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Cooking tips and hints:

Healthy oil substitution for margarine, butter, and shortening
My most famous substitution is using healthy oils in lieu of shortening, margarine, and butter. All three harder fats have a bad name in the nutritional world -- butter for its high cholesterol, and the other two for consisting of "funny fats" or trans-fats. If you listen to Dr. Joel Wallach's "Dead Doctors Don't Lie" radio show, often the first thing he tells cancer victims is to stay away from fried foods and margarine.

In recipes, my replacement for these three hard fats is to take the amount of margarine, shortening, or butter, and divide it in half -- that's how much extra virgin olive oil to use. Some people don't like the taste of olive oil in recipes, while others adore it. I like it personally, think it adds a nice extra flavor to some recipes. But for those who don't like olive oil, grapeseed oil is a nice light oil with a very healthy reputation.

Then the final touch -- add a very small extra pinch of salt. That's because margarine and butter are salted. If the recipe calls for shortening, check the label on the shortening can you'd normally use, to see if it also has salt.

For things like margarine or butter on vegetables, a little salt and oil work fine. Generally I prefer to use an even healthier oil like flaxseed, or a mixture of flaxseed and extra virgin olive oils.

For bread, an herbed oil is often popular -- extra virgin olive oil with thyme is mentioned several times in Mort Rosenblum's book Olives : The Life and Lore of a Noble Fruit. But any combination you prefer could be used. Hummus is also a great bread spread, with good calcium & nutritional content. The sesame seeds it contains even have their own essential fatty acids or "good fats."


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[Original page posted 17 February 2005]
© 2005 by Pam Rotella

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