Published on: June 21, 2021
Nutiva makes a vegan shortening product that’s made from palm oil and certified by Palm Done Right – I bought some at the Grocery Outlet and tried it out. Somebody asked me to review Earth Balance, so I decided it might be useful to review two palm oil products as a comparative case study in palm oil sustainability.
First, I’ll let you know how it worked out. I used the Nutiva Shortening as intended – as a shortening for baking. I made a typical pie pastry, following Maida Heatter’s recipe, which involves just four ingredients – flour, shortening, salt, and iced water. The pastry is made by cutting the cold shortening into the salted flour and then adding just enough water so that it holds together.
I’ve made this pastry with regular dairy butter and also with vegan butter – Kite Hill and Califia plant-butters. Making it with Nutiva shortening was not much different from using the other plant butter and I’m realizing that vegan baking isn’t difficult. I would prefer if Nutiva used packaging typical of butter – i.e., waxed paper and perhaps cardboard – instead of this tub. As you can guess, I would prefer the paper packaging from a sustainability perspective, but it would also make the measurement easier than scooping the cold hard shortening out of the tub.
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