Shortening, Lard, Oil

[C.Whalen]

I just don't understand the difference between these three items.
Are they interchangeable based on preference, or do they each have very distinctive uses.
I am frying chicken tonight and I don't know if I have to use oil in my pan or if I have to use lard.
One other thing I would like to know is if a recipe call for oil and I melt down the required amount of shortening, is that the same thing? If not, why would it make a difference, what would the outcome be?
I am grateful for any and all replies.

 

[lulu]

I might be wrong but:
shortening = vegetable fat eg crisco
lard = pork fat
oil = liquid vegtable fat

I know there will be a technical reason why shortening is solid. I almost always use veg oil when I can, ie for frying chicken. Why? because its easier, and although I may be mistaken, I believe healthier. Furthermore it is easier to dispose of afetr cooking, lol. I still prefer duck fat with roast potatos.


As for the interchangability, well..I don't know. With some things it will definitely work, but others, well I'm not sure. I imagine, for example, a carrot cake made with lard might be heavier than one made with oil. In UK we have a sort of bun called lardy cake, and that is certainly heavy. On the other hand, we use suet (beef fat) in many things too.

Someone will help you with technicalities, but rest assured you can fry your chicken in oil!

 

[YT2095]

ok, roughly speaking, shortening can be either Veg or animal fats so it requires a specifier in that respect.

yes you Can cook with Any of the above mentioned, and it will make little difference to the dish, except where Strong fats like Lamb or Beef are used (it will flavour the dish somewhat).

but up to temp, all will work quite well as an "oil".

 

[Michael in FtW]

As for frying ... you can use any of them with equal success since basically all you are looking for is a liquid medium which can be heated far enough above the boiling point of water to promote browning reactions and to form a crust. At frying temps - they are all liquid.

As for baking - melted shortening, or lard, will definately make whatever you are making heavier due to the increased percentage of saturated fats. You will also have to add them while still warmer than room temp to keep them from re-solidifying. That's one advantage of oil - it's liquid at room temp.

Different fats (solid or liquid) do have different flavors - some are subtle and some are very pronounced ... as Lulu and YT noted about duck, beef and lamb fats. Although lard (pork fat) if probably the most subtle of animal fats, I can taste the difference in some foods fried in it (especially mild flavored things like Indian Fry Bread).

Health and Nutrition: Lard is about 40% saturated fat, and contains about 12mg/Tbsp of Cholesterol. Shortening is usually about 25% saturated fat, Corn oil is about 12% saturated fat, and Canola (Canada oil!) is only about 6% - these non-animal fats don't contain cholesterol.

 

[Barb L.]

My input as a Grandma cooking, I would never use anything but oil when baking, unless it calls for shortening, then I would use Crisco-(solid shortening) I like the flavor. Pie crust made with lard are awesome, I don't make my own but Mom did. Fried chicken, Mom always used Crisco, so that is what I use if I want it to taste like hers !

 

[TexanFrench]

Aside from the saturated fat/cholestrol content and flavor, the other big variable is "smoke point" -- i.e. the point at which a fat will burn. Butter, for instance, has a very low smoke point, as does olive oil. You don't want to use either of those for heavy-duty frying. However, don't obsess about it too much. In many parts of the world, only one type of fat is readily available for cooking, and folks do just fine.

 

[Michael in FtW]

I would really like to know who started the myth that you can't fry in olive oil! It has been documented that the Greeks and Romans were doing it nearly 2,000 years ago, according to Apicius compiled in the 4th-5th century CE.

Extra Virgin Olive Oil (406ºF) has a higher smoke point than Vegetable Shortening (356º-370º F) - Extra Light Olive Oil (which is a refined oil) is even higher at 468º F- refined Peanut oil smokes at 450º F. Clarified butter (butter oil) - about 350º F. If you want the ultimate highest smoke-point oil - it's refined Avacado Oil (520º F) - with safflower a close second at 510º F.

 

[TexanFrench]

I never use anything but extra virgin olive oil. And when I have a pan of onions that I'm stir-frying, I do better with grapeseed oil. Sometimes I'm just not up to the delicate touch required with evoo.

I'm sure the ancient Greeks didn't care if their oils smoked a bit, and they certainly didn't care about the possible carcinogenic effects of same.

I will say that I've used evoo in every conceivable form of cooking, including baking and frying, because there have been times when I've been pinching pennies, and that's all that is in my cupboard!

 

[VegasDramaQueen]

There's no doubt that making pie crust with lard is superior than any shortening, however, because this is pure animal fat the cholesterol and saturated fat content is very high. My mother in law and her sisters all made pasties with the crust made of beef suet. There wasn't a pasty on the face of the earth that tasted better and the crust melted in your mouth, but I was amazed at how much food she made with lard. She fried foods in lard also. My husband had 4 major heart attacks and she herself had 2. It wasn't a good choice. I use olive oil and on rare occasions Mazzola corn oil and nothing else. But I have to admit that when I saute cabbage, I drop a teaspoon or two of apple smoked bacon grease into the pot. Wow. Awesome.
BTW I never use Extra Virgin olive oil for cooking. The delicate flavor goes away when it's heated and other food is mixed with it. I use Pure Olive oil and still get a good taste. I save the EV for dipping and salads when it's flavor can really be appreciated. I spend about 25.00 to 35.00 per bottle and I'm not dropping this into a frying pan. LOL.

 

[Caine]

Health-wise, your best bet is some type of mono- or un-saturated cooking oil, such as olive, canola, peanut, grapeseed, etc. Stay away from shortening, either pure vegetable or not, which contains trans-fats. Lard, which is pig fat, and beef tallow, which cow fat, contain saturated fat.

If your intent is to cook and eat healthy, you need to limit your saturated fats to 5% to 10% of your daily fat intake. Trans-fats, on the other hand, are so bad for you that no one has yet established a quantity that is safe to consume, so you should consider the recommended daily intake to be a big ZERO!

 

[Caine]

There's no doubt that making pie crust with lard is superior than any shortening, however, because this is pure animal fat the cholesterol and saturated fat content is very high.

On that note, let me put forth a recent observation.

I was grocery shooping and came upon a Mrs. Smiths deep dish apple pie, 9 inches in diameter, for $5.15. On the box there was a big yellow sun symbol that read "0g Transfats." Curious as to what they could be using for shortening for the crust, I turned the box over and started reading the ingredients. Sure enough, there was vegetable shortening and margarine, hydrogented vegetable oils included, on the ingredient list. HUH!?! How could they possibly have 0 grams of transfats when they admit there are hydrogented vegetable oils in the pie? Then I looked closer. "Servings per container: 12." Uh, sorry Smittty (may I call you Smitty?), but even a thorasic surgeon couldn't cut a 9 inch diameter pie into 12 pieces with destroying it. I have enough trouble cutting one of your pies into 8 pieces instead of six without the crust crumbling.

The moral of the story is, Marie Calender restaurants is having a sale on homemade pies this month, $5.99 each. I am sure they are healthier and taste better than Mrs. Smiths frozen bake-it-yourself pies, you don't need to light the oven, and they come in a wider variety of flavors.

 

[VegasDramaQueen]

ROFLMAO!!! You've got a good point there. Cutting that little pie into 12 servings would be less than a 1 inch piece per person. No wonder the nutritional information isn't so bad. Funny thing is, and my husband was guilty of this, no one really pays much attention to the "servings per container" part of the info. If you realize just how small the servings are supposed to be you'd be amazed.

 

[Caine]

ROFLMAO!!! You've got a good point there. Cutting that little pie into 12 servings would be less than a 1 inch piece per person. No wonder the nutritional information isn't so bad. Funny thing is, and my husband was guilty of this, no one really pays much attention to the "servings per container" part of the info. If you realize just how small the servings are supposed to be you'd be amazed.

The thing is, as a nutritionist, I KNOW how big a serving is supposed to be, and 12 pieces from 9-inch pie ain't it!

 

[Snoop Puss]

I would really like to know who started the myth that you can't fry in olive oil! It has been documented that the Greeks and Romans were doing it nearly 2,000 years ago, according to Apicius compiled in the 4th-5th century CE.

Extra Virgin Olive Oil (406ºF) has a higher smoke point than Vegetable Shortening (356º-370º F) - Extra Light Olive Oil (which is a refined oil) is even higher at 468º F- refined Peanut oil smokes at 450º F. Clarified butter (butter oil) - about 350º F. If you want the ultimate highest smoke-point oil - it's refined Avacado Oil (520º F) - with safflower a close second at 510º F.

I fry in olive oil - deep and shallow fry. Thanks for this post Michael. There's a thread on this somewhere. Chips and other things done in olive oil taste great, but it's always good to feel vindicated by an expert.

 

[Caine]

I sauté in olive oil, I stir fry in peanut oil, and I deep fry in canola oil. Sometimes I flavor my stirfry with sesame oil by adding a splash near the end.

 

[boufa06]

Aside from the saturated fat/cholestrol content and flavor, the other big variable is "smoke point" -- i.e. the point at which a fat will burn. Butter, for instance, has a very low smoke point, as does olive oil. You don't want to use either of those for heavy-duty frying. However, don't obsess about it too much. In many parts of the world, only one type of fat is readily available for cooking, and folks do just fine.

The old EVOO smoke point issue begins to smolder once again! Well, enough has been said as to what the smoke point of EVOO may or may not be. What I would like to ponder is how significant this smoke point may be in cooking. For the sake of argument, let's talk about the worst case scenario, ie. deep frying.

Provided that the food to be fried is added to the EVOO in the fryer before the latter reaches smoke point, I would venture to say that the EVOO will not reach its smoke point during frying as there is significant moisture in the frying food to keep the EVOO temperature in check. Needless to say, if the fryer has a thermostat that can be adjusted to keep the EVOO in the fryer at a temperature lower than its purported smoke point, the whole smoke point issue would be irrelevant.

The only possible EVOO (or for that matter any frying oil's) decomposition that may take place is when frying in a limited amount of oil, which will probably lead to charring of the food being fried on the outside. Over here, I have witnessed this phenomenon in the kitchens of several ladies of the 'old guard' (my dear mother-in-law included) who tend to splurge on EVOO when it comes to salads and cooked food but become inexplicably stingy when it comes to deep frying which it is almost always done in a shallow frying pan with a miniscule layer of oil in the bottom. This brings to mind the

I'm sure the ancient Greeks didn't care if their oils smoked a bit, and they certainly didn't care about the possible carcinogenic effects of same.

which may have been the cause of the demise of ancient Greece not to mention the Roman Empire as well. However, when frying in a deep fryer no such problems should occur. Too bad that ancient Greeks and Romans alike could not benefit from their use!

To summarize, 'smoke point' may be a smokescreen of sorts, if such a temperature cannot be achieved under normal cooking conditions. There remain only a few cases reflecting bad cooking/health habits where the cooking oil/fat is deliberately brought to its smoking point. One such case that comes to mind is the questionable practice of cooks of the old guard here who toss spaghetti or even boiled rice in a pan of smoking oil or clarified butter prior to adding sauce etc. just before serving. However, even in this case, whether one uses EVOO or not is once again irrelevant since whatever the cooking oil may be, it is brought to its smoking point anyway. Incidentally, the same will happen if during cooking for whatever reason the temperature rises abnormally in the cooking pot (eg. when all moisture is gone). That is to say, in such a case, no matter what the smoke point of the cooking oil may be, it will be reached anyway and the unhealthy effects of decomposing oil and/or burning food will be inevitable.

 

[Andy M.]

boufa:

Your logic is sound and you are correct about being able to deep fry in ev olive oil with no issue. This is true for the first use of evoo (or any other oil). Each use of oil for deep frying contaminates that oil. This contamination, along with the heat lowers its smoke point. After several uses, normal frying temps which were safely below the oil's smoke point will now cause that same oil to smoke.

Use isn't the problem, reuse is.

 

[eatsOats]

wow, excellent discussion! I have learned much already. This is of great interest to me because I love trying out different kinds of oils. I agree with Andy about the use of EVOO in a deep frier. That being said, I use EVOO or extra light olive oil for 99% of my frying with great results. Here is a table that I saw the other day describing the breakdown of different kinds of fats contained in common oils. I thought it was interesting:

 

[boufa06]

boufa:

Your logic is sound and you are correct about being able to deep fry in ev olive oil with no issue. This is true for the first use of evoo (or any other oil). Each use of oil for deep frying contaminates that oil. This contamination, along with the heat lowers its smoke point. After several uses, normal frying temps which were safely below the oil's smoke point will now cause that same oil to smoke.

Use isn't the problem, reuse is.

Andy, good that you understand the issues here too.

As for the reuse, it surely should be curtailed as much as possible. However, when we had our restaurant, I was not able to detect smoking when deep frying (calamari most of the time) in reused oil. What I did witness was that the oil eventually would lose its ability to fry the calamari anymore, with the latter shedding water and sort of boiling happily in the deep fryer. Needless to say, this was a clear sign that the oil should already have been replaced. Eventually, we did reach a rule of thumb to cover such cases which was to replace the oil after frying for the third time in it. The only time that smoking would occur was when we were too late in putting the calamari into the deep fryer where the oil was being heated.

 

[Michael in FtW]

Generally, when we talk about fats (solids or oils) used in cooking we are talking about "triglycerides" - three fatty acid chains of various lengths attached to a 3-molecule glycerin backbone.

When fats are heated up to frying temps, and used for frying, they break down from both heat and contamination from the foods cooked in them - the fatty acid chains break apart and become "free fatty acids" - fatty acid chains not attached to a glycerin chain. These free fatty acids are highly reactive to oxidation, and lower both the "smoke point" and "flash point" of the oil. And, they are not as healthy - they are more like to be absorbed. The more times fat is heated up to the frying temp, or the longer it stays there - the less healthy it becomes. But, it's life can be prolonged by filtering every day. But, different oils have their different limits on how many times they can be re-used.

Just something to think about when selecting your "fry" oil - in addition to flavor.