Nuts are good as snacks. Almonds, pistachios, walnuts, cashews, pecans, macadamia nuts, Brazil nuts, hazelnuts and peanuts are the top nuts that contain various essential nutrients.
Some of the benefits that nuts provide are
1. Great source of many nutrients.
2. Loaded with antioxidants.
3. May aid in weight loss.
4. May lower cholesterol and triglyceride (a type of fats found in our blood) levels.
5. Beneficial for Type 2 diabetes and metabolic syndrome.
6. May reduce inflammation.
7. High in beneficial fiber.
8. May reduce risk of heart attack and stroke.
(You may read about these in greater depth in https://www.healthline.com.)
Besides eating nuts as snacks, we have been making our own spreads with them as we can choose the nuts that we want to use and we can control the ingredients used to make them, especially the amount of sugar and salt and the type of oil used. We have been making peanut butter, almond butter, cashew nut butter as well as a mixture of pumpkin seed and almond butter. The method of making all these butter are the same.
Ingredients:
- 350 g peanuts (net, after roasting and removal of membrane)
- to fill my bottle fully as seen in the photo
- 1 tsp salt
- 6 tbsp extra virgin olive oil (may not need to use all the oil)
- Optional (according to taste):
- 30 g sugar, or
- 2 tbsp honey
- Note: I did not add any sugar or honey in my peanut butter.
Method:
- Wash the peanuts and let the water run off.
- Roast the peanuts at 180 degrees C for 45 - 60 minutes till they are brown and fragrant. You may also fry the peanuts in the kwali without oil if you do not wish to use the oven or air fryer.
- Let the peanuts cool down.
- Remove the membrane from the peanuts.
- Put the peanuts into a grinder or food processor and add salt to the peanuts.
- Add 1-2 tbsp of olive oil initially and start grinding the peanuts. Keep adding the olive oil until you get the consistency you want.
- You would require less olive oil if you want a smooth peanut butter consistency. This is because as you grind the peanuts longer, oil will be released from the peanuts.
- If you would like to have chunky peanut butter, you have to put more olive oil as you will be grinding the peanuts for a shorter time and little oil will be released from the peanuts.
- (Add the sugar or honey into the peanut butter.)
- Stop grinding once you have achieve the consistency that you want.
- Transfer the peanut butter to a clean bottle.
- Let the peanut butter cool down before you cover the bottle.
- Keep the peanut butter refrigerated.