Homemade Sunflower Butter

Sometimes it’s fun to make a processed food from scratch. Not only can the homemade version taste better, it’s also usually cheaper. And making foods at home is a great way to avoid controversial or harmful food additives.

Most recently I’ve been making my own sunflower seed butter. I did this the first time because of the cost savings: a jar of sunflower butter costs between $5.99-9.99 at the store, but you can make the same size jar for $2.99, or even cheaper when sunflower seeds are on sale. Making homemade sunflower butter also means you can reuse same jar instead of recycling jars all the time.

Here’s how to do it.

Start with 16 oz of sunflower seeds. (I like to use raw, toast them myself, and add salt/sugar myself – but you can also buy roasted & salted like the ones pictured here).

Place them in your food processor.

Pulse the food processor until you have coarse crumbs.

Then turn the processor to “on” and leave it to mix for 2-3 minutes. As the seeds whirl around, the oils are released and slowly the mixture will become more smooth and creamy.

After 5-8 minutes (I usually stop the processor half way through for a couple minutes to give it a ‘rest’), you will have a smooth and creamy nut butter, just like the kind you’d buy at the store.

Perhaps your kitchen helper will point out when the nut butter seems ready 🙂

At this point, you can add a little salt and/or sugar to taste. Then pour the nut butter into a clean jar (you can even reuse a store-bought jar).

Store the sunflower butter in the fridge.

Enjoy!