Butter vs. shortening: How best to use each

These two fats aren’t necessarily interchangeable.

There are some ingredients that will almost always raise questions when they’re called for in a recipe. Vegetable shortening is one of them. I’ve answered inquiries from plenty of readers who say they simply don’t want to use it.

I don’t totally blame them. After nearly a century of popularity, the tide turned on shortening in more recent years. To convert vegetable oils into solid fats, they can undergo a process called partial hydrogenation, which alters their chemical structure. This process also creates trans fats, which eventually were found to be bad for you, particularly with regard to cardiovascular health.

In 2018, however, the Food and Drug Administration’s ban on artificial trans fats went into effect, though products are allowed to claim they are trans-fat-free if the amount is less than 0.5 grams per serving. Crisco, the brand synonymous with shortening, changed its formula to use fully hydrogenated oil, while others, such as Nutiva and Spectrum, use nonhydrogenated oils.

Is shortening a health food? Of course not. But is using butter better for your health? Not necessarily, as butter poses its own set of quandaries, including saturated fat and cholesterol.

So how do they stack up from a culinary point of view? Here’s what you need to know about these two fats, including how they differ, whether they’re interchangeable and why you might still want both in your pantry.

Fat content

Shortening is 100% fat, while American butter is closer to 80% fat, with 18% water and 1% to 2% milk solids.

In something like pie crusts, fat is essential for tenderness, by interfering with the creation of gluten. Gluten is formed when proteins in flour meet water, one reason you might get a slightly tougher outcome with butter (more water) when compared to shortening. Fat also contributes to flakiness when it melts and leaves behind air pockets, Lauren Chattman says in “The Baking Answer Book.” With its higher amount of fat, “Vegetable shortening incorporated into flour creates more air pockets as the crust bakes than butter,” she says. As King Arthur Baking says, too, shortening will also help your crust better hold its shape (more on that below), especially your pretty crimps.

Subbing butter and shortening for each other in pie crusts that have been developed with certain fats in mind may affect the flavor and texture, as well as the amount of wiggle room you have before the fat starts to melt (shortening buys you a bit more time). To take advantage of the best of both worlds, Chattman recommends 60% shortening and 40% butter to achieve “flaky and flavorful in just the right balance.”

Flavor

Shortening is neutral in flavor. That’s useful if you are using it to, say, grease a pan. In dough or batter, a flavorless fat is not ideal. While Chattman acknowledges the advantage of cookies that spread less with shortening, “I would beg you to stick with butter,” which she says contributes its own flavor and enhances that of other ingredients, such as chocolate.

Butter has at least one other flavor advantage, thanks to those milk solids. As Kye Ameden explains in a comprehensive biscuit test over at King Arthur Baking, the sugars in those milk solids caramelize at a high temperature. That leads to the more enhanced browning Ameden observed but can also provide additional complex flavors you wouldn’t get with pure vegetable fat.

Melting points

Hydrogenation helps make shortening ideal for incorporating at room temperature, since it won’t go soft as quickly, says Harold McGee in “On Food and Cooking.” Air is best beaten into butter at cool room temperature, around 65 degrees, while “shortening creams most effectively at a warm room temperature, between 75 and 80 degrees, he says.

Similarly, once baked goods go in the oven, the difference in melting points is equally apparent. As my former colleague Jane Touzalin wrote, “Butter starts melting before shortening does; a cookie made with butter will sink and flatten because its fat is giving out before the cookie’s structure has had a chance to set. Shortening melts at a higher temperature; when melting begins, the cookies will have been in the oven longer and will be set, so they’ll keep their shape better.”

Aeration

In addition to the melting point, there’s a least one more major difference in how fat and shortening perform during creaming. Creaming is an important step in baked goods, such as cookies or cakes, that you want to rise. The air pockets you form in creaming expand during baking thanks to leaveners (baking soda, baking powder, yeast) and the evaporation of water.

As McGee explains, fats hang onto these air pockets that are introduced on the back of sugar crystals being beaten into them. “Animal fats – butter and lard – tend to form large fat crystals that collect large air pockets, which rise in the batter and escape. Vegetable shortenings are made to contain small fat crystals that trap small air bubbles, and these bubbles stay in the batter.” Moreover, shortening is primed for creaming because it is pumped with small bubbles of nitrogen, giving you ready-made air pockets ripe for expansion.

REY LOPEZ FOR THE WASHINGTON POST Shortening is 100% fat, while American butter is closer to 80% fat, with 18% water and 1% to 2% milk solids.