Substitute for Crisco Shortening ???

I use butter in place of vegetable oil in cakes and shortening in cookies.

It has been my experience that substituting butter for shortening will result in a more moist product. For example: using shortening in chocolate chip cookies will make a more crisp cookie, and butter will make softer cookies. Has anybody else noticed this? Personally I prefer butter.

I have eaten the country cooking of five generations of farm cooks. I have enjoyed the situation immensely. My . . . . substantial, yes substantial, stature is proof of that.

It surprises me that none of you have mentioned rendered chicken fat. It has always been a prized shortening, I guess you would call it that, by the cooks in my family.

Grandma was famous for a white cake that she made with rendered chicken fat. She would have prized the big glob of fat that comes in the abdomen of modern meat chickens. Being a broad thinking cook she also belived that "Nahrung sollte mit Butter und Liebe gebildet werden."

My mother saved even the fat that was extra from chicken prepared with vegetable shortening or butter.

A sister-in-law uses chicken fat in her bread recipes.

During the holidays I saw a stainless container with a plastic top in my sister’s fridge – marked “chicken fat” Saw her use it to make crepes as well.

Lard is still a staple in my family too. I think that pan fried fish and popcorn are best made with lard.

Quote:
Now that makes sense to me. I make Katy's Lighter Than Air rolls, and her original recipe called for shortning, which I dont use, so I tried butter instead. They turned out really good, but they are very moist. Must be because of the butter.

Quote:
Your Grandmother's "Food should be made with butter and love" is appreciated.
In our multigenerational traditional cookery, chicken fat was called "schmaltz" and was very much prized. That is, until modern medicine declared it a quick trip to Heart-Attack-City. But back in the day, we slathered it on dark pumpernickel bread, sometimes adding raw onion slices on top. That was a favorite 10pm snack. Friday night dinner always included mashed potates with lots of schmaltz on top; potato pancakes were fried in schmaltz; noodle puddings a/k/a luckshun kugels were luscious with schmaltz and raisins and walnuts baked into them. We made the schmaltz by rendering all the yellow hunks of raw fat from the chickens in a huge frying pan. Along with the fat, we always added lots of raw chicken skin, chopped into teeny pieces, along with chopped onions and lots of salt. When all the yellow clumps and lumps of fat were entirely liquified by the long slow frying, and all the skin and onions were crisp and brown, the frying pan was emptied into a big strainer set over a deep bowl. The bowl of schmaltz was refrigerated to be used throughout the week, the crispies left in the strainer were called GREE-bin-ess and we kids fought over it. Delicious cracklings. Yum; haven't had any in over 60 years now, but I still salivate just thinking about them.

We only use coconut oil in our house. Olive oil as well, but only uncooked. Occasionally butter.
Polyunsaturated oils, which include vegetable oils like corn, soy, safflower and canola, are the worst oils to cook with because of the trans-fatty acids introduced during the hydrogenation process, which results in increased dangers of chronic diseases such as breast cancer and heart disease. What most people don't understand is that once you heat oil to a high temperature in the presence of oxygen and light you can produce all kinds of different damaged toxic oil molecules that are cyclized, cross-linked, fragmented, bond-shifted, and polymerized. Coconut oil is the oil of choice for cooking because it is nearly a completely saturated fat, which means it is much less susceptible to damage when it is heated.
The short of it...When you heat oils they become potent carcinogens. Carcinogens cause health issues and cancer.

Quote:
So true. And coconut oil can be found cheaply in Big-Box type stores like Costco and Sam's Club. Same with Peanut oil, the oil of choice for frying due to its MUCH higher smoke point.

I use butter, bacon grease, chicken fat (or turkey, if I have it) beef fat, and lard, now, since we raised and butchered pigs this year, and I have plenty of fat to render. I've rendered some, the rest is in the freezer waiting for me to get around to it. I never use Crisco or any other hydrogenated fats to cook with, never buy margarine, either. I'd prefer raw butter, but until I get my own milk beast, I have to settle for store bought butter.

Chicken fat (with onions or without) is yummy to fry potatoes in, and make biscuits or pie crusts for meat pies, but the rendered fat with onions might not be the best choice for cookies or fruit or other sweet pies! The onions don't quite work, there! Nice in breads, too.

Wow, I have sure learned alot from all of you. Thank you very, very much!