Pistachio Butter Recipe (1 ingredient, 5 minutes!) - Texanerin Baking (2024)

This pistachio butter recipe only calls for pistachios and salt, but a little maple syrup or honey can be used as well. It makes for a great gift, and it’s also paleo and vegan.

This recipe starts off like pretty much any nut butter recipe. You roast the nuts. Then blend them in a food processor or high-speed blender until creamy. That’s it!

What kind of pistachios to use

You’ll want to make sure to use pre-shelled pistachios. You don’t have to, but shelling the number of pistachios you need for this recipe would take way too long and possibly leave you with some hurting fingers.

I don’t recommend using pre-roasted pistachios. They’re roasted longer than this recipe calls for, and that results in them being a bit too hard and dried out. It’d probably work if you added a bit of oil.

And using salted pistachios results in pistachio butter that’s too salty.

Roasting activates the oil in the nuts, which makes it quicker and easier to break down into butter. You need to process them when they’re still warm. Roasting them also brings out the flavor!

You can make pistachio butter without roasting them first, but the flavor isn’t as good, and it’ll probably take twice as long to process the nuts.

So! Raw and unsalted is the way to go.

Food processor versus high-speed blender

I like to use a food processor and not a high-speed blender because the sound of grinding nuts is less obnoxious. I’m not sure if my high-speed blender is faulty or what, but since I got it, the sound of making nut butter in it has been almost unbearable.

If using a high-speed blender, you definitely want to use the smaller jar that’s meant for making nut butter. I believe you can put about 2 cups of nuts in there. Max.

If using a food processor, you’ll probably not be able to get the nut butter totally smooth. But you might need more than 2 cups of pistachios to ensure that the nuts go well over the blade of your food processor.

What I do is use the food processor to get it as runny and smooth as it can get, and then I move it over to the high-speed blender to get it 100% smooth.

I know it sounds like a pain, but I usually process 14 cups of nuts at a time, and it pays off. If you’re just doing the 2 cups, I can understand why you couldn’t be bothered. ;)

A great homemade gift

Homemade Christmas gifts are my favorite kinds of gifts to give and receive. And this homemade pistachio butter makes a tasty, healthy and festively green present!

Put on a nice gift tag, and you’ve got yourself a fancy-looking (at least to me) gift that is sure to please. :)

These other nut butter recipes would also make great gifts.

• Chocolate almond butter
• Walnut butter
• Maple almond butter

What to do with pistachio butter

In raw recipes, I think it’d work well most of the time. As long as the other flavors would go well with pistachio.

In recipes where you have to boil the nut butter with some other ingredients, like these no-bake oatmeal cookies, I wouldn’t risk it. Every nut butter has a different consistency.

Plus, pistachio butter in an oatmeal cookie recipe, at least mine with lots of cinnamon, sounds weird.

It would also be great on these Pistachio Muffins, which you can make with the leftover blanched pistachios you need for this recipe.

These no-bake chocolate oatmeal cookies would be a safer bet, but I’m not 100% since I haven’t tried it.

I also haven’t tried using pistachio butter in this paleo fudge recipe, but think it’d work well.

In baked recipes, there’s no way to know without trying the exact recipe. I think it’d work in these coconut flour cookies, but the cookies may look differently. And they’ll of course have a bit (or maybe more than a bit!) of pistachio taste.

Are pistachios healthy?

Yes, they are! Pistachios are little golden nuggets of goodness that have so many health benefits.

Pistachios are actually seeds from the pistachio tree and although they are called a nut, botanically they are seeds, and they vary in colors from yellow to shades of green.

• Pistachios are low in calories, one daily serving is 1 ounce (49 nuts) and amounts to 159 calories. Compared to other nuts, pistachios take the win for one of the lowest-calorie nuts.


• They are packed with nutrients and minerals, high in protein, fiber, magnesium, potassium, Vitamin B-6, Vitamin E and unsaturated fat.


• Pistachios have 6g of protein per serving making them a great plant-based protein source for vegans and vegetarians. Protein makes up 21% of the total weight of the nut, and when comparing the ratio of amino acids, pistachios win hands down compared to almonds, hazelnuts, pecans, and walnuts.


• Vitamin B-6 plays a vital role in health, particularly concerning protein metabolism. One serving of pistachios provides about 37 percent of the recommended daily vitamin B-6 intake.


• As far as potassium, one serving provides half of the potassium of one banana.


• Antioxidants are substances that play a critical role in health. Nuts and seeds, in general, contain several antioxidant compounds, but pistachios may have higher levels than other nuts.


• Good for eye health, gut health, blood sugar balance, and important for heart health, pistachios really are an outstanding healthy choice.


• Because pistachios have a low glycemic index, they don’t cause a sharp rise in blood sugar.


• Eating pistachios is beneficial for blood sugar levels, blood pressure, obesity, and inflammation.


• Did I mention anti-aging benefits? Well, if I don’t stop here, I’ll never get to the recipe, but believe me, when I say, pistachios are amazing golden seeds of health.

Let me know what you think if you give this pistachio butter a try!

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