Do I need a food processor?

[AnC]

Hello, I need to make a hazelnut paste - instructions say to blitz nuts in a food processor and add a bit of oil (best I can see the consistency needs to be very smooth, somewhere between smooth peanut butter and nutella). I don't own a food processor though. Will a standard blender, coffee grinder or spice grinder be able to blitz the nuts to a powder consistency? If not, will a cheap mini  chopper such as the kenwood CH180 work? If I absolutely cannot use anything other than a food processor, please could I have some recommendations for a decent but cheap one (am in the UK) - will not be something I will use often so if it's easy to store too will be a bonus!

[pastrygirl]

A blender might work but you may have to scrape the sides down often. It can take a while for nuts to turn to butter. Toasting the nuts and grinding them while still warm can speed the process. 

[JoNorvelleWalker]

To make truly smooth nut paste you will need a colloid mill or a melanger.  I use a melanger from melangers.com.  When last I checked a few years ago colloid mills were thousands of dollars.  I was shocked to see small colloid mills now selling for a few hundred.  A colloid mill is like a rotor stator homogenizer but it can handle much higher viscosity.  In contrast a melanger uses grinding stones.

 

[Duvel]

On the low tech end of the scale, you‘ll be able to make a fine hazelnut paste with a heavy duty mortar & pestle. 

[liuzhou]

I'm fairly sure that hazlenut paste has been around a lot longer than food processors, so no, you don't need one.

 

My mother made it 70 years ago and never possessed such a thing in her life. She used a mortar and pestle, as @Duvelhas said.

Edited September 4, 2021 by liuzhou (log)

[KennethT]

6 hours ago, Duvel said:

On the low tech end of the scale, you‘ll be able to make a fine hazelnut paste with a heavy duty mortar & pestle. 

And arm strength/stamina!

[AnC]

Thanks everyone for all the tips. I shall use the blender, and then the pestle and mortar and brute strength if they need a bit more grinding! 

[Duvel]

2 hours ago, KennethT said:

And arm strength/stamina!

Seriously ?! After hiking miles through the forest primeval, fighting off wild boars and oversized leeches, reaching the hazelnut grooves, climbing up the 12 story high trees and plucking the finest hazelnuts with your bare hands, hauling all 260 kg of them back home only in a jute sac on your back, cracking them open one by one between the walls of the old abandoned gym at 45th/Maples and your forehead and finally roasting them in a giant iron skillet over an open flame of a fire you made out of the complain notes of your landlord on the roof of your building, this is the part you think will require strength and stamina ?