I got a jar of one of those “old fashioned” style peanut butters, where the oil is separated from the peanuts. And then I spent a fair amount of time stirring it all up and getting into a reasonably uniform consistency, something a bit thicker than, say, maple syrup.
Then I thought about how getting it onto bread, let alone eating it from there, would be kinda messy. And I decided to eliminate the middleman. And so I just poured it straight into my mouth. Pretty damn good.
And to cap it off, I’m going to be nominating this thread for the Most Pointless Thread of 2010. I wanna win a Dopey!
Well, if you want, we can get a little less pointless by fighting some of my ignorance.
Is peanut butter usually homogenized? Or is there something else they do to get the oil to mix? And why is old-fashioned peanut butter so runny in the first place?
And, finally, has anyone else tried just pouring the oil off and using the other stuff?
I am reminded of the time we had the house heat treated for bedbugs. After raising the temp indoors to 66 degrees C or thereabouts, I realized after we got back in that we neglected to put the peanut butter in the fridge (they didn’t put that on the checklist!) and was quite runny. I attempted to make a peanut butter sandwich that night, but was far too runny, and looked absolutely disgusting
(Way too TMI in spoiler. Don’t read if you don’t have a strong stomach. You also lose your right to complain about the grossness if you click on the spoiler :))
It very much reminded me of the consistency of diarrhea. The colour of the peanut butter did nothing to dissuade me from that notion. I think mentioning it was chunky peanut butter will only make things worse …
With a stomach becoming queasy, I threw out the sandwich and put the PB in the freezer. Was good the next day.
Often homogenized or stabilized, yes. Non-old-fashioned or hippie-natural peanut butter has a lot in it besides peanuts.
Because peanuts contain a lot of oil.
Yeah, I have. The “other stuff” (ground peanut solids) is stiff and unspreadable unless you heat it, and it REALLY sticks to the roof of your mouth. You need twice as much milk to go with your sandwich.
Ah, no, mine is Swensen’s with a second E instead of the O. The San Francisco-based ice-cream company.
The wife’s cousin did some sort of Rotary Club exchange to Chicago back about 15 years or so ago for a few weeks, and she claimed none of her hosts – there were several, as they moved the participants around – had never heard of Swensen’s Ice Cream, so it took a long time for her to believe me when I said it was an American chain. I’m still not sure if she believes it. Are there no Swensen’s in the Chicago area or what?
That helps me the most. I didn’t realize old-fashioned peanut butter was made only from peanuts. In the more usual variety, is some of the oil taken out, or does the stabilization or extra ingredients somehow made more solid? Or is the oil just hydrogenated?
A quick look-up shows Jif has sugar and partially hydrogenated oil added to it. I imagine all the major brands and comparable store brands are similar. There are a couple of natural PB’s that are blended better - I think even Target has one - though I’m not sure how they accomplish that.
That I don’t know. I do know that if you mix one part just-peanuts peanut butter with one part sugar, it seems to stay mixed indefinitely.
Sadly, not always. I think it depends on how long it was sitting right-side-up on the store shelf.
Right – sorry I wasn’t clearer – the kind that separates, a.k.a. old-fashioned or hippie-natural, has just peanuts and maybe salt. It’s usually more expensive than the mass-marketed kinds like Jif, a.k.a. non-old-fashioned, which contain sugar and various other ingredients.