These 3 things make for epic nut butter

Nut butter is the hot phrase on everyones lips of late, and we’re not talking store bought peanut butter here. There’s already a huge variety of nut butter freely available, but homemade takes the cake for us. There’s the freedom of creating your perfect combo and peace of mind in knowing exactly what’s going in. No weird soya oils, excess salt or sugar and preservatives. With these 3 simple things in line, your nut butter will be epic.

1. First, get a good, strong blender

This is key to nut butter success. Your mom’s hand-me-down stick blender is great for soups, but this is a surefire way to break it. Nuts are hard so a strong motor and a sharp blade are needed to process them down to a creamy, buttery consistency. These machines are pricey, but if you plan to make your own nut butters or even nut and seed flours, it’s a worthy investment.

A good, strong food processor can also work well for nut butters, but you’ll need to make larger volumes as the bowls are much bigger, and the base is flat, so small quantities will get stuck below the level of the blade.

2. Start with raw nuts

Roasted, salted nuts are tasty for snacking, but for nut butter, fresh is best. Raw ones are as fresh as they come. If you want to get the roasted flavour, do this:

• Spread them out on a roasting tray. Set oven to 180°C.
• Roast them in the oven until they are golden brown for 15–20 minutes.
• Then go about making the nut butter once cooled.
• You can even mix up raw and roasted nuts in a single butter, to get the flavour of roasted but the health benefits of raw. It’s a win win.

3. Remember your seeds

Seeds aren’t just for salads, you know. Sunflower, sesame, pumpkin and other seeds make excellent additions to nut butters (indeed, sesame seeds make an excellent butter all their own, known as tahini). Try these combos:

• Cashews and pumpkin seeds
• Almonds and sunflower seeds

Seeds are also oil, vitamin and mineral rich, which makes them healthy and delicious to add in.

There you have it really. With these 3 things under your belt. you can go forth and butter those nuts like a pro.