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I know there a thousand different products you can make with peanuts. But, my local supermarket has one of these,

peanut wizards

I'm wondering if the effect will be similar if I use my mini coffee-bean hand grinder.. You can find a picture of it here,

Coffee Grinder

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Evan Carroll
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  • I suspect what you will get is a mess. Peanuts are both softer and *far* more oily than coffee, but the grinder still will not break them down any finer than it would coffee. – SAJ14SAJ Mar 10 '14 at 20:02
  • It can make a turkish blend in about 3 minutes of grinding. That's finer grit than any peanut butter I've eaten. – Evan Carroll Mar 10 '14 at 20:03
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    Then despite your profile saying Houston, you must never have had Jif or Skippy or a comparable commercial brand. – SAJ14SAJ Mar 10 '14 at 20:05
  • related : http://cooking.stackexchange.com/q/15549/67 ; http://cooking.stackexchange.com/q/41427/67 – Joe Mar 11 '14 at 04:28
  • I see from comments below that gluten is an issue. Since peanut butter is naturally gluten-free and there are a gazillion brands that swear upon pain of class-action lawsuit that they are gluten-free, why waste your efforts on the peanut butter? Or the jelly for that matter? If you want to actually do something that might be of actual benefit, why not make the bread? Or make pasta? Or pizza? – Jolenealaska Mar 12 '14 at 04:45
  • I'm just waiting for you to pass an apple so you can say "Look, Ma, it's vegan!" – Jolenealaska Mar 12 '14 at 04:47
  • Food processor, with a whirling cutting bade, makes decent butter out of many nuts. I expect a burr grinder, unless specifically designed for the task, would make a mess out of most nuts. – Wayfaring Stranger Mar 21 '14 at 19:55

2 Answers2

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While the grinding of peanuts produces a paste we call peanut butter, a food processor may be slightly better equipped to handle them then a coffee grinder, especially if you want to blend coffee with it again. Peppercorns are harder and they can be done in a coffee grinder, but peanuts would likely result in a mess that would not easily be cleaned, and somewhat chunky peanut butter.

edit:

As stated in the comments below you may get some good headway with a blender. I had a crappy blender at home, but peanuts may be easier to grind than thick smoothies. But again, cleaning may take some time afterwords. But blender would probably be more effective than a coffee grinder.

Peanut powder can be made by freezing the peanuts I believe, very cold. A part of the modern cuisine. I think you would need liquid nitrogen for it. Source from Tech stuff podcast, title of the podcast was Molecularly Gastronomical.

Benjamin Scherer
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  • In fact, this can be done well in a blender, with additional peanut oil. My grandfather used to do it in an old Oster. – SAJ14SAJ Mar 12 '14 at 08:22
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I don't know what type of coffee grinder you have, but if there's the remotest chance of your efforts resulting in "Peanut Butter", you should ask yourself... "How in the world am I gonna clean this mess out of there"?

Yuk!

Lonnie Moore
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  • I linked to the coffee grinder. – Evan Carroll Mar 10 '14 at 23:54
  • I'd be leary of attempting it unless the grinder is completely washable in Hot sudsy water. Is it your intent to actually make peanut butter? – Lonnie Moore Mar 11 '14 at 00:01
  • Yes. Because then I only have to find out how to make jelly and I can tell gluten-free people I cooked from scratch. – Evan Carroll Mar 11 '14 at 00:04
  • Well, I wish you luck in your endeavor. Jellies are easy enough without resorting to fancy equipment, but I'm not too sure the peanut butter side of the equation is worth pursuing! If you do succeed, I'd be quite interested to hear about how you did it. If on the other hand, your experiment fails in a Spectacularly Dismal (yes, that's an oxymoron) fashion, I'd prefer to Not hear your screams of anguish! Lol !!! – Lonnie Moore Mar 11 '14 at 00:15
  • Interesting, most people line up to hear my screams of anguish. They sound [kind of like this except ever slightly more luberjackish.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2-5VAmOAz8&feature=youtu.be&t=1m26s) – Evan Carroll Mar 11 '14 at 00:30
  • If the idea is just "to make it from scratch", as a comment above says, a blender or food processor would be much better suited to this. Unless the burrs are completely removable, I don't think you'd ever get it clean. – SourDoh Mar 21 '14 at 18:26