Long time readers of my blog will know that I’m a massive fan of peanut butter. I’ve now forgotten when I really started eating it (my memory is not as good as it used to be, though much better than most people), but I remember starting to eat it regularly when we lived in London in 2017-19.
That’s when, on a random day at a Tesco, I discovered Whole Earth peanut butter. The brand might be familiar to some of you since they are sponsoring the England cricket team now during the ongoing Test series against India.
This was the first time ever that I had found peanut butter that was crunchy, had some salt and had no added sugars or sweeteners. There would always be a 1kg jar of it at home, which I’d add to everything, but most commonly eat out of a spoon straight out of the jar.
When we moved back to India, I struggled on this count. There was no peanut butter available then that had salt but no sugar. Somehow Indian brands seem to think that using jaggery or honey or date syrup in lieu of sugar magically reduces the glycemic content of the food!
After a year of experimentation, I started getting Haldiram peanuts and grinding them at home to make peanut butter. And then during the pandemic, I found MyFitness peanut butter, which didn’t have that much sugar, but was nice enough and close enough to Whole Earth.
Soon, my wife started objecting. “Why do you want to eat so much processed food”, she would chide me, instead arguing we need to make peanut butter at home. I tried a couple of times but I overroasted the peanuts and it was horrible. That experiment was quickly abandoned.
I tried many other brands - Yoga Bars and Whole Truth being among the better ones. Life would be very different when there would be peanut butter at home! But again my wife raised the issue about eating processed food with “stabilizers” etc.
Soon we got into this situation of “bad apples”. I would constantly keep waiting for my wife to make peanut butter at home, which she wouldn’t make. And that she would “make it tomorrow” would mean that I would not buy as well. This went on for too long, and I hardly ate any peanut butter, and my happiness went down.
Finally, a month or two ago, I gave up, and on a day when I was home alone, roasted a bunch of peanuts with the intention of turning it into butter. As usual I had over-roasted it. The most challenging part, btw, was in separating the peanuts from their peels without making too much of a mess at home.
That I had over-roasted meant that I didn’t enjoy it too much. A small jar lasted two weeks (nobody else ate it as well), and we got into the “bad apples” peanut-butter-less territory again.
Until yesterday.
Finally my wife decided to put me out of my misery. Out of her own initiative, she roasted a bunch of peanuts in the air fryer (reducing the temperature to 160 to roast carefully, down from our “default” 200). While watching some stuff on TV, she painstakingly separated the nuts from the chaff. By evening, we had peanut butter.
As things stand, the jar is already down to half of what it was yesterday. She has made it so well that she is now a victim of her own success - the way we are going she will need to make this again tomorrow. And again. And again. And again.
It’s six years since we returned from the UK so I’ve forgotten what Whole Earth tastes like, but what my wife made yesterday is easily the best peanut butter I’ve eaten in the last few years. Hopefully she’ll maintain a consistent stock of it going forward!
PS: She invented a new dessert yesterday - her own (crunchy) peanut butter with leftover chocolate sauce from the last time we ordered from Corner House. She claims it “tastes like snickers” and I tend to agree. You should try this, too, irrespective of what sauce or peanut butter you have.
This is the thing about making a lot of things at home. The effort to reward ratio is seriously skewed. This is why processed food exists. 😅
Clearly making Peanut butter is no eating kallekaayi activity