Our organic pistachio from California being processed in our stone grinder. Green gold!
When I opened my Gelateria, as an Italian now living in the US, I vowed to myself that I would always stay true to artisan gelato, made completely from scratch with raw ingredients or ingredients that we created (caramel, baked goods..) or transformed in our kitchen.
This is the reason why I started to look into making my own nut butters since the beginning, and we are finally at a point where we pretty much fine-tuned the whole process.
You can really make ALL your nut butters in house and this will allow you to select the exact nuts you want to work with, how roasted they are, how “smooth” the butter is and overall save a lot of money in the process.
I love to work with local ingredients and that’s why I use fresh hazelnuts from Oregon and organic pistachios and almonds from California: I order them and in a matter of days they are here. We also deal directly with the farms which allows them to make more money, ship fast and for us to save money (up to 50-70% savings) and have an amazing fresh product to work with. If you live in tropical or specific countries this process will allow you to use local nuts that you might not find already transformed in butter from the gelato suppliers.
When we talk about nuts you normally can use them raw or roasted. Roasting the nut will normally bring out a more decisive/strong flavor so for some nuts I do encourage it: almonds, pistachios, hazelnuts & macadamia for example. You can also use raw nuts, if you are looking for a milder, purer flavor but be careful because the dairies might overpower it in the gelato.
To craft your own nut butter I recommend a stone grinder or any other professional nut grinders (they sell them in all shape & sizes) that will not overheat or over-process/stress the nut ruining the flavor. Please do not use a blender, a vitamix, a food processor…they will all over-heat and ruin the nut, not to mention the fact that smoothness will be an issue. Back in my training days I killed a bunch of blenders myself while trying different options.
The stone grinder (or other specific grinder) will basically crush and then reduce the nuts to butter slowly, with no excessive heat and gives you full control on the smoothness.
Different nuts also have different fat/oil content therefore will become butter faster than others (peanuts and hazelnuts being the fastest ones - pistachio instead takes longer). That’s why sometimes it’s helpful to add little oil to speed up the process: here you can use a flavorless oil or a specific nut oil which can be bought everywhere.
We work directly with the farm to understand how they roast the nuts and then eventually roast them a bit more in our ovens here to enhance the flavor even more (for example for our pistachios) or we just transform them into butters if the roasting is adequate. We normally get raw almonds because we use them in our cookies and for gelato we always roast them a bit. It all depends on the flavor profile you are looking for!
The only downside to the process is the fact that it requires more labor, more equipment and some time if you do use a lot of nut butters it might just add extra work to your team. Also please keep in mind that buying already made nut butters is not a crime :) my recommendation is to make sure your nut butter is 100% pure and possibly I would buy directly from the producer. A lot of time gelato ingredient companies will hide in colorants, flavorings and other enhancers that you might not know about and might not even be written in the spec sheet. (yes even if they call it “pure” or 100%..).
Ever tried making your own? Do you buy pre-made ones?
Hopefully this was helpful & valuable!
Got questions? We’ve got answers! Don’t forget to sign up for our free Q&A newsletter - sign up directly here!
Need tools, equipment, ingredients for testing or to get you started? Check out our trusted shopping list here.
A presto amici!
Vincenzo