Yes please! "Natural" peanut butter tastes better, but the stirring is IMO not worth it. If the jars were designed better, ie with more empty space at the top above the PB, it would be acceptable. Instead they are designed in such a way that it initially A: Makes you feel like you are bad at it and should try harder and practice, then B: Realize that that this is like those plastic clamshell packaging on some consumer goods: There is no right way to do it; it's a hostile design.
I think if they took your advice, people would complain that they were selling misleadingly empty jars (even if they correctly specified the amount you were getting on the label).
This seems likely. I wonder if explaining it through the packaging, e.g. coloured stripe marked "stir space" and an explanation on the back saying don't worry you are only paying per gram of peanut butter...
Except that the larger packaging size is not totally free - makes shipping more expensive and less units per shelf space. Not sure by how much. I bet peanut butter margins aren’t great.
For years we stored Adams natural peanut butter at room temperature with no ill effects. A large jar usually lasts less than a month. Then one day I noticed it says refrigerate after opening on the label. I wonder if that is the reason why, or if it's really prone to spoilage.
The fridge addresses the issue of the post: oil separation; more so than spoilage.
I wish I had the discipline to keep a jar of peanut butter around long enough for it to spoil. :)
Growing up we put the peanut butter in the pantry without separation issues because my parents were either fine with or oblivious to the stabilizing additives in the mass produced peanut butter brands.
Now, when I look at the ingredients list I only want to see “peanuts”! (And maybe <1% salt)
I would guess it’s because it will just last longer in the fridge, so they’re recommending it be refrigerated. I have lots of stuff that say the same that do fine in a cool, dark pantry. Though I’m sure if I left it long enough it would spoil sooner than in the fridge.
It will spoil/go rancid. Even the 'non-natural' big brands like Jif/Skippy taste and smell 'off' if they sit out for a few weeks after being opened.
There's no winning here, because putting it in the fridge makes it hard to spread. The best approach is to take out a week's worth or so and put it in a small/airtight container. Leave that out but put the main jar in the fridge.
I've been buying 100% peanut butter for years, never stored it in a fridge and never had it go bad. Maybe your room temperature is higher? It's strange as with a single ingredient product I would expect we would have the same results...
The separation and mixing is a pain though. Love the mixer idea!
Same here. Never even thought of the fridge or what cold peanut butter would be like. I just can’t imagine it and have never needed to. Weird. In other contexts too I’ve never experienced it. Work breakfasts, hotels, I really can’t ever recall fridge temperature peanut butter. Not to mention the size pots we buy would be annoying.
My solution is to have 3 kids. Peanut butter has no chance of spoiling around here, we go through it like it’s going out of fashion! On a more serious note perhaps simply buy a smaller jar if it spoils before you eat it all.
Funny I’ve been leaving it out in the pantry for years. It just switched to the fridge only because I find it too runny at room temp. My son dribbles it everywhere trying to make pb&js.
1. Is cold peanut butter a misery? I grew up in a cupboard pb home, and I enjoy fridge pb as much as cupboard pb. What temperature do you keep your fridge at?
2. Storing upside down is a precaution against oily messes because the oils separate on top of the peanut solids, and so is under the peanut solids when upside down. Also, I mentioned that at the fridge temperatures the oil congeals, and so remains mixed when refrigerated, avoiding any oily mess.
I discovered that it's much easier to dip apples slices in peanut butter if I nuke the peanut butter for 30 seconds. Now I don't get frustrated by my apples breaking off in my peanut butter.
When in a cupboard the oil separates on top, so it can make mixing more difficult by both having the oil spill out when stirring and having the driest peanut bits stuck deep at the bottom.
Upside down places the oil underneath and the driest parts more accessibly near the removable part of the container.
I always imagined after stirring and placing it in the fridge upside down provides that “last mile” guarantee until it gets to temp in the fridge.
After the first use it goes back in the fridge right side up.
I get these big 1kg tubs of the pure peanut butter on Amazon, the advantage is they’re perfectly cylindrical, so it’s easy to just give a good mix with a butter knife before spreading
I think you must! I once related to this but I decided to try and figure out a better way and I started using a knife instead of a spoon and had success.
I always fantasized about putting my peanut butter jar in one of those vibrational paint shaker devices you see at Lowes or Home Depot when you select a paint color.
My only complaint about this would be that it’s noisy in your video. I already have my dog bark his damned head off when I turn on the Vitamix for anything.
I think that someone's suggestion for rotating it slower and longer might alleviate the noise issue.
I 3d printed and built a rock tumbler that was effectively the same device as this, some time ago. I put O-rings on the wheels for grip instead of a rubber band on the jar :-P
I checked Adam's peanut butter today from costco and it has garbage ingredients. The Kirkland one has only dry roasted peanuts, which is how it should be.
A few days ago I had one from a canadian brand "nuts to you nut butter inc", which is organic: it was mind blowing, the strong peanut feeling was delicious, it felt like eating peanuts, but it was also so creamy. No idea what they did, but I'm craving for more. I suspect they just used higher quality peanuts.
I have a jar of Adams 100% Natural crunchy from Costco that I’m looking at right now that says “Ingredients: Peanuts” and “Contains 1% or less of salt”. Do they have multiple kinds of products? This is all I’ve ever bought from them.
I actually prefer the taste of the “garbage” peanut butter. Natural peanut butter tastes too overwhelmingly like peanuts to me. It’s also too thick (especially cold) and messy to deal with.
Sorry, "garbage" is strong, it has salt and another ingredient, but from my perspective, added salt is one of those ingredients to trick your taste buds when used in mass-produced food
I know a guy who has been slowly automating very old food process equipment.
He makes peanut butter by the ton. Loading the hopper was quite tricky and getting up and checking a bit fraught. Knowing how much peanut butter is in the big vat thing once it is being stirred is quite hard too, and most sensors become less accurate once coated in peanut butter.
His ultrasound sensor (measuring the distance to the surface of the peanut butter) is a thing of beauty. He used Arduino.
You should tell him about pulsed coherent 60ghz radars from Sparkfun(based on the XM125 from acconeer), they may be able to work through peanut butter to find the level in the vat(they can see through walls).
I also put one of these together, but I find it mixes much better if it turns very slowly over a long period. I have it set to do ~1/4 of a turn once per minute and usually run it at least overnight before putting a new jar in the fridge. Also helps to put the jar in the fridge on its side so it doesn't separate back out as much before solidifying.
Yes - the peanut oil freezes at 37F which keeps it from separating. (Some brands have additives such as palm oil which provide the same benefit at room temperature, but I usually don't purchase these.)
Normally I wouldn't mind separation but peanut butter is kind of a pain to stir thoroughly.
Nice, that's a table top ball mill! Now instead of peanut butter, put a chemical oxidizer, some metal salts and a fuel in there and you are in the business of preparing DIY pyrotechnics!
I use a metal chopstick to stir my PB (after pouring off a bit of the oil). It's a bit smaller than a butter knife, which means it can glide through the PB without risking spilling. But honestly what makes the most difference for me is that when I'm serving PB I use the knife to reach all the way down to the bottom. Otherwise it ends up getting pretty hard down there, even if it was initially very well mixed.
Also, I'll there's a lid-based mixer [1, scroll down a bit] that apparently works well, but kind of looks like a mess to clean up. I believe that it is very effective though — much better at getting down to the bottom than any non-invasive solution.
I’ve had one of those. They aren’t nearly as mess-free as they claim to be. The lids don’t quite fit right over the jars I get here in Canada, and I always get a bit of oil spillage.
Since we started buying the Farm Boy 500g Organic Peanut butter[1], I haven't had an issue. It’s a good size, lasts a few weeks (my wife has some every day; I have some periodically), and is quickly stirred well on opening with a simple butter knife without spilled oil.
I believe European and US peanut butter is rather different.
European peanut butter is solid, with the consistency of refrigerated butter, or of fudge.
US peanut butter is a thick liquid. Over time, it separates and you get peanut oil on the surface. That oil is unpleasant, so this machine can help mix it back in.
Hence, Europeans wouldn't see the need for this, because they have never witnessed the problem this machine is intended to solve.
The main difference in peanut butter isn’t about being European or American actually—it’s about the recipe. Some brands add extra oil, like palm oil, to keep it from separating (Skippy (US) and Calvé (EU), for instance). Without it, peanut butter can separate, leaving oil on top.
I believe that they actually remove the peanut oil as it can fetch more money sold as cooking oil. They substitute an inexpensive oil that they also hydrogenate. The hydrogenation is what keeps the oil from separating.
Peanut oil is also sold as an industrial lubricant. So they inject crap like palm oil and then use stuff like cane sugar to mask the taste. It is a CRIME.
The moral of the story is: Accept only peanuts and salt as ingredients; all else is duplicitous garbage.
Most Americans actually buy peanut butter that doesn't need mixing, too... brands like JIF mix oils into the peanut butter which keep it from separating.
"All natural peanut butter", which is what a lot of us like and what the OP is talking about in their article, is made with just peanuts blended, and the oil separates after a while on the shelf.
afaik they're basically the same thing. The need to stir comes from peanut butter that is literally nothing other than minced peanuts. Brands like Jif and the such add a bit of palm oil, salt, and whatever else which I guess helps to stabilize the mixture and make oil separation less likely. "pure" peanut butter like the kind the author likes here is available just the same in the UK with exactly the same problem!
UK here. Yes, our peanut butter is typically solid and has similar consistency even after a couple months in the larder (never even thought about using the fridge).
Tahini on the other hand separates very quickly into oil+solid so perhaps could also do with a spinner
That’s probably because your peanut butter isn’t just peanuts. If you’re buying Skippy or whatever the additives give it a stable textur. But if you buy pure (aka “natural”) peanut butter you’ll see separation, just like any other nut butter, including tahini
The 100% peanuts varieties separate out a bit due to the oil in the nuts. Most UK supermarkets have an own brand 100% nut option that is usually a good deal compared to the branded stuff like Whole Earth (which has something added/removed to avoid having to stir it I guess).
Same goes for Tahini, you can get bottles that never separate, or jar of 100% sesame seeds that needs a stir.
You can get both kinds here, but the emulsified kind is more common. This has been slowly changing with additive-free food popularity and therefor 100% peanut-butter.
This European buys supermarket own brand peanut butter that is just peanuts and a little salt. It never seems to separate, has a three month shelf life once opened, and doesn't say it needs refrigeration.
If only there was a blog post that you could read just the first paragraph of to find the answer to your question…
From TFA:
> I love peanut butter. I also hate mixing it. There are many products available to mix peanut butter for you, but I wanted my own design that took no effort to use. I'm looking for a "set it and forget it" solution. For those who don't know what I'm talking about, many natural peanut butters are not homogeneous at all times. The oil and the nutty material separate, and thus require mixing to return it to buttery consistency.
> The oil and the nutty material separate, and thus require mixing to return it to buttery consistency
I don’t mix what’s in the jar - I tilt the jar (to avoid picking the oil), dip deep and spread on the bread. The peanut butter then has varying densities, but I spread it well, mostly mixing it on the bread. Not buttery smooth, but close enough for me. And tastes great.
I rarely use toast bread though, I guess toast bread could fall apart.
I find that when I open a fresh jar I have to pour off (and set aside to save) some of the oil before the first mixing. Because no matter how conscientiously and thoroughly you try to mix the entire contents of the jar, you always end up with peanut brick when you've eaten your way to the bottom of the jar, which is when you need to pour back in some of that saved oil for another mixing.
How much do you lose cleaning out the vitamix? I’ve found that PB costs the same amount as peanuts, by weight. If I had to roast and grind them I feel like that would take a while and result in some loss.
Is this better than using the in-grocery grinders?
Very little (I rarely make peanut butter, but I roast hazelnuts and make homemade "Nutella" with dark chocolate). Out of about 900 g hazelnuts (minus a bit of "shrinkage" because warm roasted hazelnuts are delicious) and 70 g dark chocolate (Costco Suisse Delice) we get about 850g or more of blended hazelnut chocolate goodness.
Add some almond milk and other stuff to the Vitamix and you can make a really nice power shake from the residue, and lose only a few grams to the soap and water cleaning required.
Many recipes for Vitamix peanut butter also mention mixing in some ice cream or something similar once you’ve scraped out as much peanut butter as you can. Then you get a little peanut butter smoothie as a treat at the end and help get out some of the extra peanut butter.
That’s what I came here to ask. When I make peanut butter in the Vitamix, I roast the peanuts and then blend them. I’ve never experienced separation, although I do store it in the refrigerator.
What’s so different about this way of making peanut butter that results in no separation?
Fridge and time on shelf. I'm not even sure the oil is liquid when in the fridge! And the jars at the grocery store probabky have been stored longer than you take to go through your PB.
I use a beater from an old hand mixer inserted into my M18 drill. Just have to be careful near the top the jar to avoid peanut butter spray on the counter. And my shirt.
Edit: works best if the jar is stored upside down for 1-2 days.
An alternate, arguably more delicious solution: buy high quality roasted peanuts, put them in a food processor, jar it, and fridge it. No separation and as fresh as it gets.
What's needed is a 3D printed lid that attaches the jar onto the arm of a clock. Now you have perpetual mixing while always being peanut butter o'clock.
