Wild Child: No Adams PB... what do you do?

Picture from http://www.birdsong-peanuts.com/

You may know by now that our island (Singapore) appears to have run out of natural peanut butter. If you cannot live without it, what do you do??? As far as I can see, you have two options: (1) make your own natural peanut butter; and/or (2) buy natural peanut butter from overseas.

Making your own natural peanut butter

Ingredients

3 cups dry roasted peanuts*
2-3 tbsp canola oil
1/2-1 tsp salt (optional)
1/2 cup peanut chunks (optional)

*See comments after receipe.

Method

1. Using a food processor, grind the peanuts until they are reduced to powder or form a ball.

2. Drizzle the oil whilst processing the peanuts, until you get the consistency you want.

3. If you want salted peanut butter, add the salt, a little at a time, tasting the peanut butter each time until you are satisfied with the level of saltiness.

4. Pour your natural peanut butter into a clean jar.

5. If you want "chunky" style peanut butter, add in the peanut chunks and use a knife to distribute them evenly throughout the jar.

Comments on acquiring dry roasted peanuts

Choose your peanuts cautiously. Do look at the list of ingredients in the nutritional information behind. You will want fresh peanuts that are dry roasted. You will want to stay away from peanuts that have been cooked in oil, especially vegetable oil, in case the oil has gone rancid. You will want to stay away from peanuts that have had additives added. You really want just plain old dry roasted peanuts.

Alternatively, you could roast your own peanuts. The only problem is that the kind of peanuts meant for peanut butter are not readily available in Singapore. In Singapore, you will usually find at wet markets and in supermarkets either small roundish peanuts (that are good for making sambal peanuts with ikan bilis), or more longish peanuts (that are good for Chinese peanut soup dessert or porridge). These peanuts would not make good-tasting peanut butter.

If I was making natural peanut butter, my choice of peanuts would be valencia peanuts. Unfortunately I do not remember seeing these being sold in supermarkets, although you may be able to find them at Marketplace or organic supermarkets.

What I think would make for an interesting savoury spread is Farmer Brand's garlic flavour peanuts. They are mine and my family's favourite peanut snack because of the hint of garlic when you eat them. The only thing is that you will have to be prepared to crack a few bags of peanuts to get your 3 cups!

(Farmer Brand's garlic flavour peanuts retail at NTUC Fairprice for S$1.70 per 150g bag.)