Question
Monica Alexandra Torres Del Rio
What are the substitutes for vegetable shortening, please?
Answer
Well for me. Go ahead chef. Don't use there's no shortening ever ever for any recipe and shortening. I don't know my food history. Well a short thing was invented. You can read about it why he was invented? I think it was a shortage of butter. a long time ago cheaper and does not melt in the sun. Right? So but my my students would always tell me. Hey Sheffer. Can I use shortening for my pie crust? Because that's my grandma's recipes. Well, I say sure. Let me get some shortening and I put it on a piece of bread and you eat it. Right and they would say that's disgusting. Why would somebody do that? Well say if you put it in a pie crust, you will eat it. Right and the problem is if he does not melt in the Sun. It does will not evil will have a hard time melting inside your body. Right? And so it's it's not a healthy fat. It's does not taste like anything. So if you really want to mimic the the texture and the properties of Shortening, I would advise you to use all butter or clarified butter. That's the Clifford Brothers. Probably a closest thing you can use to shortening, but do not use shorting for baking. Yeah, I have a quick story on this my great-grandmother pie crust recipe calls for half butter and half shortening. And I knew when I was a kid, we used Crisco and crisco had different properties than it does today, which is shortening. And we were making this with my mom and my kids and she insisted we use the shortening like nope. I don't put shortening. I'm gonna substitute butter. No we got to put the shortening and it had been kind of reformatted and recalculated the short and just did not do it. It's anyways, we couldn't roll out the dough. I couldn't get it off the counter and I was baking a pie for a pie contest with my kids and they're like, this is the ugliest pie I've ever seen dad. Why are we because we use shortening and I wanted butter. We didn't have the right thing and it tasted okay, but it didn't taste great. So I would say just look at the shortening and say her I'm gonna put butter instead. Don't yeah, it's it's really it's really a bad product for baking. You know, it has no no flavor whatsoever. It's it's not a natural product. It's not healthy. Just use butter if shortening does not contain water. Yeah butter contains 16% water. And so if you if you want to get to that exact texture of the shortening then you use a clarified butter when you cook butter slowly and then all the water evaporates and then you let it Harden And then you get something very close to shortening and at least it's natural. Perfect.
