crisco alternative? healthy shortening?

[Chakra]

its to make a pie crust and i wont use crisco.

[gabella06]

I've used butter to make crust before. It's pretty good! I think I got the recipe from Martha Stewart. The best alternative would, most likely, be lard. But from reading on this board, lard is not easily come by.

[crunchy_mama]

palm shortening?

[Denvergirlie]

coconut oil is GREAT in baked goods, wonderful, just wonderful

[spughy]

Lard is not that hard to come by - if you have a good butcher or a charcuterie nearby. Our charcuterie sells lard they render themselves - it is lovely. (And from free-range happy pigs.) But if you have a butcher who has access to good pigs, ask him/her to get you in some kidney fat, take it home, stick it in a saucepan on low for a long time, then strain and store the resulting liquid fat. That's lard.

[artemis33]

I make crust with a combo of palm shortening (the Spectrum stuff - non-hydrogenated) and butter. 1:2 ratio - in my recipe 4TBS shortening to 8 TBS butter. I have also used coconut oil and it works pretty well but melts easily so I had to stop and chill it a couple times while working with it.

[poppymum]

Butter makes a fine crust. A lot of recipes use both butter and shortening (butter for flavor and strength, shortening for tenderness and flakiness). But I think butter alone is wonderful, especially if you replace half the water in the recipe with plain vodka. You can even add a tiny bit more liquid to the recipe, making it easier to roll, because the vodka will bake away. :

I agree that nice white lard is wonderful for pastry crust, but don't use the stuff from the supermarket-it often tastes meaty.

Enjoy your pie!

[JElaineB]

I use lard for piecrusts.

[gabella06]

Originally Posted by poppymum

But I think butter alone is wonderful, especially if you replace half the water in the recipe with plain vodka. You can even add a tiny bit more liquid to the recipe, making it easier to roll, because the vodka will bake away.

I've never heard of adding vodka instead of liquid! Well, for a pie crust anyway! What does the vodka do to the crust? Is it flakier?

[poppymum]

Piecrust gets tough when gluten in the flour reacts with water to become stretchy and firm (it's what makes bread chewy and good). But gluten doesn't react with alcohol. One of the difficult things about pastry crust is that you want to use as little water as possible to avoid toughness, which can make the dough difficult to roll and form. So if you replace some water with vodka, you can make a softer, easier to handle dough that bakes up tender

[EyesOfTheWorld]

I'm not sure exactly where else their stores are, but we get lard at Shopper's Food Warehouse. Works great in pie crusts!