By Hannah invited one of her nutrition program clients to dinner Thursday. An elder woman — Mrs. Sixkiller, which is actually her name and it suits her — who has been working with Hannah's program for two months on traditional Cherokee foods. She is seventy-three and grew up in a household that made kanuchi, the old hickory nut soup that was a Cherokee staple before commodity food reshaped everything. Hannah thought it would be meaningful for me to make kanuchi for her, given that I had been working on my version all spring.
I had hickory nuts from the Muskogee farmers market. I cracked and sorted them, extracted the meat, pounded them in a cloth bag the old way — not a food processor, an actual pounding, crushing the nuts into a rough paste that smells like the bottom of a forest. Then you cook that paste into a broth, long and slow. What you get is rich, slightly bitter, deeply savory. It tastes like a food invented by people who knew exactly what the land could give them.
I served it over hominy, the traditional way. Mrs. Sixkiller tasted it. She took a second taste. She looked at me with the expression of an elder who has decided to be honest and said: "Close. But the nuts want more time."
That was it. Close, but the nuts want more time.
I spent Thursday night thinking about it. She was right — I had been impatient with the pounding, left larger pieces that had not fully integrated. The fat had not completely dispersed into the broth. Close is not the same as right, and for a dish made correctly for centuries, close feels like an insult to everyone who made it before me.
Hannah thought I was taking it too hard. She said Mrs. Sixkiller had given me the highest praise a seventy-three-year-old Cherokee woman gives a welder's kanuchi, which is "close." I told Hannah that a weld that is close fails inspection. She said cooking is not welding. I said everything is welding. She has heard that line before.
I made a batch Saturday and pounded the nuts forty-five minutes. The soup was better. Not right yet. But closer to close. I will keep going until someone says it is right.
I—m not going to pretend almond butter is kanuchi. It isn’t. But after Mrs. Sixkiller sent me back to the pounding stone, I found myself making this on Sunday just to work through something: the idea that nuts require time, and that shortcutting the process leaves fat and flavor you earned sitting on the table unclaimed. Almond butter is forgiving in ways hickory paste isn’t, but the principle holds—you run the processor long past the point where it looks done, and keep going, because what you want is on the other side of impatience. This is the recipe I use when I need to remember that.
Homemade Almond Butter
Prep Time: 5 minutes | Cook Time: 15 minutes | Total Time: 20 minutes | Servings: 16 (about 1 cup)
Ingredients
- 2 cups raw whole almonds
- 1/2 tsp fine sea salt, or to taste
- 1 tsp neutral oil (such as avocado or light olive oil), optional
Instructions
- Toast the almonds. Preheat oven to 350°F. Spread almonds in a single layer on a rimmed baking sheet and roast for 10–12 minutes, stirring once halfway through, until fragrant and lightly darkened at the center. Do not walk away—almonds go from toasted to bitter fast. Remove and let cool for 5 minutes.
- Start processing. Transfer warm almonds to a food processor fitted with the blade attachment. Process on high for 2 minutes. The almonds will break into a coarse, dry crumble. It will not look promising. Keep going.
- Push through the dry stage. Stop and scrape down the sides. Continue processing another 3–4 minutes. The meal will begin to clump into a rough ball as oils release. This is the stage where people quit. Don’t quit.
- Let it go smooth. Break up the ball with a spatula, add salt, and process another 3–5 minutes, stopping to scrape every minute or two. The butter will loosen and become glossy and pourable. If it remains stiff after 10 total minutes of processing, add oil 1/2 tsp at a time. Taste for salt.
- Store. Transfer to a clean glass jar. Store at room temperature for up to 2 weeks, or refrigerate for up to 2 months. Stir before each use if oil separates—that separation is a sign there’s nothing in it that shouldn’t be.
Nutrition (per serving, approximately 2 tablespoons)
Calories: 185 | Protein: 7g | Fat: 16g | Carbs: 6g | Fiber: 3g | Sodium: 74mg