Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Move Over, Peter Pan.

My husband and I are both Food Network junkies. This obsession started a few months ago when we realized our remote was always choosing shows like "Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives", "Iron Chef America", "Chopped", and "The Best Thing I Ever Ate" over our usual sports and criminal cop show favorites. This commonality has developed a new sort of kinship between us and that I think that is one of the best things about marriage: Always discovering new things you like about each other. Very pleasant, indeed.

One of our favorite shows is "Good Eats", which features the Amazing Alton Brown, who chooses a particular food item and proceeds to dive deep into details about said item, giving its history, its variety, and, best of all, recipes that incorporate it. Simple recipes. Alton is basically a fabulous Super Geek who explains the atomic structure of everything from sprouts to chocolate, and, well, we're hooked. Seeing as we are basically geeks ourselves.

A few nights ago, Alton did a show on the wonderful legume that is the Peanut.

And then he made homemade peanut butter.

And after my husband and I wiped the drool from our chins, we resolved to try it ourselves.

On Friday night, we went to Target, and, thanks to gift cards from friends and family, we purchased a food processor. Oh, the wonder that is the food processor. We have two small processors at home and I employed them when I made Cub's baby food months ago, but oh, having one this large would have been SO HANDY as I whipped up those green beans and sweet potatoes months ago. And, it has kind of been a dream of mine since to actually be able to make more than a half cup of food, be it sweet potatoes or salsa, at a time. And on Friday night, my dream came true.

We came home, put the Cubster to bed, and proceeded to create our own peanut butter. We looked up Alton's recipe online and went to work. I am mentioning again that this is Alton Brown's recipe, the Amazing Alton Brown, not my recipe or my husband's recipe or anyone else even remotely close to me's recipe. Did that sentence make sense? Anyway. You get the point.

Here we are about to begin. You can sense the excitement.

You need:
15 ounces shelled and skinned (unsalted) peanuts
-->(You can make AB's homemade roasted peanuts ... but we just bought a couple jars of unsalted. Make sure the only ingredients in the peanuts are, well, PEANUTS, before you purchase them.)
1 tsp kosher salt
1.5 tsp honey
1.5 tablespoons peanut oil

This is Alton's recipe online. You can find it here.

The peanuts, salt, and honey, respectively.

The blending of the three.

My husband was so proud when he found this. "It's from Oklahoma!!" He was very excited to support local farmers (Bee farmers? Bee growers? Bee breeders?). And I agreed with him.

The trifecta mixture. Then we added peanut oil.

The end result.

The peanut butter was delicious. It wasn't sugary, but was instead more nutty, like the organic peanut butter we have tried in the past. (But, we liked this better.)


And what better way to celebrate homemade peanut butter than to make homemade peanut butter and chocolate shakes? YUM. I can't say my blood sugar loved me the next morning, but the moment was worth it.

Deliciousness.

We stuck the tub of peanut butter in the fridge and have quite a bit left to use. The next day I tried our recipe on our little man to see what he thought.


He loved it. Success.

Try this if you find the time. You won't be disappointed!

5 comments:

  1. You guys are too funny! You can make me a PB&J with that homemade concoction any time--it looks YUM! Glad you had a fun night together!

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  2. LOVE food network - it's usually what's on when the t.v. is on in my living room...it's nice to be able to share that with your hubby - my hubby is more into UFC fighting and Man vs. Wild...which is great except when he has to eat something horribly disgusting, not good for a pregnant gal. Fun post!

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  3. Thanks for posting the recipe! Josh brought some for us to try to basketball last night. THANK YOU SO MUCH!! I had some with my breakfast this morning and I love it! It is such a real, rich, different taste from the store bought! I think we will have to try to make some ourselves!!

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  4. You guys are so cute! Sounds like quite the Friday night! :) I am mildly addicted to the Food Network as well...so many amazing recipes and tips!

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  5. I used to live next to a bee farmer. I love making things, and I'm so addicted to Food Network. I'm going to have to try this recipe.

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