A bowl of peanut stew with sweet potato and dark greens beside a small dish of glossy peanut sauce and a scatter of roasted peanuts on a wooden table

Cooking with nut butter: The Uses That Earn a Place in the Pantry

Published 30 Sep 20266 min read

A jar of nut butter does three kitchen jobs at once: it thickens a liquid, it carries fat, and it seasons with the flavor of roasted nuts. Each of the four uses below comes from a tested recipe, with the ratio that makes it work and the reason behind it. The first one starts with a nearly empty jar.

What is in the jar, and why it cooks the way it does

Peanut butter has a U.S. federal standard of identity, and that definition doubles as a description of how it behaves in a pan. Under that standard, peanut butter is made by grinding shelled, roasted peanuts. Seasoning and stabilizing ingredients together may not exceed 10 percent of the finished weight, and the fat content may not exceed 55 percent. Any oil added as a stabilizer must be a hydrogenated vegetable oil.

The arithmetic matters for cooking. If a jar is no more than 55 percent fat, at least 45 percent of it is something other than fat, mostly ground peanut solids. The fat carries flavor and richness, and the solids help give a sauce or stew body when the nut butter is loosened with liquid.

Natural peanut butter, made without a stabilizer, separates in the jar. The Canadian Food Inspection Agency explains that the peanuts' own oil rises to the top, that this is natural and poses no health risk, and that the fix is to stir it back in or store the jar upside down so the oil works its way back through. For cooking, stir first. A spoonful taken from the oily top or the dense bottom of an unstirred jar will not have the same balance of oil and solids as the recipe assumes. Storage and the other practical questions are in the nut butters questions guide.

Use one: the dressing shaken in the jar

The University of Illinois Extension publishes a peanut sauce made in the jar itself, starting from a jar with a little peanut butter left in it. Into the jar go 1 tablespoon each of reduced-sodium soy sauce, rice wine vinegar or cider vinegar, lime juice, honey or maple syrup and warm water, plus 2 teaspoons grated fresh ginger and 1 teaspoon sriracha. The lid goes on and the jar gets shaken until everything is combined. The Extension suggests it as a dipping sauce, a stir-fry topping or a salad dressing.

Read it as a balance. The soy brings salt, the vinegar and lime bring acid, the honey brings sweetness, the ginger and sriracha bring heat and aroma, and the warm water loosens the paste to a pourable sauce. The peanut butter clinging to the walls supplies the fat and the body, and shaking works it off the glass. It can be read with the same logic as a vinaigrette, with nut butter doing some of the work mustard does there. The vinaigrette ratio guide and the acid in cooking guide cover the other half of that balance.

If the sauce is too thick, the correction is more warm water, a spoonful at a time. If it tastes flat, try another squeeze of lime before adding more peanut butter.

Use two: the stew thickener

The University of Nebraska-Lincoln's recipe for West African peanut stew, maafe, shows nut butter working as a thickener and a seasoning at once. Onion is cooked in oil until translucent. Garlic, curry powder, turmeric and ginger go in for a minute. Then 4 cups of broth, a 15-ounce can of chopped tomatoes and ½ cup of peanut butter are stirred in together. Diced sweet potatoes simmer covered for 15 minutes, then chopped greens (kale, collards or Swiss chard) cook uncovered for another 10 to 15 minutes until the potatoes are tender. Hot sauce is optional at the table.

Two details carry the method. First, the peanut butter goes in early, with the liquid, which gives it the whole simmer to disperse into the broth. Second, the ratio is modest: ½ cup of peanut butter to 4 cups of broth plus a 15-ounce can of tomatoes, roughly 1 part to 11 by volume. The recipe accepts creamy or crunchy, so the jar already open is the right one.

Use three: the flourless cookie

The three-ingredient peanut butter cookie shows how much a nut butter carries on its own. A City of San Diego How-To Festival handout gives the whole recipe: 1 cup of peanut butter, 1 cup of sugar and 1 egg, mixed, rolled into balls 1 to 2 inches across, pressed with a fork in a crisscross, and baked at 350°F for 10 to 12 minutes. A chocolate kiss pressed into each cookie straight from the oven is the optional fourth ingredient.

There is no flour and no butter. In effect, the nut butter supplies both the fat and the solids that butter and flour would otherwise provide, while the sugar sweetens and the egg binds. With no flour to absorb stray oil, whatever balance of oil and solids sits in the measuring cup goes straight into the cookie. The tested recipe uses peanut butter. Swapping in a sweet, flavored nut butter such as Big Spoon Roasters Vanilla Caramel Almond & Cashew Butter (shop Vanilla Caramel Almond & Cashew Butter) or Lemon Coconut Cashew Butter (shop Lemon Coconut Cashew Butter) is an untested variation.

Use four: next to the jam

The most familiar use still earns its place. Nut butter and fruit preserves balance each other: the nut butter brings fat and roasted flavor, and the preserve brings acid and sweetness. The peanut butter and jelly guide takes the sandwich seriously, and the jam and preserves guide covers the other side of the pairing, with the differences between jam, preserves, marmalade and fruit butter set out in the jam versus marmalade guide.

The four uses at a glance

Use	Nut butter to the rest	When it goes in	Why it works
Jar-end dressing	What is left in the jar, plus 1 tablespoon each of soy, vinegar, lime, honey and warm water, with ginger and sriracha	All at once, shaken in the jar	Fat and solids give body; salt, acid, sweet and heat balance it
Stew thickener	½ cup to 4 cups broth plus a 15-oz can of tomatoes, roughly 1 to 11	Early, with the liquid, before the simmer	The whole simmer to disperse into the broth
Flourless cookie	1 cup to 1 cup sugar and 1 egg	Mixed, baked at 350°F for 10 to 12 minutes	Nut butter supplies the fat and the solids; the egg binds
With jam	To taste	At the table	Fat and roast against acid and sweetness

Matching the jar to the use

For the stew and the dressing, a plain peanut butter keeps closest to the tested recipes. Big Spoon Roasters Crunchy Peanut Butter (shop Big Spoon Roasters Crunchy Peanut Butter) lists high-oleic runner peanuts, Virginia peanuts, sorghum syrup and Jacobsen sea salt. The maker describes the Virginia peanuts as the crunch and the runner peanuts as the smooth base, and says each batch is roasted and mixed by hand. As a crunchy peanut butter it fits the Nebraska stew, which calls for creamy or crunchy, and its salt comes from the same Oregon maker profiled in the Jacobsen Salt Co. producer guide. The jar-end dressing already calls for honey, so a honey-sweetened jar such as Big Spoon Roasters Peanut Butter with Wildflower Honey (shop Peanut Butter with Wildflower Honey) is a natural candidate for it. The Big Spoon Roasters guide covers the maker and its range.

Short answers to the rest

Creamy or crunchy for cooking? The Nebraska stew accepts either. In the dressing and the cookie, creamy gives a smoother result and crunchy leaves texture, a matter of preference. Does tahini work the same way? Tahini is a sesame seed butter and follows much of the same logic, and the tahini first-recipe guide starts there. Where to begin? The nut butter first-recipe guide names the single dish to start with. What about the nuts themselves? The nuts first-recipe guide covers whole and seasoned nuts.

The shop is at 263 Josephine Street in Cherry Creek, Denver, where visitors can ask the staff questions, and products ship across the continental U.S. from theambrosianpantry.com.