Santa Cruz Organics Crunchy Dark Roasted Peanut Butter, 16 Ounce

Let me clear up all the misinformation. This review is for Santa Cruz Organic Crunchy Dark Roasted Peanut Butter. The ingredients are two: Organic roasted peanuts and a tiny bit of salt. There is no palm oil in this product. If people say that in their review, they are utterly lying or can't read properly and posted a review for a completely different product (SC no-stir pb).This is super good peanut butter with a perfect crunchy consistency. It tastes very rich with a deep flavor. I buy this regularly and absolutely love it. If you don't like the idea of oil separating out from the peanut, this is not for you. I buy this for health and taste, so I don't mind having to stir the heck out of it before putting it into the fridge. Some people just put the jar under their mixer and stir it on a low speed -if you did that, it would come out a similar consistency to how you get it from the health food store when you push the machine button and it turns peanuts into butter on the spot. I do it by hand, which will give you a good work out; however, you only need to do it once and then put in the fridge -it will remain mixed when it becomes cold. So, this product is not for people who want something that stirs easily and plan to slather on a slice of Wonder bread. In that case, if you don't mind sustainable organic palm oil, you can buy their no-stir version of the creamy or crunchy regular or dark roasted.As long as you aren't going to blow a gasket at having to stir your pb and your main goal isn't to use it on soft bread, I highly recommend you buy it and try it. I'm doing keto... so I eat it by the spoonful or on a wasa cracker. Would be great to eat on celery, apples, in smoothies, in recipes, etc. If you want to be decadent, do like me and put a teaspoon atop two big squares of 90% Lindt dark chocolate and you have an instant keto Reese's pb cup that only cost you about 70 cents to make. To me, it tastes amazing. It is also very filling and I eat anywhere from one teaspoon up to two tablespoons a day most days. It keeps me from being hungry and is nutritious. : )

I have no idea when I first began eating peanut butter, but it's safe to say I likely have been at it for at least 75 years. This Santa Cruz, dark-roasted, organic peanut butter is the best!Now obviously, as a food stuff, "the best" is a matter of taste. So let me explain my taste. I like peanuts. I want peanut butter that tastes like peanuts. I live in peanut-producing country and when I can get fresh ones, I like to roast them myself, and I tend to roast them a shade on the darker side. I love a little toasty touch in the flavor. Santa Cruz Dark-Roasted has it.What I DON'T want in my peanut butter is too much salt. I don't want ANY sugar or other sweeteners. I don't need any emulsifiers, and I sure cannot imagine why anyone would feel the need to add any other sorts of oils or fats to their peanut butter. Nor do you need preservatives. Peanut butter does fine in the pantry, but if you are a slow peanut butter eater, then stick it in the fridge and it will last as long as you need it to.Is there a downside? Well, Santa Cruz has not had additives or treatments that keep the oils and solids from separating, so it needs to be stirred. So before you serve it the first time, get a good strong knife or small spoon and stick the jar in the sink and stir it as throughly as you can. Wipe the jar off and lick the spoon, and you're most likely good for the rest of time it takes to eat that jar of peanut butter. And you haven't eaten anything but organically grown peanuts and a hint of salt.So why is it just NEAR-perfection and not all the way there? Well my taste would like roasted one more itty bitty shade darker. That would be truely perfect peanut butter.

This is really good peanut butter. As I've gotten older, I've moved towards natural peanut butter choices and I just happened to try this one because peanuts are the only ingredient for the "Light Roasted" version (there is a "Dark Roasted" version from Santa Cruz that adds palm oil -- no thanks, that's exactly the kind of thing I'm trying to avoid).Flavor is great. It has better spreadability than some other natural peanut butters but I think generally because they are natural PB's they don't include the additives that make them easy to spread.It definitely requires stirring before first using, but I've become a bit of an expert at that because a couple of our kids have nut allergies so they only eat sunbutter spread and that requires serious stirring before it can be used. But for the uninitiated, stirring can get messy and peanut oil is hard to clean up (so is sunbutter oil) so be careful.As to cost, it's about the same as other natural peanut butters. I'm not using gobs of it on kids PBJ's for school lunches so a jar lasts me a couple weeks or so. The kids in our house who can eat peanut butter choose Skippy or Peter Pan or whatever major brand we happen to buy. They refer to Santa Cruz as Dad's fancy peanut butter. That's fine by me -- I don't want to share it anyway!

The quality is good. The texture seems fine; it's not weirdly smooth like big cheap brands. Mixing difficulty, I prefer pre-stirred and this has oil on top. Taste is typical, not fresh ground, but not commercially inexpensive. Carb content, I don't recall exactly, maybe 2% of daily intake per serving. Hardness, none.