How to get every last bit of peanut butter out of the jar

Plus: Two more recipes to use up what’s in the bottoms of jars

Welcome back to Cool Beans, where half of our sustainable-eating journey is about finding delicious ways to reduce waste. Some recent favorites include a “tuna” salad flavored with pickle brine and griddle cakes made with last night’s mashed potatoes. Sometimes transforming leftovers into new and exciting dishes is easy as pie, but other times we have to get creative, like when trying to use up the dregs of jars. 

Getting the last sticky morsels out of their glass prisons can be a bit of a chore—unless you wield the jar as a kitchen tool in and of itself. Today, I’m turning three almost-empty tubs into a meal-maker sauce, a vinaigrette, and even a cocktail. Each of these zero-waste recipes is made right in the jar (in under 5 minutes), so you have less to clean up later.

These “recipinis” are as much must-haves for waste-watchers as they are for devoted container savers. Absent an obliging canine who gets to lick jars for being the very-best boy, you gotta find ways to get those vessels clean. Take peanut butter: You’re almost to the bottom, but there’s still a tiny bit left. You can see it! Wrangling it out is annoying, but necessary if you want to reuse the container—or set it up for success at the recycling plant. May as well get dinner out of the deal while you’re at it! Shall we?  

Any Nut Butter Sauce

Nut butters, for me, are an essential food group. No jar lasts very long in our house, and I’ve even invested in a tool to help me extract every last bit. For those of you who are not quite that desperate, this shake-and-go sauce is a great way to free the bottom-of-the-jar bits. This makes for a splendid (if rich) salad dressing or a simple way to sauce up some noodles. You can even add some cooked noodles or grains right to the container and toss it up for a quick lunch. This mix works with every nut or seed butter—from cashew to tahini—but you may have to adjust the liquids depending on how thick or runny your nut butter is. 

Team Crunchy. Credit: Gabriella Vigoreaux

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