The Best Almond Butter

In recent years, almond butter has emerged as a popular alternative to peanut butter. But which supermarket product is best? To find out, we rounded up the four top-selling national products (as reported by IRI, a Chicago-based market research firm) and had 21 test cooks and editors taste them plain and in cherry-almond smoothies.

You can buy almond butters that are made solely from almonds that have been roasted and ground, but no products in that unadulterated style sell well enough to have made our lineup. The four top-selling products we tasted all add a solid fat (palm oil or hydrogenated vegetable oil) to help create the homogeneous, spreadable consistency that many consumers like. As for flavor, we greatly preferred almond butters that added sugar and especially salt—and the more, the better. The lone almond butter with no added salt or sugar was deemed bland, whereas the almond butter with the most salt (which was also tied for having the most sugar) came out on top.

Textural differences proved equally important. Three of the four almond butters were labeled “creamy,” but in reality, only the two winners were totally smooth. Although manufacturers wouldn’t reveal their processing methods, the coarser consistency of the less-preferred products was likely the result of grinding the almonds with their skins on. Because almond skins are high in fiber, they’re harder to process into complete smoothness. By contrast, the two winning products were made with blanched and skinned almonds and were truly smooth.

Our favorite, Jif Creamy Almond Butter, had a “mild,” “clean” almond flavor that was punched up with plenty of salt and sugar. Made from blanched roasted almonds, it had a perfectly even, creamy consistency and was the cheapest product we tasted.