sharing your experience with the almond butter, looks like I wasn’t patient enough with mine, thankfully it still turned out well!
Fun blog! I got “Nourishing Traditions” for Christmas and I have yet to really dig into it.
Anyways, I was wondering how much almond butter this recipe yielded?
Hi Kelli… that’s great that you received NT for Christmas! this yielded about 2 cups of almond butter. It lasts a long time in the fridge too if people in the house are careful to not use a soiled knife in the container…
Kim, do you think it would be possible to make this with a hand blender? I don’t own a food processor and really want to make this myself. $10 for 16 oz. is NOT a part of my long term budget, and I finally have a dehydrator too.
Hi, can you give instructions for the soaking and then using the dehydrator.. and what is the purpose of the dehydrator? thank you
Do the almonds need to be dehydrated if you are just planning to bake with them immediately? (I would be incorporating mine into a pie crust that uses almonds, coconut oil, and dates -blended in a food processor and stopping just short of almond butter before pressing into a pie dish and baking.) So, is it possible to skip the dehydrating step?
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