In our Taste Test series, BA editors conduct blind comparisons to discover the best supermarket staples (like tomato sauce or vanilla ice cream). Today, which frozen french fry deserves a spot in your shopping cart?
Peanut butter is a national treasure. In 2019, US peanut butter sales raked in approximately $2.3 billion. Americans supposedly eat a whopping 700 million pounds of the spread each year, with the average kid scarfing down 1,500 PB&Js before their high school graduation.
But peanut butter is an ingredient that goes well beyond sandwiches. I’m talking about these brown butter rice crispy treats. And a punchy, savory dressing for your next bowl of udon noodles. And the creamy-tangy dip that’ll level up your air-fryer chicken tenders.
So, which store-bought peanut butter is the best? Jif, Skippy, and Peter Pan dominate the US market, but there’s a whole world of PB waiting to be explored. To find out which jar offers the most bang for buck, a handful of BA staffers tested seven popular brands, including Stop & Shop, Target’s Good & Gather, and Reese’s. (Sorry to the Smucker’s stans, but for the sake of consistency we disqualified unsweetened, non-homogenized peanut butters, including those labeled as “natural.”)
We tasted them with a spoon first and then spread on a saltine cracker, judging each on flavor and texture. Here’s the full scoop.
Simply No: Peanut Butter & Co. Smooth Operator
The ingredients: peanuts; cane sugar; palm oil; and salt.
The flavor: Everything is wrong here. “The flavor is rough,” said senior cooking editor Emma Laperruque. “It doesn’t taste like peanut butter.” And associate cooking editor Antara Sinha noticed a strange “floral” aftertaste. “It’s so weird,” she said. The texture is another drawback: “It’s loose, oily, and hard to swallow,” said test kitchen coordinator Inés Anguiano. Associate visuals editor Marc Williams just kept asking, “Are you sure this is peanut butter?”
The Funkiest: Target Good & Gather Creamy Peanut Butter
The ingredients: dry roasted peanuts; sugar; hydrogenated rapeseed, cottonseed, and soybean oils; molasses; mono and diglycerides; and salt.
The flavor: vaguely of moth balls. And the texture is “powdery,” said editorial operations associate Kate Kassin, to the point that it made Anguiano wonder if this PB is made from “ground-up peanut shells.” For Laperruque, the flavor gives “rancid oil.” And Sinha said it’s “too sweet and molasses-y.” Would not add to cart.
The Earthiest: Peter Pan Creamy Peanut Butter
The ingredients: roasted peanuts; sugar; hydrogenated rapeseed and cottonseed oils; and salt.
The flavor: “like dirt,” said Sinha. She noted a “super sweet, super bitter” flavor, as if there were “lots of peanut skins blended in.” Kassin, who is known to eat peanut butter like it’s yogurt, did not go back for a second spoonful. Laperruque appreciated the salty punch and silky texture, but said she would “still not buy this.”
The Least Peanutty: Skippy Creamy Peanut Butter
The ingredients: roasted peanuts; sugar; hydrogenated cottonseed, soybean, and rapeseed oils; and salt.
The flavor: “disappointingly mild,” said Laperruque. “It tastes more like oil than like peanuts.” Kassin raised an eyebrow while licking her spoon. “This tastes like nothing,” she concluded. In summary: Peanuts, you there? The texture is Platonically smooth, though, so if you have a jar at home, cook with it. This very un-peanutty butter is not worth seeking out, but would be fine in recipes where it can fade into the background like the wallflower it is.
The Best for Baking: Stop & Shop Creamy Peanut Butter
The ingredients: dry roasted peanuts; sugar; hydrogenated rapeseed oil (treated with heat and hydrogen to produce a semi-hard goop); and salt.
The flavor: “It’s nothing special,” shrugged Sinha. The flavor is sweet and toasty, but only mildly peanutty, and the texture is “too smooth,” said Laperruque. While we probably wouldn’t buy this one to eat straight from the jar, Kassin thought it would be “great to bake with.” Laperruque agreed: “I bet this would be nice in a peanut butter cookie or frosting.”
The Natural-esque: Reese’s Creamy Peanut Butter
The ingredients: peanuts; sugar; hydrogenated rapeseed, cottonseed, and soybean oils; salt; peanut oil; monoglycerides; molasses; and cornstarch.
The flavor: “This is fire,” said Williams. Despite having one of the longest ingredient lists, this peanut butter tastes the “most natural,” said Kassin. The texture is runnier and less emulsified than the others, but that “is fine for snacking,” said Laperruque. Sinha reported an oily film in her mouth after eating. As for Anguiano: “No thoughts, just vibes,” she said. Overall, this is a solid PB we’d happily eat again.
The Most Spoonable: Jif Creamy Peanut Butter
The ingredients: roasted peanuts; sugar; molasses; hydrogenated rapeseed and soybean oils; mono and diglycerides (colorless, odorless emulsifiers that help bind oil and water); and salt.
The flavor: Jif was our all-round favorite. “Big peanut flavor,” said Laperruque. “I would eat this straight for sure.” The toasty-nutty notes are much more prominent, and the soft, whipped texture is “so good, so fluffy,” said Sinha. It’s also much more caramel-colored than most of the other brands. We’d use this PB for dunking apples, in a savory peanut sauce, and as a stress reliever to spoon between meetings.