When you have natural peanut butter at home, it’s equally natural that with time, the oils will separate. This can in turn make it runny, which doesn’t mean that it has gone bad.
Here are 4 awesome tips which you can consider when this happens
- Refrigerate
- Stabilize the peanut butter
- Shorten grinding time
- Extract the oil and Stir
Read further to find on more on how the above-mentioned tips can help you thicken peanut butter.
Important Tips on How to Thicken Peanut Butter
Refrigerate
In some areas, temperatures tend to be extreme or uncontrollable. Now, the only way you can hide the peanut butter from such conditions is keeping it in the refrigerator. What this does is prevent the oily content from separating, and with that your peanut butter will be in shape for longer.
Stabilize the peanut butter
This can be done when making peanut butter at home, or the moment you realize that it’s runny. The trick is to use something that would keep the layers from separating. There are different ways you can stabilize yours, but the safest one is adding oil to it as done in most commercial brands.
You can add this in the grinding process, or just add and stir-in the oil afterwards. However, you won’t have the same natural taste and that’s why for many users, such hydrogenated oils are never an option.
Shorten grinding time
This goes out to those who prefer home-made peanut butter. It’s equally the perfect choice for those who need theirs customized in terms of thickness, probably depending on the intended use.
With only 4 minutes running in the food processor, you should already have creamy and consistent butter. This means that you can always stop the food processor once the peanuts are ground to your desired paste. When you grind longer, you’ll definitely end up with runny peanut butter.
Extract the oil and Stir
Depending on what you have, separation can sometime be way too much which when stirred-in could make the peanut runnier. If that’s the case, what you need to do is drain out the excess layer of oil after which you can stir to get a thicker consistency.
However, this oil should not be discarded because of how resourceful it can be when you need some stir-frying to do. You can still stir it back in the jar in case the peanut butter extremely solidifies in order to make scooping easier.
On the other hand, you can skip the extraction process by keeping the jar upside down. That way, the separation will leave the oil at the bottom end of the jar which you can simply flip back and use the peanut, which will now be at the top.
Read More: 5 Top Quality Substitutes for Peanut Oil That Will Enhance Flavor Of Food
Some of these tips on how to thicken peanut butter require one to try them over and over again. If you need something to kick-start the process, try this video here:
Conclusion
Learning how to thicken peanut butter is not complicated as has been highlighted above. Simply follow use the tips discussed above and have your peanut butter thickened in a very short time. From this discussion, I believe that you can now confidently make your own peanut butter and keep it in shape till the last drop.