Since I do the majority of my cooking before the crack of dawn, way before any grocery stores close to me open it's important for me to have ingredients I need before I retire for the evening the night before. I ended up only buying a few things at the Farmers' Market on Sat., a 5 lb bag of carrots (I hope you all like carrots, lol), broccoli with thick stalks, fresh bay leaves, oh and corn! The first corn of the season...woo hoo!
Back to the carrots....
So the obvious use for all of those carrots is a salad and a soup. I add 2 tbl almond butter in my carrot soup and I also make an Asian salad dressing with peanut butter, but I thought why not use almond butter instead. Well...I didn't have any almond butter at 4:00 this morning...but I did have almonds, and plenty of them.
I've never made nut butter but I've heard it could be done in a food processor. My food processor is so old I couldn't imagine that it would do the job, but I thought my blender might! Well I was wrong about both of them. The belnder did not work, and my food processor ended up saving the day (or should I say the morning!).
I dumped the ground almonds into my food processor, and I have to say I was worried. Around and around they went not seeming to be turning into any kind of butter. But I had no choice but to stick it out and keep going.
I put 6 oz of raw almonds in my blender and it made beautiful finely ground almonds! But the blades were not long enough to pull down the almonds the finer they became and everything ended up around the sides of the blender....drats. One more appliance to clean out.
I dumped the ground almonds into my food processor, and I have to say I was worried. Around and around they went not seeming to be turning into any kind of butter. But I had no choice but to stick it out and keep going.
Finally the ground almonds started to come together, clumping up into small buttery balls. Whew! The motor of my food processor did get mighty hot though. I can see how peanut butter would be easier as peanuts are a softer nut.
On with the cooking. As I mentioned I made some soup and a shredded carrot and broccoli stalk salad with Asian Almond dressing. I'll post recipes and pictures soon.
2 comments:
I've always wanted to try to make peanut butter. I buy the natural kind, why not just buy peanuts? I'll have to give it a go.
How was the flavor?
Maribel,
Natural peanut butter you buy in a jar is not the same as freshly ground. I buy mine at Whole Foods or a couple of other places that have peanut butter grinders and sell it by weight.
Whole Foods sell peanuts and peanut butter for the same price per lb, so essentially they don't charge you to grind it.
Making nut butter at home could be less expensive depending on the "quality" of nuts you buy. The advantages are that you could use raw nuts which is hard to preground, and you can make nut butters you may not easily find, like macadamia (Mark's favorite)
Post a Comment