What Exactly is Shortening (Crisco)? | America’s Test Kitchen
In this episode, host Jack Bishop compares shortening and lard. Shortening was marketed as a replacement for lard, but can the two be used interchangeably? And what is shortening made of?
Light and Fluffy Biscuits (with Shortening) Recipe:
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This product was first called shortening as it was discovered that it shortens the lives of those who eat too much of it, too often 😊
Good explanation of the advantages and disadvantages of butter versus lard versus shortening.
But what about clarified butter? It has the water removed, so would it give the best of both worlds?
I always use lard and butter in my pie dough and it makes it super flaky. Crisco still has high levels of linoleic acid which can contribute to heart disease
Morello is hydrogenated. Not good. And contains BHA and BHT. This is not pure lard.
Crisco=Crystalized Cottonseed Oil
the "I" is dotted with a flame..did you notice??? there is a reason for that!
I have a recipe from my Mom for her applesauce cake. The only thing you can use in it is lard. She tried Crisco and the cake wouldn’t rise. Every time she’d give the recipe to someone, she’d tell them they had to use lard because Crisco wouldn’t work. And when I was a child c she baked this cake a lot because it was the only one I’d eat.
My grandfather was a chemist at the AC Humko plant making that shortening. He died at 53 from a heart attack. There were other factors but tasting shortening for a living probably didn't help!
Why not use ghee? It's 100% butterfat with all of the milk solids and buttermilk removed.
Fantastic!! I just found the Morrell and have been using it instead of crisco
Hydrated foods are undigestable…not good
I was in Fred Meyer's, 2 days ago and I saw the retro old packaging with the 1911, on it was neat seems like they would have done this in 2011 for their hundredth anniversary.
Some lard is hydrogenated, especially if it's shelf stable. Check the label.
Shortening got its name way before anyone knew anything about the chemical reaction of fat and gluten, and that's because the word "short" used to mean tender in reference to food.
Lard has lots of cholesterol. Crisco has none. That is an important distinction.
This is an excellent beak down. Thanks for the helpful information.
I was collecting and saving fat from bacon drippings, and eventually I had enough for a berry pie crust, It is not true that everything is better with bacon.
It’s not made from vegetables.
There’s also an Animal Shortening option and i’m surprised they didn’t include it. It consists of mostly beef tallow among other fats.
The reality is, a large portion of consumers balk at any animal fat. I love lard and tallow, but vegetable derived fat is the most widely acceptable fat. Of course, I’m not including Butter which falls into the Dairy category. Butter is accepted by all except vegan consumers.
For deep cracks in my heels, my UMass podiatrist told me to wrap my heels in plastic wrap with Crisco for 2 hours a day, wash, exfoliate with a pumice & moisturize – 2 months later … no cracks!
I think Suet is cheaper and available at my local grocery store. But comes in raw vac packs.
Unhydrogenated lard is better for humans than hydrogenated vegetable oi.
They aren’t equal.
This Video about Crisco is all about Lard
We used to save and keep lard for cooking. It was better tasting than Crisco, but my Mom had a little Crisco around in case we got low on lard.
For years my family recipe for pie crust was known as water whip. Crisco was put in a bowl with some water. Then was whipped together with a fork. Tilting the bowl to one side as my aunt insisted. Then taken out of the bowl put on a sheet of wax paper molded into a ball then covered with another sheet of wax paper and using a rolling pin rolled into a pie crust. It was the best and the flakiest crust ever. The key to a light and flakiness was a gentle hand while whisking . It was an art that needed to be practiced to achieve.
Lard is essential for refried beans, also
Shortening is what’s happened to me in the past five years.
What about clarified butter (Ghee) that doesn't have water in it?
Isn't crisco made from soybeans? That takes off my list of edible foods.😊
I remember in the 60s,they added its digestible to their commercial
This stuff is poison anf should be banned. This is the ultimate ultra processed food.
Crisco was a real life saver for people who kept kosher. They couldn’t use any pork products and even if there was kosher beef fat, anything baked with it could not be eaten with anything dairy. Conversely, anything baked with butter could not be eaten with meat or chicken. Crisco was not a meat product nor was it dairy, so it was embraced by the Orthodox Jewish community and became the go-to baking fat – at least until dairy-free margarine came along.
On the internet, I found the Morrell Snow Cap Lard that you recommend. Now, the front label says "With Hydrogenated Lard", so it's now basically Pork Crisco,
I wish he mentioned cholesterol when glossing over the difference in "nutrition" between the two.
I’ll pass. Both look disgusting.
He didn't tell us why he didn't like shortening. It's made of vegetables, after all; how is it not sustainable?
Why are videos on this channel so quiet. Turn it up!
Thank you very much for this. Really really did not understand the difference of what lard was and what Crisco was even though I’ve known about both. Appreciate your explanations!
He equates the healthiness of bith of them yet doesn't give the reasons.
Tenderflake is the best lard for baking. That is all I use in my pies. And it is a CANADIAN product and, as far as I am aware, very difficult to find in the US.
it is not a tie by any stretch of the imagination. Just think about the process where we allow 'scientists' and industrialists to declare "food items or ingredients/additives" as safe for consumption until proven otherwise, where the process should be proven by real scientific study free of conflicts of interest before pushing them on the general population for profit.