Hello, my name is Meg. And I am a shortening snob.
I didn’t mean to be a snob about fats. In fact I come from humble fat beginnings. My mother has used vegetable shortening all my life. Granted, it was usually for greasing cooking sheets and 9 by 13 pans, but it was a staple in my home as a child. However, living in a home where my mom was an avid baker, I didn’t spend much time in the kitchen myself. So my culinary journey really began in my early twenties on a coal burning range.
Yes, I said coal. Summers in college I worked on an 1880s farm at a local historical village. This was where I really learned to cook. And in the 1880s there was no vegetable shortening and no vegetable oil. Lard and butter are used in baking.
As I moved out on my own, I began to use olive and canola oils, but my fat of choice has always been butter. It’s expensive, but so delicious. And truthfully, I never thought about my fat choices. I always have butter on hand – you never know when a grilled-cheese-and-tomato-soup urge will strike. I might as well use that for greasing or pie crust or any other fat needs. My love of butter and insecurities with less natural forms of fat never came up. Until last week.
My husband’s birthday was last week. So I wanted to make him a pie. (I made him werewolf cupcakes for his birthday party the weekend before, but we’ll discuss those in another post.) My husband isn’t a huge dessert fan, but he loves Dutch apple pie. A blog I enjoy had an amazing recipe for the pie and recommended a specific pie crust. It claimed the crust was flaky and delicious and that it comes out perfect every time. Sounds incredible, no?
There’s only one hitch. The pie contains vegetable shortening.
I was taken aback. Vegetable shortening? But don’t they understand? It isn’t from nature. You can’t cut open a vegetable and find shortening. You can’t squeeze a vegetable and get shortening. It’s created in a lab. So I thought I’ll just use butter instead. Yeah, that’s what I’ll do. Forget them.
So I read through the recipe just before I went to the store to get ingredients. And then I saw it. “You must use Crisco, not butter. Butter simply will not work.” GASP! Butter will not work? But it has to work! I love butter! But wait, this is not just any pie. It’s a birthday pie. It has to work. I don’t want substandard crust.
Then I pictured myself in the grocery store. Pulling the vegetable shortening off the shelf. Placing it in my cart. People would see me. They would know I use inferior fats. They would think that I was not smart enough to know that EVERYTHING tastes better with butter. I wouldn’t be able to hold my head up. And even if I could get through the humiliating grocery store experience, it would be in my cupboard. How would I ever use up a whole container? I certainly wouldn’t be using it in other recipes. It would just lurk in my pantry cupboard mocking me each time I opened it. I hate being wasteful so I know I wouldn’t throw it away. I would just curse it and remember my humiliation.
No, I could not buy vegetable shortening. So what was I to do? Then I thought of the flakiest pie crust I have ever made. It was called Pate Brisee. It was beautiful. Delicious. And it took FOREVER to make. Did I mention I started all of this at about 6 PM? So now I’ve been deliberating for about 15 minutes and I still have to get to the store, make pie crust, peel, core, and cut apples, make crumb topping and bake the pie. No time for the fancy pie crust.
I had to rely on my trusty old pie crust recipe. It is always good, has always served me well. No reason not to make it again, right? It will be fine.
Then again, this is a birthday pie. Fine won’t exactly cut it.
So I thought perhaps there’s something about the way you make the crust that makes it so special. So I read through the instructions again. This pie crust calls for freezing. That’s right. Freezing. Should I make my trusty old recipe and freeze it? But I want my birthday pie to be great. What’s a girl to do?
And then I remembered Susan. Susan is a dear friend, a huge food lover, and has used this trusty old pie crust recipe many times. So I called her up. “Susan, do you know anything about this freezing pie crust business? Have you ever tried it with the basic recipe?” Susan is always interested in a food conundrum. Unfortunately, almost all of Susan’s cooking comes from 19th century cookbooks. That would be cookbooks from the time before refrigeration. Blast! Susan definitely has not frozen pie crust. Not any pie crust. But Susan is a food lover and a critical thinker. So Susan says, well what does the freezing do? How long do you freeze it? The recipe said to freeze it for 20 minutes or longer. So it might be just a faster chill than the refrigerator. Chilling pie crust is good. That’s normal and it is always good for a crust. And you know what? The pate brisee called for freezing, too. Freezing – there must be something to this. So with reassurances from Susan I decided to make my normal pie crust and freeze it while I prepped the apples and crumb crust. So I went to the store and came home to make my crust. The freezing made it stiffer, but that helped in rolling. The rest of the pie went swimmingly. (Well except for that one part when I forgot to set the timer, but thankfully we were watching a DVD and could tell from the movie how long the pie had been in!)
And you know what? It turned out the best my trusty old recipe ever has. So though I have uncovered an ugly shortening prejudice, I did make a beautiful and delicious pie. Which was, of course, the whole point. Happy Birthday, Brian!
My trustee old pie crust recipe is as follows:
For two crusts
½ cup butter (and I do mean butter)
2 cups flour
Dash salt
Enough water to make it stick
Combine flour and salt. Cut in butter. (I actually do it with the two knives – I learned to cook in the 1880s-but a pastry blender will work fine.) Add water ¼ cup at a time and mix until the dough sticks without leftover flour at the bottom of the bowl. In the past I just rolled out the dough at this point. This time I froze the dough for about 30 minutes before rolling.
God bless and happy baking!
Here's the scruptious apple pie. It's half eaten because I wanted you to see more of the crust. Not because I forgot to take a picture before we ate it. Um, yeah, that's it.
Haha! I love this story! And I, too, learned how to cook without any modern conveniences–on an 18th century hearth. The first time I made bread at home, I did all the mixing by hand–my mom came in and said, “You know we have a mixer, don’t you?”