This Is The Hands-Down Best Natural Peanut Butter Brand On Store Shelves

Peanut butter without palm oil, sugar or other sweeteners, or stabilizers can be a tricky one, often a little dry, too oily, or even bitter. So when we set out to determine the best and worst brands of natural peanut butter, we were surprised to learn that Woodstock Organic Smooth Peanut Butter was actually a mostly enjoyable experience for our reviewer and their family. In fact, in a lineup of 10 other contenders, it was the only one to earn a pretty darn near-perfect 3.6 out of 4. Color us impressed.

And let's be clear: It isn't easy to be up against a series of other all-natural peanut butters. Being natural means everything was stripped back to basics with just peanuts and perhaps a bit of salt or peanut oil, so there is no hiding behind flavors, sweeteners, or palm oil in this competition. Therefore, to win with just peanuts is a pretty impressive feat, but Woodstock came through by having the perfect spreadable and creamy texture that our panels of self-proclaimed peanut butter experts thoroughly enjoyed.

The takeaway was that Woodstock was the only peanut butter likely to survive a taste test by the whole family: adults, kids, and even dogs alike. So if you're still stuck on the notion that natural peanut butter can't be creamy or tasty, you add that to the list of peanut butter myths you can stop believing today.

There were a few interesting takeaways from the battle of the natural peanut butters, so let's break them down now. First off, creaminess is incredibly important to people, and unfortunately natural peanut butter has a bad habit of separating, sometimes requiring a bit of elbow grease to get it all flowing together again. But our winning brand came through on both creaminess and spreadability. It also lived up to taste expectations, which many others on the list fell short on. And yes, there were a lot of other well-known brands that didn't live up to their hype. Wild Friends, for one, came through as pricey and too runny. Once Again had fans but also a notably strange flavor, while the famous Trader Joe's version was fairly tasty, though a bit heavy on the peanut flavor and too low in salt.

And if there's one trick worth stealing from this taste test, it's to flip jars of natural peanut butter upside-down in the pantry for a few days before opening (just make sure you turn it back before you actually twist the lid!). That's one of the the absolute best way to mix natural peanut butter — even better when it's a jar as delicious as Woodstock.