How to make Peanut Butter

For our readers in the diaspora who sometimes wonder how to cheat with some of the Nigerian recipes, this is for you. Traditionally groundnut soup is made with raw groundnut, ground to a fine powder. Anyway I found myself with a very dear friend who’s blender didn’t have a dry mill and she didn’t have a coffee blender either, and I had promised to make her groundnut soup. So we decided to experiment with peanut butter. We reached for a jar of Skippy Peanut butter from her panty and went to work hoping it would come out great. I can tell you it did.

Recipe

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 cups Peanut butter

• 3 dried Cameroon pepper

• 2 tbsp Ground pepper (Ata rodo /Scotch Bonnet /Habenero)

• 1 Tsp Uziza seeds

• 1/4 cup Palm oil

• Cooked Assorted Meats and Fish

• 3 cups beef Stock

• 1/8 cup crushed dried Efirin leaves.

• Salt and bouillon cubes (Maggi or knorr … etc ) to taste.

Procedure

– Blend the Cameroon pepper and uziza seeds together to powder, if you have a dry mill blender. If you have a regular blender, blend the uziza and Cameroon pepper with the other pepper and some water.

– In a pot , add the meat stock and the peanut butter, stir the peanut butter in the meat stock till it dissolves completely. Put your cooker on medium heat.

– Add, palm oil, Uziza, and ground peppers now. Allow to cook for about 3 mins the add the meats and fish . Taste for seasoning and add additional seasoning if necessary. Leave the pot covered and cook for about 10mins, add about 2 cups water if the consistency is too thick. Cook on medium heat.

– Because peanut butter is very oily you’d notice the oil start to float at the top, that is why you need very minimal palm oil. Add the efirin leaves and stir it in, turn the heat down to low and turn it off about 3 minutes after.

See how much oil the peanut butter gave off

Enjoy your peanut butter soup with any starchy accompaniment as you would your native soup.

Welcome to another one of my how-to series.
Today I’d be showing you very easy ways to make your own peanut butter. I promise you, you’d dump the store bought brands once you know how to do this. Making peanut butter is as simple as ABC. In fact I have never bought a jar of peanut butter with my money.

This is what you need to know.
Ingredient
Roasted Peanut -we call it groundnut-

Optional ingredients
Honey
Cayenne pepper
(I didn’t use any of these optional ingredients.)
Ehu Seeds (Calabash Nutmeg) if you are looking for traditional tasting peanut butter like the one Igbo people serve with garden egg.

Procedure
Get out the dry mill of your blender.
If you are not sure about the freshness of your peanuts turn it into a dry frying pan and stir fry on low heat for about 3-5mins. To avoid rancidity. Do not burn .