Making pistachio butter, also known as pistachio paste or pistachio cream, is a pistachio nut butter both nutty and green, and easy to make with only one ingredient in a blender in minutes.
It's easy to make homemade pistachio butter by just blending raw nuts. It's basically the same process as making homemade cashew butter or homemade almond butter. You roast the nuts, and blend.
You'll want to make this delicious toasty, nutty pistachio butter to spread on toast, dip cookies, or make the viral Dubai chocolate bars! Use it as a layer in my homemade caramel chocolate bars!
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🧾Only 1 Ingredient
- Pistachios. Buy shelled or not, but be sure they are unroasted and unsalted. I used this brand.
- Olive oil (optional)
- Salt (optional)
See the recipe card at the bottom for full information on ingredients and quantities.
🥣Steps to Make
For more detail, visit the complete and printable recipe at the bottom of this post, but here are general steps.
Prep: Prepare pistachios. If you are using pistachios already shelled, just measure them out. If you are using pistachios in shells, shell them. If you want to go many extra steps to make them greener, look at my Recipe Tips for instructions.
Step 1: Roast shelled pistachios to dry them out. To do this, spread them on a quarter-sized baking pan, spread thin on parchment paper. Bake at 350 F for 2 minutes. Cool for a few minutes.
Step 2: Add the roasted pistachios to a blender.
Step 3: Blend for 1 minute. If the texture is rough, like rustic nut butter and you are okay with that, sprinkle in some salt to taste and stop here.
Step 4: For a creamier pistachio butter, add ½ tablespoon of olive oil and salt to taste, and blend another 30 seconds.
Step 5: Your finished homemade pistachio butter will be creamy and delicious.
Recipe Tips
- Best Tool to Use: The texture of your butter will depend on the strength of machine. I recommend you do not use a food processor to make this or any nut butter. Instead I suggest using a strong blender with a jar that assists in churning such as this Twister Jar with a Blendtec blender. It is the best tool I have found to blend up nut butters and things that require agitation such as my homemade coconut butter.
- Scrap It Down: If you aren't in the market for a new blender - stop your blender every 30 seconds and spoon or scrap down the mixture. Also if you are using a full-size blender, double the recipe to help the blender have more substance to blend.
Ways to Use Pistachio Butter
- Spread on toast.
- Use as a dip or spread with cookies or crackers
- Use in recipes for no bake treats or as a replacement for any nut butter such as in my Pistachio Brownies or to add as a filling to my homemade filled chocolates for a Dubai chocolate flare!
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Storage
Refrigerate homemade pistachio butter for a week, and after that freeze it for three months.
Choosing Your Pistachios
- I use this shelled brand. Pistachios from Canada, Turkey and Iran are general greener. Pistachios from California are more brown. Here are bright green slivered pistachios from Canada that are awesome but expensive.
- You can buy pre-shelled or shell yourself depending on which you value more, saving money or time.
🍃Peel Pistachios
Make your pistachio butter greener by skinning them before blending. That will remove the brown skin that turns homemade pistachio butter darker.
Warning: If you plan to remove the skins of your pistachios, don't start with pre-shelled pistachios - those are dryer and harder to remove skins off of.
- Long method to peel pistachios: Shell them by hand. Then blanche them by dropping them in boiling water for only 30 seconds. Drain and dry by spreading them on a pan to dry for 1-2 hours. Finally roll the dry pistachios in a cloth to remove the skins.
- Shorter way to peel pistachios: Cut off tips of each nut. Add all trimmed nuts to a jar so the jar is half full, put on the lid and shake vigorously. This may or may not remove most skins.
Make your pistachio butter greener by adding color. To ½ cup of butter, stir in ¼ teaspoon of spirulina or ceremonial-grade matcha powder or a drop of natural food coloring.
Variations
- For crunchy pistachio butter: Fold in 2 tablespoon of peeled and crushed pistachios.
- For a sweet pistachio cream: Fold in 1-2 tablespoon of cream or milk and ½ teaspoon of sugar or maple syrup.
- For pistachio paste: Add ½ teaspoon of almond extract. Pistachio paste is often used as a base for the traditional pistachio ice cream you might be used to.
- Double the recipe to make blending easier and to make 1 cup of butter. The recipe below makes ½ cup of pistachio butter. In general 1 cup (8 ounces) of raw pistachios makes ½ cup of butter.
- Use a food processor instead of a blender, but I would think you would have to double the recipe and process for much longer than you would in a blender to make the nuts break down their oils.
FAQS
Pistachio butter is like a creamy nut butter, whereas pistachio cream is creamier with milk and sugar added, and pistachio paste has almond extract.
Yes, even if you buy shelled pistachios which are more expensive than pistachios still in shells.
Other Pistachio & Nut Butter Recipes
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📖 Recipe
Homemade Pistachio Butter
Ingredients
- 1 cup raw pistachios, unroasted, unsalted buy shelled or buy in shells and manually shell
- ½ tablespoon olive oil
- ¼ teaspoon salt
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Instructions
- Prepare pistachios. If you are using pistachios already shelled, just measure them out. If you are using pistachios in shells, shell them. If you want to go many extra steps to make them greener, look at my Recipe Tips in the blog post for instructions.1 cup raw pistachios, unroasted, unsalted
- Roast shelled pistachios to dry them out. Spread them on a quarter-sized baking pan, spread thin on parchment paper. bake at 350 F for 2 minutes. Cool for a few minutes.
- Add the pistachios to a blender.
- Blend for 1 minute. If the texture is rough, like rustic nut butter and you are okay with that, sprinkle in some salt to taste and stop here.¼ teaspoon salt
- For a creamier pistachio butter, add ½ tablespoon of olive oil and salt to taste, and blend another 30 seconds.½ tablespoon olive oil, ¼ teaspoon salt
Dee Dine says
It is so easy to make this pistachio butter with one ingredient and in only a few minutes!