Dried fruit creams and butters: how to prepare them at home

Nut butter is a vegetable cream made from almonds, walnuts, hazelnuts or cashews. Excellent for enriching your recipes, here's how to do it.

We have long since learned about peanut butter, discovered through American film production and, once tried, never abandoned again. However, not everyone knows that it is not the only nut butter that can be prepared: almonds, hazelnuts, cashews, walnuts but also pistachios can be transformed in a very similar way into delicious creams or nut butters. Curious to find out how?

When we talk about nut butter, however, we cannot intend it as a real substitute for butter in recipes. It can in fact be spread and used to enrich your dishes , but not for the preparation of desserts instead of traditional butter.

Peanut butter

We have already seen how to make peanut butter at home by simply toasting the peanuts and blending the peanuts for a long time with a rather powerful mixer. The origin of this delight, however, remains shrouded in mystery: official historiography sees it as being born as early as the time of the Incas , but some alternative versions attribute its paternity to Mr. Kellogg .

In fact, however, it has been on the market in the United States since 1904, the year in which it was presented at the St. Luis exhibition . Since then, Americans have loved to eat it spread on bread together with an additional layer of jam.

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Hazelnut butter

Hazelnut butter , like the others, is prepared with just one ingredient. The intense hazelnut flavor recalls that of the famous spreadable cream as well as the famous Gianduiotti. However, it does not contain added sugars, proving to be a true concentrate of nutrients. But be careful with calories: there's no shortage of them!

Almond butter

Preparing excellent homemade almond butter is really simple. The only difference compared to the peanut one is that we recommend toasting the dried fruit at 150°C for 15-20 minutes before proceeding to make the cream. In this way you will obtain an even tastier vegetable butter.

To prepare all homemade vegetable butters you need to have a rather powerful mixer and blend for a long time. If you encounter difficulties, you can add one or two tablespoons of seed oil to make the mixture more fluid and easier to blend.

Pistachio butter

Impossible to resist the full, slightly salty flavor of pistachio butter. Excellent for giving a touch of flavor to hummus or for breakfast with porridge, it is a concentrate of nutrients. To obtain a beautiful bright green color, however, it is important to purchase quality pistachios and remove the skins before proceeding with the preparation.

Walnut and cashew butter

Little known in Italy, it is widely used in South America, just like cashew butter. The slightly sweet flavor of this dried fruit is truly particular and lends itself very well to being used on bread, at breakfast, or to enrich savory preparations just as we usually do with tahini .

Conservation

All these types of butter can also be kept for a month in the fridge , inside an airtight glass jar.

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