Veg shortening vs Lard for crust

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suziquzie

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I am going to attempt a Sweet Potato Pie. I usually make my crusts with butter and lard. The recipe I have calls for all butter, except for 2 TB veg shortening, and I'm willing to try something new.

Does anyone have thoughts on this? I don't care for veg shortening in anything, I always think it makes things taste bland,even the butter flavored stuff. But maybe there's enough butter to cover it up this time??:ermm: Maybe I should just go with my own tried an true. Help!
 
I'm with ya!!!!

Bill I used to go out to Montauk and Shelter Island alot as a kid. I grew up in the Bronx, my Mom is from Bethpage.
 
Count me in too!! Suziquzie go with your tried and true if you want a TASTY pie crust.
 
I'm with ya!!!!

Bill I used to go out to Montauk and Shelter Island alot as a kid. I grew up in the Bronx, my Mom is from Bethpage.

It’s a small world- in the early 1940’s I lived in a new apartment house on Bailey Ave near Van Cortlandt Park, Bronx. I hear Arthur Ave is still hanging in there. Guess the nice bakery on Dykman Street is gone as are the Jewish Deli's and bakeries on Saint Nicholas Ave. Then spent a dozen years a few miles north of Sheepshead Bay at a time when Nostrand Ave was unpaved South of the last stop on the trolley (South of Ave U) with horse stables and vegetable farms for neighbors. Within a few years after the end of WW II that all changed.
Bethpage, Farmingdale and Melville were pretty rural and quite to my liking through the 1950’s. It’s decline (growth) seemed to culminate with the replacement of the Ag School with a Tech school. Shelter Island, Amagansett, Oyster Ponds, Montauk and Orient Point were pretty nice through the 1970’s. Now they are becoming overpopulated. I used to be able to drive from Riverhead to Shelter Island without having to stop at any traffic lights; not so any more. The litter and discourtesy typical of the NYC area is invading ELI.
 
I've done a lot of recipes for pie crust and the ones that get rave reviews are the ones where I use lard only. The others work, and folks like 'em fine, but all lard is the way to go.
 
Well, she's in the oven, I decided to go with the lard. I'll let ya know in a few hours!

MM smells good already! :chef:
 
Hey Bill! Thanks for asking!

The 2 and 8 yr olds liked it, 4 yr old doesn't like anything, so that's the true test. DH liked it, it's half gone already!

I used Armour lard, same as always. The crust was flaky but a little tough, maybe a smidge too much waster and a little over baking? :ermm:Better than soggy though I figure.

How's the island today?
 
Armour seems to have a corner on the readily available lard market. The island is pretty quiet this morning. The sound of chainsaws did not used to bother me but that was back when the island was full of trees. But as the island has become barer and barer it has become a sad sound. Half a dozen large eastern red cedar were felled nearby yesterday.
 
I rarely see any other lard here, funny how different simple little things are just by an imaginary "line in the sand". My brother thinks I live in Canada... because GASP I moved 50 miles away from the city, north. Poor city kid.

Bill it seems the more people want to move out to the middle of nowhere to "get away from it all", the more they bring "it all" with them. I was born in the biggest city in the world, and it seems the smaller the places we move to, they always grow on us and we have to go farther. The town we're in now is about 5,000 tops, about 50 miles from Minneapolis. Give it 5-10 years and I bet I will no longer live next to a cornfield.
 
I rarely see any other lard here, funny how different simple little things are just by an imaginary "line in the sand". My brother thinks I live in Canada... because GASP I moved 50 miles away from the city, north. Poor city kid.

Bill it seems the more people want to move out to the middle of nowhere to "get away from it all", the more they bring "it all" with them. I was born in the biggest city in the world, and it seems the smaller the places we move to, they always grow on us and we have to go farther. The town we're in now is about 5,000 tops, about 50 miles from Minneapolis. Give it 5-10 years and I bet I will no longer live next to a cornfield.

Im happy for you that you are living next to a cornfield. While at the Indiantown Gap Military Reservation, Lebanon PA for summer camp, in the early sixties, acreage could be had fo $100 per acre but my Army pay was $3,000 per year and looking forward to a possible career in the big city the acreage didn't seem to make sense. Guess I was wrong even though Lebanon is not what it used to be. Hear anything about what's happening on the Eastern Peninsula of Michigan? Sure had some great whitefish dinners on the shore of Lake Superior and one **** cold swim!
 
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