Sometimes you might open a jar of peanut butter to make a PBJ sandwich, only to find a pool of oil at the top. As inclined as you might be to pour out the excess oil, you might want to think twice about it; that oil is a good thing.
When peanuts are ground to make peanut butter, their oils are naturally released into the peanut butter mixture during manufacturing. If you have a lot of floating oil in your peanut butter, it's a sign that your peanut butter is all-natural.
When you don't have much oil at the top of your peanut butter jar, that typically means your peanut butter has more added oils that don't float to the top of the jar at room temperature, so it's a sign that your peanut butter isn't as natural as it could be.
You might be thinking that stirring the oil into the peanut butter in the jar is the best solution, but this often results in a big mess. Instead, just store your peanut butter upside down in the cupboard; this will make the oil float to the top, which in this case happens to be the bottom of the jar.
If you pour the oil out, your peanut butter won't taste as good in the long run, and it'll dry out much more quickly.
Don't be afraid of a little peanut oil!
