Peanut Butter

The creamy, sweet peanut butter we enjoyed as kids now has plenty of competition at the supermarket. You now can buy low-sugar, no-sugar, and low-fat peanut butter. The latter isn't very good, but we wondered about the “natural” brands with less or no sugar. To find out how they stack up, we tasted nine brands of creamy peanut butter raw and in peanut butter cookies.

The results of the raw tasting were clear: Tasters liked sweet peanut butter. The big three winners were (in order) Skippy, Jif, and Reese's. Each of these brands has 3 grams of sugar per 2-tablespoon serving. Brands with just 1 or 2 grams of sugar per serving (including the natural options) landed at the bottom of the rankings.

The results from the cookie tasting mirrored those of the raw tasting, with one exception. Smucker's Natural, which finished last in the plain tasting, was the winner here, followed by Skippy. The complaints drawn by Smucker's in the raw tasting (not sweet enough, poor texture) didn't matter in a cookie recipe that called for both light and brown sugar-for cookies, all that matters is peanut flavor. Smucker's is darker (a result of longer roasting) and chunkier (yes, even with “creamy” on the label) than other brands, and these traits made cookies that were especially good.

Our conclusions? Natural peanut butter is fine for baking, but for sandwiches we'll stick with the sweet stuff. The peanut butters are listed in order of preference based on scores in the two tastings.

Our Favorites

1. SKIPPY CREAMY PEANUT BUTTER $2.29 for 18 ounces
Tasters loved Skippy (which also won a 2001 test kitchen tasting) for its “strong nuttiness” and “ideal texture,” with one taster calling it “sweet, salty, creamy, and perfect” and another simply writing, “More, please.” Skippy made “pleasantly soft and chewy” cookies with “distinct peanut flavor.”

2. JIF CREAMY PEANUT BUTTER $2.19 for 18 ounces
Choosy tasters chose Jif for its “very robust” and “dark and rich” peanut flavor. Jif was a tad sugary for a small percentage of tasters, one of whom wrote, “The sweetness mutes the peanut flavor.” The cookies made with Jif were “bland and too sweet,” but tasters praised their “nice chewy texture.”

3. REESE'S CREAMY PEANUT BUTTER $2.29 for 18 ounces
Overall, Reese's was praised for its good, “full-bodied” peanut flavor,
described as pleasantly “sweet and salty.” A few tasters were put off by its “stiff texture” and “strange color.” The cookies made with Reese's tasted
“well balanced” and “sugary” to most, “artificial” and “bitter” to a few.

Runners-Up

4. PETER PAN CREAMY PEANUT BUTTER $2.49 for 18 ounces
“Sweet and salty” was the prevailing sentiment for this “very thick, creamy, and viscous” brand, which many tasters thought had a “sugary aftertaste.” The cookies were judged to be “light tasting” and “too crumbly.”

5. SIMPLY JIF CREAMY PEANUT BUTTER $2.29 for 17.3 ounces
Simply Jif cuts back on the salt and sugar, and our tasters missed both. Many found the flavor “bland” and “not sweet enough.” Better in cookies, where tasters liked the “subtle peanut flavor.”

6. SMUCKER'S NATURAL CREAMY PEANUT BUTTER $3.69 for 16 ounces
Tasters complained about the “huge oil slick on top,” the lack of sugar, and the “grainy and runny” texture. But they loved the cookies, with their “huge peanut flavor” and “nice balance of crunch and chew.”

7. PETER PAN NO SUGAR ADDED CREAMY PEANUT SPREAD $2.49 for 18 ounces
This brand contains sucralose, better known by its trade name Splenda. Tasters noticed that something was amiss, commenting that it “tastes like peanut-butter-flavored something, not peanut butter.”

8. SKIPPY NATURAL CREAMY PEANUT BUTTER SPREAD $2.19 for 16.3 ounces
With sugar as its second ingredient-and palm oil added-the “natural” on the label is somewhat misleading. Tasters found Skippy Natural to be “thick and salty” but “not very peanutty.”

9. TEDDIE SMOOTH OLD FASHIONED PEANUT BUTTER $2.49 for 16 ounces
In the raw tasting, Teddie lost points for its “grainy” and “pasty” texture. The cookies were faulted for their lack of peanut punch: “Just not as much flavor as the others” was a common refrain.

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recipes/notes/peanut_butter.txt · Last modified: 2016/12/09 09:06 by jmarcos
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