Ingredient Spotlight: What Can You Do With Peanut Butter?

We are definitely not above having a big spoonful of peanut butter for a quick afternoon snack! Especially if there's a little honey or a few chocolate chips involved. As a raw ingredient, peanut butter actually has a lot of other uses and is quite handy to have around the kitchen. How do you use peanut butter in your cooking?

After reading last week's Minimalist column on the potential of peanut butter as an ingredient, we felt the need to give our half-used jar a little more consideration. We tend to like plain all-natural chunky peanut butter - just roasted and ground peanuts with a little salt to boost the flavor. This is very different from the Skippy we loved as kids, and it's a lot more useful for both sweet and savory applications.

Peanut butter is essentially a building block. Warmed slightly, peanut butter gets gooey and we can mix in a lot of other ingredients to change its flavor profile. Add a little liquid like chicken stock or milk, and we can thin it out into a sauce that will add a peanuty note to an entire dish.

On the savory side, peanut butter pairs with a lot of spicy ingredients (think African and Thai), meats like chicken and pork, and starches like rice and noodles. We used to make a quick curry in college by microwaving a combination of peanut butter, yogurt, milk, and curry spices until it was creamy and then pouring this over steamed vegetables. Blended with soy sauce and lime juice, peanut butter makes an excellent dipping sauce or marinade. A spoonful stirred into a soup will add another dimension of flavor.

On the sweet side, peanut butter can be a miracle ingredient. It's goes well with caramel, honey, and both milk and dark chocolates, not to mention fruits like banana and coconut. Just a little can add a subtle nutty flavor in baked goods, but it can also take center stage as a main ingredient. We've been itching to try making a peanut butter pudding or freezing it into ice cream.

We'd like to find even more ways to use peanut butter in our cooking. What do you suggest?

• Read Mark Bittman's Minimalist column: Exploring Peanut Butter's Potential

(Image: Flickr member Dano licensed under Creative Commons)

Comments (26)

Chicken in Peanut Sauce -- Peanut Soup -- two of my FAVORITE foods. Mmmmm

This has nothing to do with cooking, but slowly swallowing a spoonful of peanut butter is the only way I can get rid of hiccups. And it makes me feel like I'm in a Shel Silverstein story.

I like it mixed with red chile sauce poured over pasta

I mix it with rice vinegar, soy or fish sauce and sriracha and use the sauce as a topping for chicken burgers or dipping sauce for Trader Joe's shrimp gyozas.

Growing up my Chinese parents would mix peanut butter with soy sauce and use it as a dipping sauce for meats and noodles when we had hot pot.

When I was a kid, my sister and I would form little balls out of peanut butter and freeze them for snacks. Now I do a sweet peanut butter ice cream with salted peanuts. OK now I'm hungry!

I just ran to a Duane Reade on my lunch break to buy a jar and am currently eating it on the bread I made last night. Uh, yum.
Made PB ice cream a few weeks ago, it was delicious. I love PB in/on just about anything. Mmmm. Thinking about the savory side of it makes me crave Massaman curry.

I make a very delicious dressing with lemon juice, balsamic vinegar, soy sauce and agave to pour over my raw broccoli salad. The recipe is posted on myrecessionkitchen.com

I love plopping a spoonful or two into stir-frys. The sweetness mellows out & you're left with a nice, smooth buttery texture & just a hint of peanut.

I love it swirled into vanilla ice cream. Yum, yum, yum.

cloves and cream, I love the idea of adding a bit to a stir-fry. My boyfriend doesn't like one of my favorite spicy peanut noodle dishes, so maybe this could be a way to sneak in a little of that delicious flavor without overwhelming him... :)

The main reason I buy crunchy peanut butter is to make satay sauce. I was sick of buying satay sauce that was a very small % of peanut.

People who eat peanut butter by the spoonful need to be mindful of the fact that it is very dangerous to eat it in such a manner. If you choke, peanut butter (without an accompanying item like bread, a cracker, apple, etc.) is one of the few things that cannot be dislodged using the Heimlich Maneuver. It really is not a good idea to just eat peanut butter right off the spoon. Put it on or in something and you're good.

I love love peanut butter spread on a bagel hot from the toaster. Melted peanut butter... mmm...

One of my favorite filipino dishes is called kare kare and peanut butter is one of the main ingredients. here is a link to the recipe - http://www.filipinofoodrecipes.net/kare_kare.htm - you can make it with just beef, but oxtail is delicious. I would say the toasted rice, atsuete, and banana bud are optional. The bagoong is a shrimp paste available at Filipino stores and the string beans are Chinese long beans or can be subbed for regular green beans.

Two other recommendations - peanut butter frosting on chocolate cupcakes and adding peanut butter to smoothies with bananas, chocolate, milk, and honey!

I put PB in smoothies, or on apple slices.

It's not a culinary application, but smooth peanut butter can be used as an emergency substitute for shaving cream, or so says Men's Health magazine.

Cookies!

I recently made a Thai-flavoured hummus. With lime, peanut butter and oil, garlic, ginger and Thai basil.

Kale and peanut butter go surprisingly well together in a stew.

pb and mayo. not kidding.

when i was a kid my dad would mix peanut butter and mayonnaise (a 75:25ish ratio) and we'd dip apple slices in it. so good.

now as a vegan adult i use vegenaise and sometimes add a little cinnamon. i made it for my mayo-hating boo, didn't tell him what was in it, and got him hooked. i know it sounds awful, but just try it!

I swirl it into vanilla yogurt or spread it on granny smith apples in the fall. There is little better.

I use peanut butter in "Hillbilly Hummus" (black-eyed peas instead of garbanzos, peanut butter instead of tahini" and mixed with tomato paste, red chili flakes, and broth for a soup base of whatever is around (sweet potato seems to go really well). Both of these come from "Passionate Vegetarian" and are incredibly good.

BTW, Thai peanut sauce on a baked sweet potato is delicious!

Stir-fried kale with garlic, onions, and tomatoes. At the end, stir in some peanut butter. I learned this recipe from my roommate from Zimbabwe. It's amazing! I've tried the same thing with tahini.

A lot of cool ideas here.

I'm quite boring but Peanut Butter Brownies (with chocolate chips) are a staple around my house. Yummy good.

Could you possibly give the ratios for that quick curry sauce you mentioned? It's something I'd love to try out!