Our heavenly homemade peanut butter is perfect slathered on soft bread. It’s also great toasted golden brown under the broiler. It tastes better and saves money.

Fact is, we don’t eat peanut butter because it’s good for us. Nor do we eat it because in one study in the Journal of the American Medical Association. That study found that eating 2 tablespoons at least 5 days a week can lower the risk of diabetes by almost 30%.

Every 2-tablespoon serving has 3 mg of the powerful antioxidant vitamin E. It also has 49 mg of bone-building magnesium and 208 mg of muscle-friendly potassium. You also get 0.17 mg of immunity-boosting vitamin B6. (1)

Nice, but we eat peanut butter because we love the taste. We love it as a salad dressing for gado-gado. We love it as a dipping sauce for sate. We love it on bread toasted in the broiler until it just begins to char.

It makes Jamaican Sweet Potato and Peanut Stew something to yearn for. Truth is, we’ll lick this stuff off a spoon.

Why Make Your Own Peanut Butter?

What we don’t love is the price of good peanut butter today. Like any food in the marketplace, peanut butter can be good, bad or anywhere in between. It comes down to your goal, profit margin, quality of raw materials, manufacturing methods and whether it’s organic.

Just seek out a good-tasting, organic, non-hydrogenated, low-salt peanut butter. We find that in Santa Cruz Dark Roasted Peanut Butter. We think it’s one of the best-tasting peanut butters on the commercial market.

We’ve been fans for many years. Over those years, the price has gone up and up and up.

Today, Santa Cruz Organic Dark Roasted costs just shy of $8 a jar. Raw peanuts wholesale for $1.74 a pound. But where would I put 30 pounds of peanuts?

My neighborhood Trader Joe’s sells raw and roasted peanuts, salted and unsalted, in 1 lb. bags for $3.49. That’s what I generally buy, unless I run across organics somewhere.

Since I have a food processor, I turn that $3.49 bag of peanuts into the best-tasting peanut butter you’ve ever eaten. The processor makes quick work of it. We control the salt level and make it smooth or crunchy.

Because we made it ourselves, we saved $4.50 a pound. Best of all, it tastes better than anything you can buy at the market.

Give it a try. Get yourself some good peanuts and drag out the food processor. You’ll never buy store-bought again.

Enjoy!

Homemade Peanut Butter Recipe

Prep Time: About 5-7 minutes

What you need: A food processor, or a high-powered blender such as a Vitamix.

Ingredients:

• 1 lb. bag of peanuts (we use roasted and lightly salted)

Instructions:

Empty the bag of peanuts into the food processor and level the nuts.

Process for about 8 minutes. Time will probably vary with different processors.

Pour into a jar and allow to cool.

Enjoy.

(1) / http://www.prevention.com/food/smart-shopping/healthy-eating-why-peanut-butter-good-you