If you want to grow your own cooking oil, in the US there’s really not anything better for this than peanuts. While Sunflower or canola can yield fairly high amounts of oil, peanut oil ends up being better to cook with than sunflower oils and easier to obtain than canola oil. The process can be a bit tedious and it’s certainly not something we would recommend doing, but for the more self sufficient homestead you can make your own oils at home instead of buying them from the store.
Why Make Peanut Oil At Home
There are two big reasons to make peanut oil at home. The first is that you really want to make everything yourself. If you’re going to make your own cooking oil anyway, peanut oil is a good one to go with. The second reason why you might want to make peanut oil at home is if you grew way too many peanuts. Some people get over excited when they first start planting peanuts and don’t properly estimate how many they can get out of a small plot!
You can get 25 to 50 peanuts per plant and the Agricultural Marketing Resource Center estimates you can pull in 3,000 pounds of peanuts per acre! At roughly 22 lbs of peanuts per gallon of oil, that’s a lot of oil from a relatively small space! Realistically the average household wouldn’t want to grow more than a tenth of an acre of peanuts, which still yields around 300 lbs all said and done, which converts to 13.5 gallons of peanut oil if you your processed all of it.
We certainly don’t grow that many peanuts and we use our peanuts for things other than oil (we actually very rarely make oil since it’s so much work!). So if you’re interested in making oil, you still we encourage you not to go crazy, and we’ll explain why next.
How Much Peanut Oil Do I Need?
Not much! Before we get into how to make peanut oil at home we want to stop and explain that the main reason we like using peanut oil is that it can very easily be cleaned and reused for frying. We go through about a gallon of peanut oil a year, but that’s because when we use it we triple filter it into jars to be used again. We label each jar with what it was used to cook and only use the same oil for the same things.
The biggest sink on our oil supply is fish and shrimp which have some quality that you just can’t filter out of the oil after using it. If you’re making french fries, fried vegetables, or fried breads, all of that oil cleans up very nicely and very simply. You can even get washable filters so that you don’t end up making extra waste.
Now, on to processing!
Making Peanut Oil From Scratch
Starting with fresh peanuts the process for making peanut oil is very simple. Roast the peanuts, blend them into a smooth paste, mix with water (slowly), press out the oil. For ever cup of shelled peanuts you will want to add around 2 tbsp of water to the blended mix.
Making Peanut Oil Step By Step:
- Shell your peanuts.
- Measure the amount of shelled peanuts you have, estimate you will need 2 tbsp water for each cup of peanuts.
- Roast your peanuts 15-20 at 350F.
- Let peanuts cool to room temperature.
- Blend peanuts into a fine paste in a blender until you have smooth peanut butter.
- In a separate bowl add water 1tbsp at a time while stirring it into the mix. The mix should start to firm up and become crumbly over time. You will do this until you have added roughly 2 tbsp of water for each cup of peanuts you used.
- Once the water is all absorbed the oil will start to sweat from the mixture. Work the mix like dough and fold and press the paste in the bowl. Peanut oil will start to accumulate in the bowl with each press.
- Pour oil off through a wire mesh into a sealable air tight container. Continue working the peanut mixture until oil no longer pools, pouring off oil as it accumulates, until done.
- If you peanut oil is cloudy or has bits in it strain through an oil filter.
That’s it! Easy steps to make peanut oil at home. It takes very little skill, but does take quite a bit of time, patience, and elbow grease to get it done. The only issues you will need to look out for will be adding too much water, or storing your oil in an open air container. Oil oxidizes very easily so you should keep it sealed after making it. As for water problems, adding your water all at once or too much will reduce your yield form your peanuts and add some cleanup steps to get the water out of your oil as you pour it off.
Is It Worth It To Make Peanut Oil At Home?
Now that you know how to make peanut oil you have to ask if you should. If you’re fine with the time expenditure and are already growing peanuts, there’s no reason not to do it. Peanut oil is quite expensive and growing peanuts is far far cheaper than buying the oil. If you’re growing peanuts just for the oil, it might be worth it, but price wise for new garden it would be about a break even. If you’re saving peanuts for seed for next year, that year will end up being significantly cheaper for your oil production and the cost to return ratio tips more in your favor.
If you’re not worried about saving a few dollars and are more interested in your time, this really isn’t worth it. Peanut oil is expensive, but it lasts for a long time and can easily be cleaned and filtered for multiple uses, so it’s huge money saver unless you’re making multiple gallons of it a year.
Peanut Oil From Your Own Land!
While we can’t say we recommend this method of oil production for everyone, it’s at least easy and fairly fun. If you’re anything like us you’ll want to try your hand at it at least once so that you can say you made your own cooking oil and you got a bit closer to a fully self sufficient life. For some of you reading this, it will be something you want to do more of. There are those of you reading who will absolutely want do this and if you’re already growing peanuts on your land, this can be the key to getting a little more use out of an already very useful plant.