My Struggle with All Natural Peanut Butter

 I love peanut butter. Yes, it's fattening if you eat too much of it, but it's one of my favorite flavors. It goes with jelly (of course), you can eat it straight from the jar if you're so inclined, it takes great on crackers, and...I could go on. The thing is, however, I have to work hard to keep my cholesterol levels down, and peanut butter that has additives makes that tougher.

But over the years I've tried several times to go the all natural peanut butter route. Just peanuts and salt. It seems like a no-brainer, except...there's that oil on the top. And the fact that you have to somehow get the oil to mix in. I've done the stirring vigorously routine and the turning it upside down for a day (or more days). None of those worked the way I wanted them to. There was always hard peanut butter at the bottom that fought me. And the rest was too runny for my taste. 

I read forums where people discussed their favorite methods of mixing the peanut butter (knives, peanut butter stirrers made for just that one function, and the aforesaid spoon mixing and upside-down method). None met my one requirement which was that the whole jar of peanut butter would be well-mixed and an optimum, easily spreadable but non-runny consistency.

Finally, I just capitulated and decided to spend the extra ten minutes to really mix that peanut butter up well. Now I always keep an extra jar on the shelf. When one jar gets low, I take out a medium sized mixing bowl, a hand mixer, scoop out all the peanut butter in the new jar and just mix that stuff up until all the lumps are gone. Then I spoon it back in the jar and put it in the fridge. Once it's in the refrigerator, it won't separate.

Problem solved. This might be a bit much for most people, but for me it's worth the extra effort. I throw the dirty mixing bowl and beaters in the dishwasher and consider the ten minutes of mixing, time well spent.

Best Wishes,

Myrna