Cook Like Chuck

One of the things I love about having a good food processor around is that we can make fresh almond butter whenever we want. We buy the almonds in bulk, so we can make fresh almond butter for cheaper than we can buy it in the store. It takes just ten minutes and we customize it to our tastes.

We go through a pound of almond butter in about a week. We primarily eat it with apples or celery (this has helped us get through our Whole 30), but we’ll also throw it in the occasional smoothie. Here is how we make it:

Instructions

1. Take 1lb of whole almonds and put them in the food processor. I like using 1/2 raw and 1/2 roasted almonds.
2. Put the lid on the food processor and turn it on.
3. Wait 9 minutes. Be patient. It will look almost like almond butter between the 5-9 minute marks, but it will disappoint you if you taste it. It will be mealy and dry instead of smooth and creamy.
4. At the 9 minute mark, take the lid off and scrape down the sides. Put the lid back on.
5. Process again for another full minute. This is when the transformation from “meh” to store-bought quality happens. This last minute is when it turns nice and creamy.
6. Eat a few spoonfuls while it is still warm, then put it into a jar and store in the fridge for up to two weeks.

Your times might vary with your food processor. With my 9-cup Cuisinart workhorse, here are roughly the stages the almonds go through:

Variations

• Chocolate Almond Butter
  • Add in 1 bar of dark chocolate before processing.
• Maple almond butter
  • Use maple-roasted almonds (make your own by tossing your almonds with maple syrup and roasting them at 350F for 20 minutes), or add 1/2 cup maple syrup
• Chunky Almond Butter
  • Pulse for 20-30 seconds and then take out a 1/2 cup of chunks and then put the lid back on and start processing again. Mix the chunks in at the end.
• Honey Flax Almond Butter
  • Include 1/8 cup of toasted flax seeds and 1/8 cup of raw honey before processing.
• Try other nuts.
  • Walnuts, cashews, and pecans are all great.
  • Macadamia butter is good, but very rich. I can’t eat much at one time. Macadamia nuts are best mixed in small amounts with almonds or pecans.
  • Pecans + Cashews or Walnuts + Cashews are particularly good combos.
• If you like a lighter color (or want lighter almond flour), use blanched almonds.

Hyperlapse

I took a quick hyperlapse of making the almond butter to show the transformation. It is sped up by 12x. I know the video kind of sucks: It is vertical, the vibrations of the food processor moved it all around, and I had to freehand it for the last 5 minutes. I stopped this video at the 9 minute mark, just before we scraped it down and processed it for the final minute.

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