Wednesday, June 12, 2013

Home Made Nut Butter

One of my favorite snacks is nut butter of just about any kind. Nuts have a variety benefits including protein,  antioxidants, vitamins, minerals, and omega-3 fatty acids. It can also aid in stress reduction: the nutrients in several types of nuts can help protect your body against the damaging physical effects of being stressed out. Boosts the immune system with vitamin E, vitamin B and magnesium. Improving heart health: may help reduce LDL cholesterol - According to a Harvard review. And so much more!

I really love nut butters but like most products, the store bought brands aren't up to standard! They often contain harmful oils, sugar, preservatives, aren't raw, are loaded with sodium, or are just over priced. Once I realized how unbelievably easy it was to make them I'll never go back!

Hopefully you caught my blog the other day about juicing -  one wonderful perk to the kind of juicer I have is that it can also make nut butters (and pasta). I've had an Omega 8000 series masticating juicer for about 5 years now and it is still going strong. For a solid 2 years I was using it daily and I've seen this model take a beating! If you do the math on this:  juice can be anywhere from $7-$14 in LA and I got the juicer for about $250, if you juice daily it will pay for itself in a few weeks! And thats not including the yummy, healthy, raw, nut butters you can make.

Lets get down to business. For this I used hazelnuts so that I could make a raw chocolate hazelnut cheesecake. 

Step one. Decide on your nut butter - literally the hardest part.
Step two. Assemble your juicer with the proper parts. Follow instructions that came with your particular juicer.
Step three. Turn on the machine and slowly start to feed the nuts through. You will get a nut meal/flour type of substance and first, this is totally normal. Go with it!
Step four. Feed the ground up nuts back through 5-6 times. You will eventually get a paste.
Step five. Add your favorite healthy oil - for me it would be cold pressed coconut oil. Just add a little bit at time until you get the consistency you want.



And thats it! I was skeptical at first because it didn't come out all creamy from the get go but trust me this is way worth it. The entire process took less than 10 minutes and I felt so DIY.

Taking control of the ingredients in your nut butters is an easy way to make yourself a priority - and feel like a total bad ass!