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I love almond butter.  It’s my favorite nut butter, even if you count peanuts as a nut (they’re not, they’re a legume).  Almonds are also a decent source of vitamin E, fiber, and monounsaturated fats (the good kind).  My only issue with almond butter is the cost – close to $12.00 for a 16 oz jar around the area where I live.  It’s good, but it’s not $12.00/lb worth of good.

Last night I had an epiphany – I own a food processor, why not make my own?  Really, how hard could it be?  I scoured around the Internet, found a few recipes, and gathered my materials.  Turns out it was relatively easy, once I ignored a few pieces of bad advice.  Here’s my recipe:

  • 20 oz almonds (not roasted, just regular almonds)
  • 1 t salt
  • 4 T oil

Almonds can be found in the bulk bins at some stores, as well as in the baking section.  The almonds above came from the baking section, at about $3.20 per 10-oz bag.  Two bags came to $6.40, or right about $5.12 per pound.

I can’t even begin to state how incredibly simple this was.  Total yield of this recipe is only about 20 fluid ounces, but the food processor needs to have room to throw the mixture around a bit and a motor that can handle it.  I have an 11-cup food processor that was a hand-me-down from somebody who upgraded to the latest & greatest model; if you don’t own a good-sized food processor you could make it in smaller batches.  The quantities above should scale nicely down to 5 or 10 ounces of almonds.

  1. Dump about 1/4 of the almonds into the workbowl of your food processor, along with the salt.
  2. Turn the food processor on to low or medium speed, and grind until you have a coarse meal.
  3. Repeat this procedure for each 1/4 of the batch.
  4. You should now have a food processor full of ground almonds.  Turn the food processor on low, and drizzle in the olive oil.
  5. Continue to run the food processor until you have a thick paste.  It will not be completely smooth, but it will be a paste – not a coarse meal.
  6. Dump the entire contents of the food processor into jars, cover tightly, and store in the fridge.

This whole procedure took about 15 minutes, and most of that was due to following bad advice (as noted below).

A note on adding oil – I saw at least one recipe that insisted no additional oil is needed.  This is true for many nuts, as they already have high fat contents, but I was skeptical about almonds as they’re lower in fat than many other nuts.  The same recipe also said that in order to get the oil out of the almonds, you need to process them for over ten minutes.  I ran my food processor for almost that entire time, and saw no progress whatsoever toward oil extraction.

What I *did* see was that the almond meal began to warm up considerably as I approached the 10 minute mark.  Heat damages the vitamins and other good stuff in the almonds, and the presence of heat is frequently the sign that you’re overworking your food processor.  This rapidly ceases to be a frugal project if it costs you a food processor, so the next time I do it I’ll add the oil as soon as I have the almonds to a coarse meal (a minute or so, max) rather than after close to 10 minutes.

The first time I made this I used extra-virgin olive oil, which I now consider a mistake.  The flavor of the oil is too strong for the nut butter – next time I’ll use canola oil for a more mellow flavor.

The verdict?  Other than the slight off flavor (contributed by the extra-virgin olive oil) this was as good as the almond butter I can buy in the store.  Unless I find a source of almonds that’s super-inexpensive, it’s still probably not cheap enough to be an everyday staple in my kitchen.  Either way though, I like almond butter – and this gives me a way to enjoy a high-quality product at a much more reasonable price.