Homemade Sunflower Seed Butter Recipe
If you have read a previous recipe of mine for RAW, homemade suflower seed butter (or “sunbutter” recipe), then you’ll already know how much I love this smooth peanut butter alternative. The raw butter is great; however, the color seems to be a bit offputting for most. Having a gray seed butter on your homemade crackers or bread isn’t extremely appetizing for many.
How do you fix this problem? You roast the sunflower seeds of course! Now this recipe isn’t raw, but the seeds are soaked prior to roasting, making the sunflower seed butter easily digestible which aids in a healthy digestive system. We should always look for a great way to incorporate easily digestible foods into our diet everyday. I try to do this by avoiding grains and gluten, sugar and pasteurized dairy (raw dairy I do drink, but even that is very little and rare).
To make creamy sunflower seed butter, be sure to add oil to the recipe after it forms a butter in your food processor. I like pure olive oil and coconut oil. You could also use flax oil, if you like. Since sunflower seeds are very high in omega 6’s, it would be important to try and add as many omega 3’s with the flax oil to balance it out.
Homemade Roasted Sunflower Seed Butter (“Sunbutter”!)
2 cups raw, organic sunflower seeds – soaked for at least 4 hours
1/4 tsp. Himalayan Sea Salt
1-3 TBSP. Olive, Coconut or Flax Oil (to desired consistency)
Drain sunflower seeds and discard excess water. Rinse the sunflower seeds and drain once more.
Lay sunflower seeds evenly on a lightly greased baking pan. Make sure all sunflower seeds are evenly distributed, without having any seeds on top of each other.
Place baking pan in a 250 degree F oven for 45 minutes, or until dry and lightly browned (be sure not to burn them).
Let sunflower seeds cool. Add them to a food processor, along with salt. Process sunflower seed butter on high until a butter forms (usually takes about 10 minutes). The butter will collect at the sides of the bowl. Continue scraping down and processing until butter forms (usually forms into a ball and then distributes into a smooth butter).
Once turned into a stiff butter, add desired oil, one teaspoon at a time, while processing. Once the butter gets to the smoothest stage that you can stand, scrape the butter out of the food processor into a small glass jar for storage (and eating!).
Sunflower Seed Butter
It’s Day 2 on my Sweet Free experiment, and I have to thank everyone for their support! I couldn’t do it without you guys–you truly are behind me. I’m also behind you guys who are challenging yourselves as well, because there is always something we want to change, and it starts with the first step!
I was tempted to put sweetener in my sunflower seed butter recipe this morning, but remember my experiment. I was also tempted to put stevia in my tea and another recipe I was making this morning. In fact, it grew to be such a habit, that I found myself going to the pantry to get the natural sweetener. I now know that it was a habit, and I’m very grateful to be taking this step to not rely on sweet tastes anymore.
I hope you are enjoying your weekend. Eat well, move your body every now and then, and rest. It is finally October (yes!), so expect Halloween-ish type recipes to come up during the month. Be well!
This is The Healthy Advocate.
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