Why does separation occur?
Before we tell you how you can easily make your nut butter creamier again, let's take a close look at why the oil settles and the nut butter hardens. Oil separation (the settling of a layer of oil on the nut butter) is a natural process that occurs in 100% pure products with no additives. The higher the fat content of a product, the faster the oil separates after production. Oil separation is therefore a sign of quality and means that your nut butter is free of artificial additives such as stabilizers and emulsifiers.
In search of the solution
We took the plunge and tried several methods to rescue our nut butter and bring it back to its creamy form. To do this, we first did some research and spoiler alert: we found a surprisingly simple method. If you're curious and the other methods don't interest you, skip right to the bottom of the article to "Our Conclusion."
Solution idea 1: Turn nutmeal upside down
In this case, the nut butter should mix with the oil again by itself. That sounds very simple, at least at first. We tried this method with our organic peanut butter. Our peanut butter jar stood upside down for two hours. Although the oil was distributed in the jar, it did not really combine with the nut mass.
Solution idea 2: Gentle heating
We placed the closed jar in a bowl of warm water and waited a few minutes for the nutmeal to warm up slightly. This is supposed to help melt the oils it contains, making the nut butter more pliable. Our result: after putting our jar of peanut butter in a warm water bath and waiting 20 minutes, nothing happened. So we put water in a pot, put the jar of nut butter in the pot, and slowly heated the water on the stove. Our peanut butter wasn't really creamy. It was more of a warm, crumbly mass. Also, the label on the jar of nutmeal got soggy and started to come off the jar.
Solution idea 3: Stir it
At first, we tried using a spoon. But that was rather forceful and difficult. The mass of our peanut butter that settled at the bottom was really hard already and kept sticking to the spoon when we stirred it. Also, the oil that settled on the top kept spilling out of the jar.
Solution idea 4: The stand mixer
We mixed the settled oil and the nut mass properly with our stand mixer "Sir Mix-A-Lot" and indeed both combined well again - our nut butter was creamy as ever. Our tip: Hurry up with the washing up afterwards, because once the nut butter has dried a bit, it becomes more difficult to clean up the food processor.
Solution idea 5: Dough hook
If you don't want to clean the food processor every time, we recommend using the dough hooks of a mixer to process the nut butter. If the jar is big enough, you won't even have to transfer it. The tedious stirring is taken over by a machine and the washing up is limited to two dough hooks- or you simply nibble the butter from the dough hooks as you would when baking a cake. And the result is impressive! Our nut butter was creamy and no oil settled.
Here's a little tip: If your jar of nut butter is already quite empty, you can also simply add a shot of neutral cooking oil such as sunflower oil and then mix.
Our conclusion
The next time you ask yourself how you can easily make your nut butter creamy again, we recommend that you work the nut butter with a dough hook, ideally directly in the nut butter jar.
