How to mix up natural peanut butter

Natural peanut butter has a tendency to separate.  You will see a layer of peanut oil floating on the top.  When we first made the switch to natural peanut butter I would use a knife to mix the oils back in.  This was a slow and usually somewhat messy process and I just knew there had to be a better way.

One day it hit me to use the dough hooks on my hand mixer!  Now, I have to tell you that I usually laugh when I call these dough hooks.  I own a Bosch mixer with the American Dough Hook.  Now that is a dough hook, these are just plain wimpy by comparison.

But, I digress, here is the mixer with the attached dough hooks.  They fit nicely into the jar.  Push them in just a few inches and be sure to hold on tight to the jar when you turn on the mixer.  Start it on low and gradually increase it as you go deeper into the jar.  Be sure to scrape the sides and especially the bottom of the jar.  Let it mix until no more oil is visible.  If you do it right, you'll be incorporating air and making the peanut butter nice and fluffy.

This is what mine looked like right after mixing.  You should always keep natural peanut butter refrigerated after opening and this is important after mixing because it will keep it from separating again.

Here is the same jar after it has been in the fridge.  Can you see how fluffy it looks?  It also stays on the knife much better because it isn't runny when cold.

"Eggs"periments

This morning we did a couple of experiments with eggs, hence the title of this post.

While we were home visiting the folks we saw a commercial for a new product called "Eggies" which are basically little containers that you crack your eggs into, then boil and end up with boiled eggs that you don't have to peel.  My brilliant daughter, Chloe, came up with the idea to crack eggs into a glass container with a lid and then boil.  I modified this to using a jelly jar with lid and it worked great!

We took the precaution of putting a small rack into the bottom of the pan of water.  This required a large than necessary pan because it had to accomodate the rack.  Also, this pan wasn't quite big enough and the rack wasn't flat on the bottom.  Note to self, use larger pan next time.  The benefit of this pan was the vented glass lid which I left on during the entire cooking process.

I cracked two eggs into the jar and put on the lid.

Here is the jar sitting on the rack.  Because I wasn't concerned about cracking eggshells, I put it on high until it boiled and then allowed it to cook for 10 minutes after it reached boiling, which is how I usually boil eggs.  Using an oven mitt, I lifted the jar to find the middle still gushy, so I put it back in the pot and checked every few minutes.  It actually took 20 minutes to cook.

 Here is the cooked egg in the jar.  Notice that the level it pretty much the same as before cooking.  I didn't know whether to expect them to expand or not.  I guess not!


The lid did "pop" and seal, as canning lids are supposed to do, so I held the jar with the oven mitt and used a knife to pop the lid off after having let it sit for 3 or 4 minutes.  

Here is what it looked like inside the jar.

I used a case knife to loosed the sides and it poured right out into a bowl.

I cut it in half and behold, perfectly cooked boiled eggs!

I also took a picture of the empty jar so you can see how much cleaning needed to be done.  I just put water in and used a spoon to scrape the sides, much easier than trying to peel farm fresh eggs!

I'm wondering if greasing the jar would be better.  I'll have to try that next time.  I think you could fit three eggs into the jar, but it would depend on the size of the eggs.  And, I'm not sure how that would affect cooking time.

We are so happy to have a new, easy way to boil eggs for egg or potato salad!

Did I mention how smart my kids are?  ;)


The other experiment was poaching an egg.  It didn't work out very well, we'll have to play with that more another day.