What Is Peanut butter and How Can I Use It?

Wondering what to do with peanut butter? This guide covers how to pick it, cook it, store it, and swap it, plus 943 recipes to put it to work.

What is peanut butter?

Peanut butter is a food paste made primarily from ground dry roasted peanuts, popular in North America, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. It is mainly used as a sandwich spread, sometimes in combination as in the peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

Some peanut butter marketed as "natural" contains only peanuts and salt (to help prevent spoilage), but most consumer-brand peanut butter today, even if labeled "natural", contains other ingredients including hydrogenated vegetable oil to stabilize it and prevent oil separation, and dextrose or other sweeteners to enhance flavor.

Sometimes palm oil is used instead of hydrogenated oils to prevent oil separation. Peanut butter is also sold mixed with other pastes such as chocolate, jelly (jam) and the like.

Health Benefits

Peanut butter may protect against a high risk of cardiovascular disease due to high levels of monounsaturated fats and resveratrol; butter prepared with the skin of the peanuts has a greater level of resveratrol and other health-aiding agents.

Peanut butter (and peanuts) provide protein, vitamins B₃, E, magnesium, folate, dietary fiber, arginine, and high levels of the antioxidant p-coumaric acid.

Health Concerns

For people with a peanut allergy, peanut butter can cause reactions including life-threatening anaphylactic shock which has led to bans in some schools.