How to Make Powdered Peanut Butter | A Quick Guide

The peanut butter industry is worth just under $2 billion annually in the United States. Consumers use the product as a spread, in baking a multitude of delicious treats, and it’s the core flavoring in ice creams or candy. Unfortunately, peanut butter is full of calories, and it has contributed to the obesity problem in Western culture.

How to make powdered peanut butter:

Peanut butter powder is prepared by compressing roasted peanuts until they make a fine powder. To this, additives like salt, sugar, or other flavorings are used to improve the taste. This manufacturing process eliminates most of the natural oil in the peanuts from the powder, producing a low-calorie alternative to peanut butter that can have a shelf life of up to 10 years when stored properly.

Another option is to buy powdered peanut butter, like this excellent brand found on Amazon.

While it might be easier to purchase peanut butter powder rather than making your own, it is something that you can make at home.

The benefit of doing so results in you controlling the roasting of the peanuts, the oil removal, and the quantities of salt, sugar, etc., added to the mixture. Once you’ve got your peanut butter powder in hand, there is a multitude of ways to utilize it.

Standard Process to Making Powdered Peanut Butter

Making peanut butter power involves only a few steps: Roasting your peanuts, compressing the peanut to remove the oil, and grinding the nut into a fine powder, before finally adjusting with additives to taste.

Step #1: Roasting process

Heat your oven to 350 °F and place the dried nuts on a baking tray in a single layer. Shelled nuts need 20-25 minutes in the oven, whereas unshelled nuts require only 15-20 minutes.

While roasting, shake the baking tray a few times to rotate the nuts to allow them to roast evenly. The nuts will continue to cook for a few minutes once removed from the oven.

Flavors can be added to the peanuts before they are placed in the oven; however, that is unusual when making powdered peanut butter, as it is easier to add flavorings at the end when it is in its powdered form.

Step #2: Removing oil

As 43-54% of a typical peanut is oil – there is a lot of moisture that needs to be removed. Otherwise, you will make peanut butter and not a powder when you grind the nuts.

Commercially, this process is performed to manufacture peanut oil, before the remnants are converted into a powder.

Removing oil is a far easier process on the industrial scale, and that is why a purchased powder will generally be finer and drier than anything you can produce at home. Effective extraction is possible by applying sustained high pressure and squeezing the oils out.

At home, this is a challenging process, and you can expect, at best, to remove only 60% of the oil by compression. A suggested method is to place the roasted peanuts between two pieces of paper towel and roll them with a rolling pin. The oil will wick into the absorbent material, leaving drier nuts behind.

Step #3: Grinding into a powder

If you have a food processor, then making your dry, oil-extracted peanuts into a powder is relatively easy. Place the nuts into the food processor and start grinding with slow pulses (5-10 seconds), pausing for at least ten seconds between each pulse.

Manually remove any moisture you can with a paper towel before pulsing again. Repeat this process until you have a homogenous powder-like product.

If you don’t have access to a food processor, you can use a traditional mortar and pestle to grind the nuts into a fine powder. While effective, this is a highly time-consuming method, especially if you are making vast quantities.

Step #4: Add to the taste

Peanut butter power can be bland and slightly sour for some people. Commercial brands will add salt and sugar to increase the enjoyability of the powder. However, if you are making your own, you can add whatever suits your pallet, diet, and nutritional requirements.

Ways to Use Powdered Peanut Butter

Once you have either made or purchased your powdered peanut butter, and you can use it in various ways to enjoy the flavor. Below is not an exhaustive list of uses, but here are some ideas to highlight the utility of this food source.

1. Make a peanut butter spread
   Producing a spread is simple and requires adding water slowly to your powder until the desired consistency is reached. If you haven’t added sugar to your powder, you may want to before eating it this way. After that, spread away!
2. Use in a smoothie or milkshake
   The flavor of the peanut butter will come out in a shake with more neutral tones compared to processed peanut butter. Shakes are the most common way peanut butter powder is used commercially. It is especially popular as a component of a protein shake due to the nutritional properties of peanut butter powder (see below).
3. Add it to oatmeal
   Adding a spoonful of peanut butter to plain oatmeal is a standard solution to give this breakfast option flavor and sweetness. Although peanut butter powder isn’t as sweet as most peanut kinds of butter (manufacturers add sugar), it is a low-calorie method to give your morning meal a protein and flavorful infusion!
4. Use in baking recipes
   Powdered peanut butter can be utilized in any recipe that uses flour. That means you can add protein and flavor to pancakes, muffins, loaves, cakes, bread, scones, waffles, and cookies.
5. Make a peanut sauce
   This is especially useful for salad dressings or for use in Asian-inspired cooking. Peanut butter tends to be too thick and has the wrong flavor profile to pair nicely with the other ingredients. In contrast, peanut butter power can be thinned to any consistency and doctored to achieve the correct balance of flavor.
6. Make ice cream
   Using powder rather than traditional peanut butter to flavor ice cream will give your delicious frozen treat all the flavor for far fewer calories. It is easy to add a scoop of powder before blending the rest of the ingredients together.

Nutritional Information for Powdered Peanut Butter

Powdered peanut butter is also a favorite among the health-conscious as it gives you all the fiber and protein without the calories typically contained in peanuts.

Despite the utility of peanut butter powder in many food products, the main benefit of using it versus traditional peanut butter is improved nutrition.

One tablespoon of peanut butter powder contains approximately 25 calories, 1 gram of fat, 3-4 grams of protein, and 1 gram of fiber. Whereas peanut butter boasts around 100 calories and 8 grams of fat for the same quantity (they have equal protein and fiber content).

Depending on the brand, peanut butter powder can have up to 85% less fat than the equivalent in peanut butter form. The favorable number for the powder arises from the removal of oil.

If you make homemade peanut butter powder, you may not know the exact calorie count, as it will depend on how much fat you were able to remove.

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Final Thoughts

A simple three-step process makes peanut butter powder. First, roast the peanuts to enhance the flavor. Next, remove as much oil from the nuts as you can – this will be the difference between making peanut butter and the powdered counterpart. Finally, finely grind your peanuts until they make a powder.

Once created, peanut butter powder has excellent utility. Since peanut butter cannot be canned, it is really the only way to store it long-term.

It can be used in a multitude of foods, from shakes to baked products, or be the base for a healthier spread for a PB & J sandwich. Switching to powdered peanut butter will reduce your calorie and fat intake, helping you to have an improved diet.

As such, peanut butter powder has become a popular product and is also a great survival food.

For more, check out How to Can Peanut Butter? (You Can’t But Do This Instead).

Ready-Made for Storage

• #10 Can of Peanut Butter Powder

If you are in the market for pre-packaged long-term survival food, I recommend My Patriot Supply. They have some of the best prices and best-tasting food available for those getting prepared.

Related Questions

Why is it Called Peanut Butter if there is No Butter? Pure peanut butter pulverized peanuts, and nothing more; no butter is ever added to the mix. Its name, therefore, can be misleading. However, the butter aspect arises from the spreadable properties of peanut butter. The connection was made that both products had similar consistencies, were high in fat, and were equally creamy from a whipping or churning process. Due to the similarities, the name peanut butter was adopted. The spreadability of the product also explains why they are called almond butter, apple butter, plum butter, etc.

How Long Does Peanut Butter Powder Last? If stored correctly, peanut butter powder can last up to 2 years before it starts losing some of its nutritional qualities. To prolong its self-life, keep the power in a dry, cool environment and store it in an airtight container. If you have reconstituted your peanut butter powder into a paste, then it should last up to a week when stored in the refrigerator.