Peanut butter is a polarizing food. Either you love it or you hate it. And even if you identify as a PB lover, you likely have strong preferences regarding how you consume the creamy spread. While Americans as a whole are nuts about peanut butter, consuming a whopping 700 million pounds of the stuff annually, there are strong regional differences in how that PB is eaten.
We examined research from all 50 nifty United States on how people enjoy their peanut butter. Most are unsurprising – PB&Js (with or without the crust), Reese’s peanut butter cups (preferably by the fistful), or simply straight out the jar with a spoon (binge like no one’s watching) – but a handful are downright odd. As much as we love peanut butter, we can’t say for sure that we’d satiate our PB cravings with some of these concoctions. But we will share them with you – and judge them accordingly.
These are the weirdest ways people eat peanut butter across the U.S., ranked!
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Weird Peanut Butter Ranked
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10. Coconut Peanut Butter (Hawaii)
PB gets the tropical treatment in Hawaii, where islanders mix the spread with coconut and sell it in jars. Double your healthy fats, double your pleasure?
Photo: Arx0nt (Getty Images)
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9. Fried PB&J on a Stick (Iowa)
Fair food has a reputation for being over-the-top, and the Iowa State Fair delivers. Among its many impaled offerings is deep-fried PB&J on a stick. Politicians love to get photo ops eating such things at state fairs, as did Cory Booker (above), who bit into this heart-attack-inducing snack for the first time and declared, "It's a little slice of heaven."
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8. Fried Peanut Butter Hand Pies (Oklahoma)
We are all for PB pie – of the fluffy, chocolaty, whipped cream-topped variety. But Arbuckle Mountain Fried Pies in Davis, Oklahoma, has a different interpretation of PB pies. They make their PB fried pies in the style enjoyed by cowboys trying to keep warm in the winters of the 1800s. Similar in concept to a McDonald’s apple pie (which we’d prefer any day of the week), these are hand-held and filled with piping-hot PB.
Photo: yongyuan (Getty Images)
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7. Chippers (North Dakota)
Peanut butter is great for dipping, but we never would have thought to dunk our potato chips in the nutty spread. George W. Widman, owner of Widman's Candy Shop in Grand Forks, North Dakota, did. He invented "chippers," potato chips smothered in chocolate or PB, a delicacy loved by locals for over 100 years.
Photo: Spiritartist (Getty Images)
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6. Peanut Butter Soup (Georgia)
There are very few things PB can’t improve on, but one of them is not soup. Try telling that to Georgians. This dish was among the standards served by Jimmy Carter and his wife Rosalyn when they had dinner guests. Rosalyn’s recipe used a half-cup creamy PB mixed with a can of condensed chicken soup. Excuse us while we make our own “soup” in the toilet just at the thought of this travesty.
Photo: Fudio (Getty Images)
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5. Peanut Butter Potatoes (Idaho)
The revelation that Idahoans combined their most infamous product with PB shouldn’t shock us. But it does a little, especially since they bill the unlikely combo of mashed potatoes and PB as an after-school snack. Whatever happened to cookies and milk, Mom?
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4. Guberburger (Missouri)
PB is kind of a condiment, so it’s no wonder it made it onto a hamburger. A bygone Kansas City restaurant called The Wheel Inn is credited with the idea in the form of the Guberburger, which included mayo, lettuce, tomato, and PB. Though that burger joint is no longer around, other establishments in the area have allegedly kept up the tradition. We’ll stick to ketchup and mustard, thanks.
Photo: Kyle Lin (Getty Images)
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3. Fool’s Gold Loaf (Colorado)
A now-defunct Denver restaurant known as the Colorado Mine Company created this insane sandwich of hollowed-out Italian bread filled with a jar’s worth of PB, a jar’s worth of jelly, and 1 pound of bacon. It’s so epic, infamous peanut butter addict Elvis Presley allegedly hopped on a private jet and flew to the venue just to get a taste.
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2. SPAM and Peanut Butter Sandwiches (Minnesota)
Fun fact: SPAM was born in Austin, Minnesota. So it was only a matter of time until a bored local would slip a slice of the salty mystery meat into a PB sandwich – either as a practical joke or out of sincere curiosity. Also of note: Hormel, the maker of SPAM, bought the Skippy brand for $700 million, so maybe this is all a marketing ploy? We’ll never know. What we do know is fans swear by the pairing and claim it’s even better than a classic PB&J.
Photo: SPAM
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1. Peanut Butter and Mayo Sandwiches (North Carolina)
Mayo is another spread that sparks strong opinions in eaters. Perhaps that’s what attracted it to PB? In our opinion, two wrongs don’t make a right, but North Carolinians would beg to differ. The two-ingredient sandwich is a childhood staple in the state, and is credited to the lean times of the Great Depression. The sandwich was born of necessity and somehow refused to die after people’s pocketbooks recovered. Even worse: some residents say that their parents added bananas to the sandwich for “a special treat.” That’s your idea of a treat? Have you people never heard of ice cream? Jeez.
