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  • Cook's Illustrated

    KITCHEN NOTES

    Dec 11, 2018 4 minutes
    BY STEVE DUNN, ANDREA GEARY, ANDREW JANJIGIAN, LAN LAM & ANNIE PETITO

    Thicken Homemade Nut Butter with … Water?

    While developing our Homemade Nut Butter recipe (page 29), we found that the pecan and hazelnut butters needed to be thickened after grinding to create a pleasingly spreadable consistency. That’s because both nuts have more fat than the other varieties we tested. Hazelnuts have 18 grams of fat per ounce and pecans have 20 grams per ounce, while the other nuts we used (peanuts, cashews, almonds, and pistachios) averaged 13.5 grams of fat per ounce. And here’s the interesting thing: To thicken these runny butters, we used water. Nut butters are emulsions, which means they consist of

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