Once you make your own peanut butter you may well wonder why you've been buying it all these years. Seriously. It is literally just putting peanuts in a food processor for 2 to 3 minutes. Even with scraping it out of the processor and washing up, the whole thing takes less than 10 minutes.

Put the peanuts and salt in a food processor.

Whirl until they become peanut butter, at least 2, and up to 3 min. At first the peanuts will be chopped, then clump together into a ball, and finally break apart into a smooth nut butter. If you want a thinner peanut butter, add the optional peanut oil and whirl to combine. Taste and add more salt, if you like.

Transfer the peanut butter to a jar or other container and cover. If your homemade nut butter separates - oil rises to the top - all you need to do is stir that oil back in. A lack of artificial stabilizers lets the solids and oil separate; in no way does this signal the nut butter "going bad." When nut butters go bad, you can smell it - they take on a rancid scent.

Fresh nut butter will keep up to several weeks at room temperature (remember, it's just nuts!) or up to a year in the fridge.