Peanut butter is the simplest recipe in food: roasted peanuts and a little salt. What scales it is the equipment. Roast raw peanuts in a drum roaster to a set time and temperature, recorded for every roast, since roasting is the step that controls Salmonella in a peanut; grind them in a stone mill; add salt by percentage; and fill every jar by weight while the butter is warm and flows. Done this way, a nut butter maker that ground 2 pounds in a food processor makes about 620 jars in a day, and the cost of a 12-ounce jar falls from $5.57 to $2.26. Below is the recipe at three sizes, the steps, the loss, what a jar costs at each size, and a free scaling calculator.
The short version
- Roasted peanuts and 1% salt, by weight.
- Roast to a set time and temperature, and record every roast.
- Grind in a stone mill; it runs all day.
- Fill warm, by weight.
- Keep peanuts and tree nuts on separate days or lines.
- Raw peanuts by the bag cost half what a store charges.
- TaroStack keeps the recipe by weight, takes each batch's ingredients off stock and checks its yield. More below.
The recipe, by percentage
Red Oak Nut Butters, the made-up nut butter maker in Little Rock, Arkansas, I use in these examples, ground 2 pounds at a time in a food processor before grocers started ordering by the case. Its recipe, weighed:
| Ingredient | % of the mix | Kitchen batch, 2 lb | One batch, 25 lb | The run, 500 lb | Cost a lb, bought in bulk |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Raw peanuts | 99% | 1.98 lb | 24.8 lb | 495.0 lb | $1.70 |
| Salt | 1% | 0.02 lb | 0.25 lb | 5.00 lb | $0.30 |
| The whole mix | 100% | 2 lb | 25 lb | 500 lb |
The 500 pounds cost $843.00 in peanuts and salt; the roast and grind take about 6% of the weight, as water and the skins blown off. The production steps are in peanut butter production process.
The steps, at 500 pounds
- Roast. 25 pounds a roast in the drum roaster, to the validated time and temperature, recorded.
- Cool and blanch. Cooled on a tray, skins blown off.
- Grind. Through the stone mill to the texture the recipe calls for.
- Salt. 1% by weight, mixed in.
- Fill by weight. 12 ounces a jar, filled warm, lids on.
- Label and code. Each jar with its lot and best-by date.
- Clean before tree nuts. A full clean before any almond run, or almonds on another day.
The run takes one person about eight hours, roasting while the mill grinds.
What a jar costs at each size
| Per jar | Kitchen batch, 2 lb | Bulk run, 500 lb |
|---|---|---|
| Ingredients | $2.77 (grocery prices) | $1.35 (bought in bulk) |
| Packaging | $0.80 | $0.65 |
| Labor at $20 an hour | $2.00 (6 min a jar) | $0.26 (0.8 min a jar) |
| Cost of a jar | $5.57 | $2.26 |
Raw peanuts by the 50-pound bag cost half the store price, and the labor falls from 6 minutes a jar to under a minute with the mill. The jar and lid don't fall as much. The plan for keeping it safe is in peanut butter haccp plan, and when a co-packer makes sense in nut butter co-packer.
The roast record at scale
A 2-pound kitchen batch is roasted in an oven and watched. Twenty roasts a day need a written time and temperature for each one, because the roast is what controls Salmonella in a peanut; a roast that ran short or cool is held, not ground.
Get the calculator
Download the peanut butter scaling calculator. Two sheets: scale the recipe, where you type each ingredient's percentage and cost a pound and the raw mix you want, and each ingredient's weight for the run fills in, with the roasts, what comes out after the roast and grind loss, the jars it fills and the cost of each jar; and weigh the loss, where what went in and came out over a few batches gives your average roast and grind loss. It's an ordinary Excel file with no macros, and it works in Google Sheets, LibreOffice and Numbers.
Where this stops working
Twenty roasts a day, peanuts from bags opened on different days, almond runs on Mondays, and a grocer asking about one jar. A sheet can say how many peanuts a run needs, but not which bag and which roast went into which jar.
How TaroStack does it
TaroStack keeps the recipe by weight, takes each batch's ingredients off stock and checks its yield.
The recipe in the units you use. A recipe holds each ingredient by weight, with raw peanuts bought by the 50-pound bag and used by the pound, and the cost of every jar comes from what you paid. "What could I make right now" says how many runs the raw peanuts on the shelf allow.
Each run a batch. A run takes its ingredients off stock, records the lots of peanuts it used, and gets a lot of its own for the jars, with how much came out good, how much was rejected and the labor minutes.
Yield checked from history. From your own batch history, TaroStack says whether a recipe yields what it claims and which ingredient's quantity is off, so a roast and grind loss that creeps up shows in the numbers. A roast that ran short is an adjustment with its reason, spoiled, and shows in the waste report.
| The job | Spreadsheet | In TaroStack |
|---|---|---|
| Ingredients for Wednesday's run | Multiply, then check the shelf | What could I make right now |
| Which peanut bag went into a run | Not written down | Lots recorded on the batch |
| The real roast and grind loss | Weighed now and then | Good and rejected on every batch |
| Roasts held back | Thrown out, forgotten | Adjustment with a reason |
Recipes, batches, lots and yield are on every plan, from $49 a month. The first 30 days are free, with no credit card. If you'd like a hand setting up, ask, and we'll do it with you.