Put Peanut Butter Powder in Everything

It wasn’t very long ago that mainstream nut butter options were limited to the smooth or chunky varieties of peanut butter offered by a handful of familiar brands (or their in-store generic counterparts). Today, reality is far nuttier.

A wide variety of nuts and seeds can now easily be purchased in butter form, which has not only given us access to more flavours, but has also been a boon to people with nut allergies.

One of the newer kids on the block is peanut butter powder — which is the result of pressing roasted peanuts until most of the oil is removed, and then grinding it down into a fine powder. Also referred to as “PB2” (which, alongside PBfit, is one of the major brands), peanut butter powder has been marketed as a lower-calorie and lower-fat version of the sandwich staple. It also seems a little like something that would have come out in the 1950s, when we were all about processed foods with long shelf-lives. (“Just add water, mix, and soon you’ll have your own delicious, peanut butter-like food for all your snacking needs.”)

But let’s say you somehow wind up with a jar of powdered peanut butter and have no interest in mixing it with water and using it as a peanut butter replacement. Then what? Here are a few ways to use the product to pep up other dishes, sauces, and snacks.

How to cook with peanut butter powder

When you think of peanut butter powder as a spice or flavoring rather than a less-creamy substitute for something delicious, you’ll discover plenty of opportunities to use it while cooking and snacking. Not only will it give your dishes a subtle, nutty flavour, but in many cases, the power is much easier to work with, measure, and add into food than peanut butter itself. Here are a few ideas:

• Salad dressing: Add about a teaspoon to your homemade vinaigrette and shake it up, adding more to taste if necessary.
• Yogurt: Sprinkle some peanut butter powder on your yogurt and mix it in with a drizzle of honey. (Or do the same with oatmeal.)
• Hummus: Run out of tahini? Add about a tablespoon of the powder to your batch of hummus.
• Sauces: Upgrade both sweet and savoury sauces with peanut flavour. Add the powder gradually and keep tasting the sauce until you’ve reached your desired level of nuttiness.
• Smoothies: All the taste and protein, but without having to coax the peanut butter off the spoon and into the blender.
• Soups: Stir in a tablespoon (or so) of the powder when making a pureed vegetable soup.
• As a topping: Sprinkle on ice cream, pudding, popcorn, bananas, etc.

And in case it wasn’t already clear, peanut butter powder is still made of peanuts, and therefore isn’t safe for people with peanut allergies.