The Best Peanut Butters in 2022

Peanut butter is a kind of meals that has the facility to evoke reminiscences: peanut butter sandwiches at lunch, ants on a log for enjoyable, dolloped on wedges of recent apple as a snack, and, these traditional cross-hatched peanut butter cookies for dessert, and naturally, straight from the jar. It’s consolation meals for a lot of—which maybe explains the rise in gross sales of peanut butter and peanut butter merchandise through the pandemic.

So, once we started our search to search out the most effective peanut butter, we began by recognizing that prefer it or not, most Individuals had their style buds skilled early by choices like Skippy, Jif, and Peter Pan. Nonetheless, all of those market leaders comprise some mixture of not simply peanuts, sugar, and salt, but in addition hydrogenated vegetable oil, an additive that’s been on the heart of a lot dietary controversy for a while. So, we stepped as much as the problem of testing by discovering peanut butters with the best ingredient profile potential.  

Alongside the way in which we additionally discovered that defining “peanut butter” is trickier than it might appear. By authorized definition, a product have to be not less than 90 p.c peanuts to be labeled “peanut butter.” If that commonplace will not be met, the product have to be labeled “peanut butter unfold.” Hold this in thoughts as we talk about what’s—and isn’t—in our greatest peanut butters. The calculation provides some surprises. 

After all, peanut butters additionally include or with out added salt or sweeteners, even with flavors and spices, however to get the purest check of peanut-y style, we opted to take a look at solely these peanut butters and spreads that comprise no added sweeteners in any respect. Salt, sure, however no sweeteners. And, we examined creamy towards creamy, no chunky kinds, so that every spoonful was one hundred pc nut butter. 

To seek out our winners, we examined first for style (on a plain cracker and by the spoonful), bake-ability (in flourless peanut butter cookies), in cooking (in peanut sauce), for ease of use (typically stirring is a should, however some blends are simpler than others), and for spreadability. All of our winners are extensively obtainable throughout the nation.

Our High Picks 

Finest Total: Santa Cruz Dark Roasted Creamy Peanut Butter

Type: Creamy | Sugar: None added | Salt: Sure, 55mg | Natural: Sure | Added Components: None | Dimension: 16 oz.

Why we selected it: Merely the most effective peanut taste and noteworthy versatility within the kitchen.

Perhaps it’s these “darkish roasted” peanuts, however Santa Cruz is simply the tastiest peanut butter on the market that doesn’t comprise any taste boosters (and taste-bud trickers), corresponding to salt, sugar, honey, and so forth. It simply tastes and smells like peanuts, and one thing concerning the Santa Cruz mixing course of leads to a peanut butter that continues to be higher emulsified and fewer separated than most different pure kinds. 

That stated, with all unadulterated peanut butters, there will probably be oil separation. Cut back the annoyance by preserving an Old-Fashioned Peanut Butter Mixer useful. The scant quantity of area it takes up within the drawer is greater than offset by the utility of this single-purpose gadget. 

Santa Cruz even handed our kitchen assessments. We selected a flourless peanut butter cookie to assist make sure that many of the style got here from the peanut butter, and Santa Cruz peanut butter was implausible. It makes a barely puffier peanut butter cookie than you’d get when utilizing Jif or Skippy, and it even provided higher taste in response to the cookie lovers we corralled into testing. Total, the standout peanut style is definitely worth the marginally non-traditional cookie form. 

It was much less oily than different pure manufacturers in cooking, too. As a bonus, it’s persistently among the many lower-priced natural choices. Natural, virtually nothing however peanuts, and fairly priced. The slam-dunk of peanut butters.

Finest Worth: 365 Organic Creamy Peanut Butter Spread

Type: Creamy | Sugar: No | Salt: Sure, 100 mg | Natural: Sure | Added Components: Palm oil | Dimension: 16 oz.

Why we selected it: The flavour and consistency are just like the peanut butters we bear in mind from childhood, however it has all natural elements and is persistently decrease priced than different organics.

If a little bit of palm oil will not be amongst your considerations, and salt isn’t a difficulty, then this 365 Natural Creamy Peanut Butter Unfold ticks sufficient containers to be thought-about among the many better of the bunch in style and in spreadability. It has a clear peanut taste, spreads properly, and desires no stirring. And it bakes identically to the hydrogenated peanut butters in these peanut butter cookies.

Finest Unsalted No-Stir: Justin’s Classic Peanut Butter Spread

Type: Creamy | Sugar: No | Salt: None added, 25 mg naturally occurring within the peanuts | Natural: No | Added Components: Palm oil | Dimension: 16 oz.

Why we selected it: Spreads like a dream and tastes very similar to the peanut butters of kid-dom, regardless of the dearth of added sugar or salt.

Justin’s broke into the peanut butter market when Justin Gold floor up peanuts in his Colorado kitchen. He realized he’d come across one thing when he made peanut butter super-portable by placing it in squeeze packs. From there, he expanded into flavors, different nut butters, and snacks. 

Although there are sweetened variations of Justin’s peanut butter, this plain, creamy model is nice as-is and desires no stirring. It has a pleasant, easy, pure, peanut-by taste and It baked a cookie similar to what you’d get utilizing one of many main manufacturers, and is barely in the least oily in cooking, one thing you’ll be able to offset by dialing again every other oils within the recipe by only a tad.

The corporate is now owned by Hormel Meals, which can be guardian to different manufacturers that avid snackers might acknowledge, corresponding to Planters, SPAM, Applegate – and Skippy. However Justin’s is made on totally different manufacturing traces and is deemed a “unfold” as a result of it incorporates lower than 90 p.c peanuts.

Finest with Added Salt (tie): Adams Natural Creamy Peanut Butter and Smucker’s Natural Creamy Peanut Butter

Type: Creamy | Sugar: No | Salt: Sure, reasonable (95 mg and 110 mg sodium, respectively) | Natural: No | Added Components: None | Dimension: 16 oz.

Why we selected it: Each with only a little bit of salt, these two pure peanut butters come by way of on style with out including a lot of something.

These are a tie for 2 causes. First, they’re each made by Smucker’s, with the Adams model having been acquired in 1998, and the 2 peanut butters are virtually indistinguishable from each other in style testing. (Smucker’s additionally makes Jif, so that they have an outdated hand within the peanut butter sport.) Second, they’re each fairly good, although not as flavorful as our Finest Total. Neither is natural, and the Smucker’s, specifically, has sufficient added salt to tip it at 110mg of sodium per serving—nonetheless lower than the main manufacturers, which have 140mg (Jif) and 150mg (Skippy). They do require stirring, however each jars settle for the paddle mixer and keep pretty properly blended should you do the jar-flip trick (beneath). 

Runners Up / Others We Examined

Jif Creamy Peanut Butter

Type: Creamy | Sugar: Sure, 2g added | Salt: Sure, 140 mg sodium | Natural: No | Added Components: Molasses, totally hydrogenated vegetable oil (rapeseed and soybean), mono- and diglycerides | Dimension: 16 oz.

SKIPPY Creamy Peanut Butter

Type: Creamy | Sugar: Sure, 3g added | Salt: Sure, 150 mg sodium | Natural: No | Added Components: Hydrogenated vegetable oil (cottonseed, soybean, and rapeseed) | Dimension: 16 oz.

Why we selected them: These two served as our controls, based mostly on these expectations which have been constructed round peanut butters over the a long time. 

Whereas the style is undeniably acquainted as “peanut butter,” every packs a whole lot of additional salt and added sugar. Aspect-by aspect you’ll be able to style the distinction between them, most likely because of that additional molasses within the Jif. They lose out as a result of alongside the opposite nut butters, they simply don’t style as peanut-y. Their style is powerful, however it’s a trick performed on the style buds by the salt and sugar, and maybe by reminiscence as properly.

What actually kills these two is that hydrogenated vegetable oil. Granted, by definition it’s lower than 10 p.c of the product (actual percentages of elements aren’t listed on vitamin labels, solely their ascendancy), however for all of the harm that hydrogenated oils can do within the weight-reduction plan, you would possibly wish to keep away from them.

O Organics Old Fashioned Peanut Butter Spread

Type: Creamy | Sugar: No | Salt: Sure, 105 mg | Natural: Sure | Added Components: None | Dimension: 16 oz.

Why we selected it: O Organics is a model of peanut butter that’s extensively obtainable in lots of grocery shops and it guarantees natural high quality.

O Organics is a non-public label of the Albertsons Firms, that are many, so it exhibits up in supermarkets throughout the nation, together with Safeway, Shaw’s, and so forth. It’s the one peanut butter we examined that was a product of Canada, however that’s not what ideas it out of favor. Its style isn’t peanut-y sufficient, actually, and it’s extremely oily, which is made worse by the truth that it’s in a plastic jar that won’t settle for a peanut butter mixer. It wasn’t as tasty as our Finest Total, and it was almost 50 p.c dearer than our Finest Funds selection, which was natural as well. 

MaraNatha Organic Creamy Peanut Butter

Type: Creamy | Sugar: No | Salt: No, 10 mg naturally occurring within the peanuts | Natural: Sure | Added Components: Palm oil | Dimension: 16 oz.

Why we selected it: Nice model, however style falls far wanting different organics whereas nonetheless commanding premium pricing.

MaraNatha is one other peanut butter with selfmade origins, this time from Robert and Chris Plotnik in Ashland, Oregon. It’s now a model of Hain Celestial Meals, a dependable and ubiquitous model for a lot of product varieties on the planet of pure meals. However for all its pedigree, it’s simply not as flavorful appropriately, and whereas packaged properly in glass, the jar has a smaller mouth, so it’s harder to stir.

Peanut Butter & Co. Simply Smooth Peanut Butter Spread

Type: Creamy | Sugar: No | Salt: Sure, 100 mg | Natural: No | Added Components: Palm oil | Dimension: 16 oz.

Why we selected it: Simply not the most effective of the butters, and at the next value level than related blends.

In some way, this mixture of peanut butter and palm oil comes out extra pasty than different butters, and it doesn’t have a very nice peanut style. The flavour is one way or the other submerged. It’s a bit cheaper than Justin’s, which is an analogous mix and one in all our high selections, however Peanut Butter & Co. is simply not as flavorful regardless of having 4 occasions as a lot salt.

How We Selected These Merchandise

We appeared for a choice of available manufacturers, these you’re prone to discover irrespective of the place you’re within the U.S. This was a bit dicey as a result of present supply-chain points in retail and agriculture are distorting product availability, however we cross-checked inventory in Entire Meals and Safeway markets – each nationwide retailers – and on-line. These are the most effective and most-readily obtainable manufacturers, although we didn’t embrace native or artisanal producers.

We included two of the old-school manufacturers, Jif and Skippy, particularly as a baseline, albeit a doubtful one as a result of so many people would favor to keep away from a few of the very elements that give these 20^th-century commonplace bearers of the peanut butter world their distinctive tastes, creaminess, spreadability, and shelf stability.

We checked every little thing in direct style testing by the spoonful, on super-plain water crackers, and in recipes as properly: Flourless Peanut Butter Cookies and, within the realm of peanut butter for dinner, Chilly Sesame Noodles. We particularly selected two peanut-intensive recipes in order that the comparability was based mostly as a lot on the peanut butter as potential. The peanut butter was almost by itself within the cookies, not interrupted by flour and any fluctuation of moisture content material, and all the opposite elements and kitchen elements had been precisely the identical from check batch to check batch. Within the noodles, we saved the opposite elements the identical with every check as properly. Right here’s the place we discovered that if a peanut butter wants stirring within the jar, you completely have to be positive it’s properly blended earlier than measuring and including it to the peanut sauce. Then it’s a must to be certain you’re not making the sauce too oily in its closing type. We added the sesame oil to the peanut sauce final, and dialed it again as needed.

Options to Hold in Thoughts When Searching for a Peanut Butter

Added Components, Salt, Sweeteners, and Different

Salt and sugar—carefully—are culinary pals, not foes. They act to uncover and intensify many flavors in cooking, and that’s true in peanut butter as properly. A little bit of salt and a little bit of sugar in the suitable stability can convey out components of the peanut taste profile. However if you’re watching your consumption of both salt or sugar, learn the labels, as a result of some peanut butter manufacturers pack a wallop of 1 or the opposite, particularly people who don’t even aspire to be “pure” in a technique or one other. Routine publicity to an extra of salts or sugars can prepare your tastebuds to count on these taste peaks, too, and also you would possibly lose your style for extra refined flavors. Plus,we’ve got discovered that when you have a full-flavored peanut-y peanut butter, it doesn’t want the add-ins.

Oils are one other matter, and we gained’t delve deeply right here into the relative dangers and values of such components to peanut butters or different meals; that’s an enormous and fraught topic of its personal. However by way of added oil, know that the peanut butters you discover on U.S. grocery cabinets nowadays will are available one in all three totally different configurations: with added hydrogenated oils, with added palm oil, or with no added oil in any respect. We sampled every kind for consuming, baking, and cooking, in probably the most peanut-butter-dependent recipes potential.

Right here’s the place we get into the relative “worth” of components. A peanut butter that’s simply peanuts will shortly separate when it sits, leaving an oil layer on high. The naturally occurring oils within the peanuts themselves simply don’t keep blended, so we’ve got to stir. That may be a ache, and it’s an unbelievable mess should you’re unlucky sufficient to slop peanut oil in all places when mixing or opening the jar. (Been there, performed that, proper?) 

So, for even the most effective peanut butters to remain blended, producers want so as to add one thing that helps and maintains emulsification, and that’s normally some type of vegetable oil. These outdated favorites, Jif and Skippy use hydrogenated vegetable oils. (Jif even provides mono- and diglycerides.) 

However as customers have reacted with concern to hydrogenated oils in packaged meals, peanut butter producers have needed to discover one thing else that helps the peanut butter keep blended. For that, they’ve turned primarily to palm oil, which is, properly, an entire different can of oil, so to talk.

There are well being arguments each for and towards palm oil, and far dialogue of the environmental impression of its harvesting. These are essential concerns, however for functions of our comparisons right here, what you might want to know is that nearly all of the no-stir manufacturers that keep away from hydrogenated oils will comprise palm oil. 

Then there’s the labeling. It takes a better share of palm oil to do what a lesser quantity of hydrogenated oil can do by way of emulsification, greater than 10 p.c of the full quantity, in truth. So, that ideas the “90 p.c peanuts” rule in labeling, the tip consequence being that the majority peanut butters utilizing palm oil as an emulsifier should be labeled “peanut butter spreads.” We discovered that the palm oil doesn’t make peanut butter any extra (or much less) flavorful or helpful, however maintain that added oil in thoughts when making your selection.

Natural

Natural peanut butters take up about half the shelf area on the grocery retailer, and natural comes at a premium; they’re virtually at all times dearer than these constructed from non-organic peanuts. Nonetheless, many producers of peanut butter do exit of their solution to provide merchandise which might be constructed from non-GMO peanuts. Whereas that looks like a step in a greater course for some, one hundred pc natural is even higher nonetheless.  Peanut cultivation is pretty chemically intensive, and though peanuts are legumes that type underground, within the soil, that doesn’t shield them from publicity to agricultural chemical substances.

Ask the Specialists 

Q: Ought to canine eat peanut butter?

Usually, peanut butter is okay for canine, in response to the American Kennel Membership. It’s at all times finest to verify along with your vet about what your individual canine can and will eat, but in addition use frequent sense. Even pure or selfmade peanut butter may be very excessive in fats, and sure industrial manufacturers may be filled with salt and sugars. People don’t must overload on any of that, so apply the identical healthful requirements on your canine. However as an occasional deal with (apply the 10 percent treats rule as advised by the AKC), a little bit little bit of peanut butter could make a canine a really joyful camper. 

Q: Does peanut butter have an expiration date? 

All packaged meals could have an expiration date, and the meals business is working to make the assorted terminology – “finest by” “finest if utilized by” “use earlier than” “promote by” – much less complicated total. However the factor to bear in mind is that the majority of those dates aren’t about spoilage; they’re largely about optimum high quality, and even then there’s a lot wiggle room, particularly for a meals product that’s pretty steady whereas nonetheless in sealed packaging, corresponding to peanut butter. Every week-old open container of yogurt or lumpy milk is one other matter, as is a jar of peanut butter that’s been open for months and months and is previous its “use” date. As soon as once more, frequent sense goes a good distance.

Q: Ought to I maintain my peanut butter within the fridge? 

Observe the label suggestions. That stated, with all unadulterated peanut butters, there will probably be oil separation. Seize the Old-Fashioned Peanut Butter Mixer. It may be used for tidily mixing any nut butter in a jar that accepts a typical 75mm lid. You may remix every time you employ the peanut butter, or you’ll be able to keep forward of the sport by paddling the butter at room temperature while you first open it, then sealing the lid tightly and inverting the jar for storage, which implies you’ll be greeted by largely peanut butter while you flip it over the subsequent time the jar is opened. Refrigerate if the label says to, and any peanut butter may be saved within the fridge, however you’ll wish to combine it at room temperature.

Q: Can I make my very own peanut butter? 

We’ve type of come full circle on the peanut butter observe. Means again when, peanut butter was solely what you would possibly grind at residence: simply peanuts floor right into a paste. However, with the mid-century explosion out there for packaged meals, producers had been exploring all kinds of components to make peanut butters tastier and extra enticing, together with glycerin, and many stuff starteding making its means into peanut butter, primarily salt, sweeteners, and oil components. Considerations about dietary worth of our meals and meals components got here to the forefront once more within the Seventies, and that’s when, as soon as once more, we began seeing peanut butters constructed from simply peanuts. 

Making nut butters at residence may be messy, however a meals processor or highly effective blender (corresponding to a Vitamix) could make fast work of it, and you’ll even experiment with including small quantities of oil or flavors to make your individual particular blends. The subsequent smartest thing to selfmade is peanut butter floor on the retailer, however our Finest Total, Santa Cruz Dark Roasted Creamy Peanut Butter, comes darn near freshly-ground and is rather more handy.

Our Take

Relying on what you’re on the lookout for a in a peanut butter—whether or not you favor salty, low-sugar, natural, or a creamy, childhood favourite—everyone seems to be on the lookout for the identical factor: a nutty, wealthy, peanut style. We’ve chosen the most effective, widely-available peanut butters that may take you from a late night time spoonful to a fluffy batch of peanut butter cookies. 

Each product is independently chosen and vetted by editors. Stuff you purchase by way of our hyperlinks might earn us a fee.